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This is not what I'm saying. I'm saying that they (and an increasing amount) are more likely too be losers, and unusually big and strange ones at that, not that everyone are losers.
I also find some value in some niche communities but that is rapidly decreasing. It seems to me that as the relative amount of nerds decrease, they are not merely being replaced by normies, they are replaced by normie losers.
Furthermore, this is very much true of both communities I directly participate in and those that I see at a distance, this one included. This is doubly true of people hanging around just to be part of a "community" rather than engaging with the core activity of the community. People on gaming forums that don't play games or wants to talk about them, people here or in the SSC sphere that only ever talk in the wellness or fun threads or equivalent, people in book communities that don't read, people TV-show forums that don't watch the show, etc.
Everyone isn't a loser of course but a disturbing amount are. That anonymous user could be anyone but realistically they are likely either a loser being open about being a loser or a loser lying about not being a loser (or someone young lying about their age).
We have the old framework of geeks- > mops -> sociopaths for community development but now it seems more like geeks -> losers -> sociopath losers for pseudonymous forums. Its not just that the interesting core gets diluted by normies it's that they're such massive losers as well. I mean, realistically, what group has time to spend all day in these communities that aren't obsessed with the subject matter? Its not the normies. The bizarre moderators are not outliers, they are representative of their communities.
I agree. I've linked my little joke graph before, below, nerd identification is essentially negative. One identifies as a nerd socially because one is un-athletic, socially awkward, etc not necessarily because one is factually intelligent or well read. Without gatekeeping on the axis of intelligence (which no one is willing to do), Nerd becomes the catch-all category for those with no other options.
At the same time, I caution against assuming that the users of other Social Media are any better. They might just be losers along different, hidden axes rather than on obvious ones.
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Did you see Scott’s recent post on Nerds and Hipsters?
I did, and I have an effortpost percolating asking: What drives people to write essays that try to give precise definitions to slang terms that have inherently flexible meanings? See the many essays on the difference between a Geek a Dork and a Nerd, or between a Slut a Whore and a Ho, or between a Bitch and a Cunt, a Prick and a Dick, etc.
Thank you - that was exactly my thought about Scott's post. Sometimes the most intelligent conclusion you can reach when you analyze the difference in denotation and connotation between two terms is that they ultimately don't have a stable difference in meaning, and I think that's the case for geek vs. nerd - I've read many people attempt to define a difference, but nothing has ever stuck.
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