Kristine
If you loved playing Dungeons and Dragons or reading comic books back in the ‘80s, you might have been subjected to relentless teasing from your more-popular classmates. It wasn’t “cool” to memorize obscure trivia about fantasy worlds, write stories featuring your favorite superheroes, or simply spend hours poring over a topic that thoroughly intrigued you.
Today, on the other hand, geek culture has gone mainstream!
Being a “nerd” is all the rage, from wearing quirky glasses to creating elaborate cosplays to spending hours playing video games. In this new era of nerdy pop culture, how is it that seemingly everyone can relate to the geeky outcast archetype? When did people begin to embrace nerds rather than shun them?
Lastly, what does the broad acceptance of geek culture mean for the truly nerdy geeks among us?
Nerdy & Niche to Mainstream
Think of all the ways that traditionally “nerdy” things have slipped into mainstream media.
Superhero movies dominate at the box office year after year, portraying comic book characters in larger-than-life fantasies on the big screen. TV shows and series, such as Stranger Things and The Big Bang Theory are based around groups of geeks who enjoy science, technology, and games like Dungeons and Dragons. Even gaming itself has become a major cultural phenomenon, with eSports raking in about $1 billion of the $108.4 billion dollars the gaming industry earned in 2017.
Dave Goetsch, a co-executive producer on The Big Bang Theory, says that the internet has played the biggest role in transforming geek culture. Before the internet, knowing obscure trivia and odd facts was seen as undeniably nerdy. Now, anyone can access information about anything at any time with a little help from Google. “Growing up, pre-Internet, possession of knowledge was such an identifier,” said Dave Goetsch. “That is no longer true; the Internet flattens things out.”
Does Nerd Culture Still Exist?
In short: yes. Despite the overwhelming popularity of things that used to be aimed at geeks, there’s still a major difference between those who enjoy playing video games occasionally and those who play video games, learn the backstories of each character, and passionately talk about the lore of specific storylines.
The main concern that nerds have isn’t that more people are enjoying nerdy media and activities; it’s that the enormous popularity of their favorite things will lose that special spark that attracted them to that content in the first place. “That’s what the problem is. Nerd culture is built upon the different, the weird, and the curious,” journalism student Tim Becker writes. “What makes nerd culture special gets watered down when you stretch it so far.”
