site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  11mo ago (text post)   2949 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 28, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

https://samkriss.substack.com/p/all-the-nerds-are-dead

For the last decade, mass culture has been nerd culture, and a nerd is someone who likes things that aren’t good. This is not to say that everyone who likes things that aren’t good is a nerd. Fast food is bad food: cheap, tasteless, unhealthy, and unsatisfying. But if you grew up eating frozen burgers as an occasional treat, and you still find it nice to sometimes stumble drunk into a McDonald’s late at night and wolf down a Big Mac—because it reminds you of something, because it’s the sign for a certain vanished pleasure—then you are not necessarily a nerd. But imagine a person who collects the boxes from every McDonald’s order he’s ever made, who’s yapping with excitement about the new McDonald’s partially hydrogenated soybean-canola oil blend, who can’t wait for them to release the McBento in Japan so he can watch video reviews all day, and who acts incredibly smug every time McDonald’s posts its quarterly earnings and they’re growing faster than Burger King’s. You know exactly what this person looks like. A total failure of an adult human being. Fat clammy hands; eyes popping in innocent wonder at every new disc of machine-extruded beef derivatives. An unbearable, ungodly enthusiasm. Does he actually like eating the stuff? Maybe not. It hardly matters. His enjoyment is perverse, abstracted far beyond any ordinary pleasure. It signifies nothing. This person is a nerd.

I found this essay on hipster culture and nerd culture to be interesting and enjoyable to read. I'm linking it because it seems relevant to some of the topics discussed here. It raises questions about what effect AI will have on art and cultural production.

I saw this when Scott Alexander responded to it, and read the follow-up comments with interest.

It has probably been 20 years since I last "updated" my sense of "nerd versus geek," and I have to say--I was until this week thoroughly under the impression that "nerd" referred to the academically inclined (narrow and idiosyncratic, but challenging, interests) and "geek" mostly meant pop-culture inclined (narrow and idiosyncratic, but unchallenging, or at least more artistic, interests). People could be either; people could be neither; people could be both. A Shakespeare geek loves Shakespeare; a Shakespeare nerd writes academic journal articles about how Ophelia was a proto-feminist. A science geek "Fucking Loves Science," but a science nerd actually knows things like Maxwell's equations and how to apply them. A sports geek collects memorabilia, but a sports nerd can quote you statistics, obscure rules, and probably kick your ass at fantasy football. In other words, it was never about what was "good"--you could be a geek or a nerd about things other people valued, or not. It was just about the level and quality of your interest in narrow and idiosyncratic things.

I cannot overemphasize just how much I really thought this was something my linguistic community (i.e. the Anglophone internet) had pretty well settled no later than, say, 2010.

Of course, in the 1970s and 1980s, these were both mostly words with a pejorative connotation; between "Revenge of the Nerds" (1984) and Bill Gates becoming a billionaire (1987) by the 1990s "nerd" had been pretty well rehabilitated, and by "The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001) "geek" had mostly come to cover pop culture afficionados, perhaps as part of the rise of the "geek girl." A lot of this kind of tapers off post-Awokening (circa 2014), possibly because the most relevant pop culture properties prior to 2014 was clearly dominated by "problematic" (i.e. white, male) creators and fans.

So the idea of nerds as people who like things that aren't good is just totally alien to me. This article talks about some interesting phenomena, but I think it butchers several otherwise-useful words to get there.

I would say your definition of nerd and geek is spot on. I have no idea WTF the author here is on about with saying nerds are people who like things that aren't good. That's not what it means, nor has it ever been what it means.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats