It’s a good time to be a nerd. All across the landscape, nerd culture is paramount. The top-rated comedy on television is The Big Bang Theory, a show about a group of very smart, very nerdy science types who work at CalTech on science stuff. Police procedurals, a long-time staple of prime time television, have gone increasingly nerdy, with shows like CSI becoming multi-series juggernauts, and every other modern incarnation incorporating substantial nerd characters and content. The biggest movies coming out of Hollywood are superhero blockbusters, and seemingly every superhero television series has an armada of nerdy science and technology types backing up the main character (who is himself often a nerdy sort). In pop culture, the nerds have won.
This is all great stuff, especially for those who grew up loving math and science, playing Dungeons and Dragons in their friends’ basements, reading science fiction and fantasy stories, enjoying comic books, and so forth. The nerds of yore were fringe players in the social scene, either low in the pecking order or apart from it entirely. The quiet, bookish kids who were less likely to be involved in sports and other things physical were sometimes bullied and often marginalized, more likely to be mocked than respected for their interests, and that was a shame. What’s also a shame is that the ascension of nerd culture has brought with it certain societal developments that seem to be overcompensation for the inequities of yore.
In our schools, traditional “boy” behavior, which tends to the physical, is actively discouraged and often medicated away. Normal schoolyard interactions are quashed under a zero-tolerance attitude towards bullying or anything that might be perceived as bullying. The traditional male archetype of strength, steadfastness, reliability and self-confidence has been supplanted by nerd-chic and various “softer” archetypes, including the hipster, the slacker, and the sad-sack husband (the favorite of television advertisers). The big-and-strong archetype is still out there, but it has been infused with nerd-dom as well. Today’s big-and-strongs are found in the comic book movies, and they often have a nerd backstory that brought them to big-and-strong status via magical means and association with other nerdy types. Spiderman was a nerdy kid before being bitten by a radioactive spider. The Flash of the CW television series is a dorky crime scene investigator who gets caught up in a strange energy event. Captain America was a scrawny runt who was given a Super Soldier drug. The X-Men are kids who were “different” and were brought together in a school.
The big, strong, type-A superheroes are themselves flawed. Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, is an asshole who used to make weapons of war (a Bad Thing). The Hulk is a mindless destroyer (until, in a giant gaping plot hole in The Avengers, he is not). Batman is a combination dilettante and psychopath who apparently doesn’t deserve his wealth. Superman adopts a mild-mannered milquetoast cover personality. In non-nerd pop culture, we are most likely to find the high school quarterback to be a paunchy, broken-down, glory-days-reliving used car salesman with a harpy ex-prom-queen wife screeching at his inadequacies.
There are good, strong messages in much of the material upon which nerd culture is based. A kid with quick wits but nothing special on the physical side can find inspiration and validation that he’s not unique, that there are others like him, and that perseverance and the right mindset can bring success. The path to individual success through that perseverance and self-reliance is, however, a difficult one, and has fallen behind the more seductive lure of forcibly reshaping society to compensate for past injustices.
Thus, the anti-bullying initiatives. Thus the embrace of modern tropes that show the “traditional” male role models in a negative light. Thus the turning of the tables against the traditional male archetypes in entertainment. Thus the ascendance of the man-child and squishy slacker tropes. Thus the exaltation of “manly” signals like beards, fedoras (excuse me, trilbies), and the lumbersexual look over actual “manly” activities like vehicle maintenance and home improvement. When was the last time a male character in the media was portrayed as quietly competent?
This has produced some societal shifts that, unfortunately, end up working against nerds. By embracing the denigration or mutation of traditional archetypes instead of being happy at the acceptance of nerd culture, the nerds have established a precedent for forcing the shifting of societal norms. This has fostered the creation of a cultural hierarchy of aggrievement, where the rights of some are prioritized over the rights of others. Every “alternative” lifestyle choice must not only be accepted and embraced without question or critical comment, but must be given priority over anything that’s more “traditional.” A transgender woman must be granted access to women’s public restrooms, even if “cisgender” women are made uncomfortable. Grievance groups jockey for position above other grievance groups, and everyone fights to get to specify the “correct” options, the “correct” words and phrases, and the “correct” worldview.
Under this new normal, nerds, unless they are of one of the grievance groups, nerds are very likely to fall at the bottom of the hierarchy, and again find themselves on the social fringes. The broadening of acceptance that the rise of nerd culture has engendered is, sadly, one of the sources for the rise of the intolerance that is forced tolerance. It has contributed to the weaponizing of victimhood, where people prefer to use victimhood as a cudgel to force submission rather than simply be content with increasing acceptance and naturally improving societal tolerance.
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