Fear and loathing in nerd culture.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/blog/35360
I went to the comic book shop yesterday. Well, I should back up a little. I went to the Dimond Center mall yesterday, after work, with two goals: download that Shiny Dialga to both my Pokémon White and White 2 cartridges by standing outside of GameStop, and buying the new issue of IDW’s excellent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot. As it turns out, these goals were about one hundred feet apart. Not long ago, the comic shop and the GameStop were separated by the entire mall, which gave me a nice, relaxing “mallwalk” and it let me (potentially) rack up some more StreetPasses, since the Best Buy is between the two stores. Well, no longer. Now, the comic shop and the GameStop are separated by an escalator, and nerds are free to stroll between the two establishments unfettered by any significant distance.
Despite its gradual cultural acceptance thanks in large part to Joss Whedon, Steve Jobs, Wil Wheaton, that dude from "Castle," and “The Big Bang Theory,” the term “nerd” is no longer so much derogative or pejorative as merely descriptive in a vanilla sense. Nerds read comic books and play Halo. People who once beat nerds up in high school now actively self-describe as such. But there’s still that implicit visual of the fat guy with acne and glasses held together by duct tape, sitting in his parent’s basement playing World of Warcraft with one hand and stuffing Cheesy Poofs in his orange-coated gullet with the other. This is not a positive correlation.
It is, however, one that nerds actively partake in. I have a love/hate relationship with the comic book shop. I go in there for very specific purposes: buy one or two comics, look through the Pokémon cards, and see if they have any Kotobukiya figures that catch my eye. It’s also, generally, where I buy my board/card games, although Amazon is kind of taking over that role. Some nerds, however, like to go in there and debate. They like to debate loudly. And these are my least favorite nerds.
Yesterday there were two of them (arguing in volumes one normally reserves for screaming at the umpire from your stadium seat) about dwarves, Minecraft, and Dungeons & Dragons. The amazing thing is that they were arguing about these three things simultaneously, and they weren’t really arguing so much as agreeing with each other, vociferously, in terrible Scottish accents (because all dwarves are Scottish). I suppose one might wonder, “what if I was a dwarf character in a D&D game that took place in the world of Minecraft?” Well, apparently you’d just dig downwards forever, because that’s just what dwarves do, and sometimes you’d randomly hit a dungeon where the other party members would be and you’d act all casual about it and be like “hey guys, just digging away, you know how it is,” as if it were a happy accident.
I witnessed a very strange man with a very strange-looking backpack ask if he could reserve something. The employee asked for his name and email address or phone number, and the guy became paranoid. “Why do you need that information?” “So we can let you know when (whatever it was) arrives.” “I’ll just come in and check on it. Can I just give you my first name?” What the ****, people.
As I was perusing one box of pocket monster cards, a girl leafed through another. By her side was her reluctant boyfriend, whose only role was to act as a soundboard for her constant verbal stream of how cute certain of these monsters were. She was unusually distracted by little things, like a Psychic-type card being in a red sleeve, because red sleeves, of course, are reserved for Fire-types, or errors in alphabetization. I’m the same way, of course, but I don’t verbalize my every thought. I just silently slide the Bulbasaur that was accidentally placed behind the Cloyster back with the other Bulbasaurs. I don’t gibber incessantly about how cute or powerful a particular card is. I keep that **** to myself. It's possible she had a pathology, but I found it more likely that she was a babbler—possibly because her boyfriend enabled such behavior.
Unfortunately, next to me (because I was in the cards section), three nerds were arguing with each other about who the best Green Lantern was. It was absolutely mind-numbing. These nerds were arguing about people that don’t exist who have powers that are impossibilities in a context that doesn’t matter. This is exactly why I haven’t gone to a Comic-Con. I imagine the entirety of that con would be people like this, having heated exchanges regarding continuity errors between the different books of the New 52 DC comics, because that **** matters. We’re about to bomb Syria, the debt crisis is about to rear its ugly head again, and pythons have taken over the Everglades, but goddamnit, Don Draper would’ve been a better Batman than Ben Affleck. I'm not saying your longform essay about why Grant Morrison ruined Catwoman isn't culturally relevant; what I'm saying is that you should probably be worried about far more important things.
Says the guy who agonized over whether they'd ruin Godzilla again for the 2014 film.
But I kept that **** to myself.
The one nerd I appreciated was the clerk, a young woman who noted how old the two Pokémon cards I ended up buying were. I explained that I was trying to collect one of every Pokémon from the first ten sets (that is—all the sets released before the eReader expansion). She thought that was cool, and wished me luck. I appreciated that, and I wondered if she represented the same tier of nerd that I feel that I occupy: largely introverted, but willing to strike up a conversation about one of our hobbies should the opportunity present itself, but in what you might consider an "inside voice." The Internet is a wonderful place, as it allows nerds of all stripes to come together and discuss their interests. What bothers me is when I walk into an establishment and am accosted by the absolute worst stereotypes our isolating culture produces. There's OCD girl by the Pokémon cards, Lord of the Rings guys screaming in Scottish accents, paranoid guy who doesn't even want anyone to know his last name, one-uppers with strong opinions on galactic police officers, and people I haven't begun to dismantle: really, really fat guy in an X-Men T-shirt, equipped with a satchel; goth kid reading manga in a corner; former jocks commenting on Halo 4; the list goes on.
These are not my people, but at the same time, they are. Nerd culture is simultaneously vast and insular. The majority of this essay has been repulsive—an effort to distance myself from the kinds of people I don't wish to associate with and who I wish, to be honest, would go to another comic shop. But I can't do that without looking inward. I'm the kind of nerd THEY don't want to associate with: the judging nerd, the one who looks down his nose at Green Lantern arguments while simultaneously having strong opinions on how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Goddamn Turtles have been portrayed by different creative teams over the last twenty years. I'm the nerd who doesn't like Halo because it's Halo, and who dismisses EA Sports games as being little more than $60 roster updates (which they are, but that's beside the point). I'm the guy who disparages figmas while buying figures. I'm not immune to criticism myself, nor should I be; nor should any of us be.
I guess my point is that I can whine and distance myself from other nerds all I want, but I do have to appreciate that we all want the same things, ultimately. I share an enthusiast's eye with OCD girl over Pokémon cards, though our motivations differ substantially. I wanted to deck those Lord of the Rings guys, but I probably wasn't the only one in the store with those feelings. Really fat guy was picking up a stack of New 52 books; I was picking up a stack of TMNT comics. Aside from our BMI's, there's really no difference there (except the satchel—I can't forgive that). And I really DO want to go to San Diego Comic-Con before I die, if only to meet some of my heroes—J. Scott Campbell, Frank Cho, Bruce Timm, etc. I'll just have to turn my "tolerance" meter up to "high." Because I'm pretty intolerant of my fellow nerds, but sometimes I think it's warranted.
They probably feel the same way about me.
Topic: Of Nerds and Men: Isolation (Read 1270 times)
