I just saw a headline at Inverse Magazine discussing the possibility that Gwynyth Paltrow spoiled the next Avengers movie by stating that Pepper and Tony have a child together. In the opening paragraph, the writer mentions that Tony and Pepper discuss having children in the movie.
This spoiler alert sums up nerds to me perfectly. I haven’t seen this movie, but every spoiler review has been, ‘oh, I can’t believe they killed so and so’, or ‘this is how so and so messed up trying to stop Thanos’, or, ‘maybe Thanos had a point’, or ‘where is this or that character’, ‘That’s not canon!’...blah blah blah. Only now does some magazine mention the human development of a character, presumably because all of the rest of the nerd hypothesizing and spoiling has been done. This is some classic escapist, miss the forest for the trees, failure to appreciate meaningful character development, nerd bullshit. Nerds have become cool, and along with a popular embrace of nerd-centric culture, the antisocial and non-productive elements of nerdiness have also been embraced.
There are cool things about science fiction and fantasy, and being a fan of whatever, but there’s some fucked up shit in nerdworld too. Part of the reason nerds got into the things they did was that they were escaping from social isolation. Some capitalist realized that all of that pent up social neglect and fantasizing about a world where they might matter was marketable, and started hiring these sad fucks to write movies and books, and over time made themselves the heroes of the stories, and normalized their social deficiencies, made them charming, and wrote themselves into all of their stories as the unlikely hero and loveable underdog in the popular zeitgeist.
And overall, that’s fine. It’s good for people to have a voice and to feel included. But please don’t forget that the triumph of the nerd also gave us ‘nice guys’, ‘Incels’, gross libertarian atheists in fedoras, ‘social justice warriors’ with cartoonishly over the top abilities to be offended, the alt-right, animal-kin, furries, hentai, etc. the embrace of nerd culture also smuggled in some anti-social and counter-productive, degenerate shit.
So, Iron Man is going to have a baby. At least I guess, in the movie, he talked about it. No one mentioned this in their reviews because nerds don’t think about basic human shit like this. They’re more worried about whether or not the tailpipe on the Millennium Falcon is loyal to the original design George Lucas scrawled drunkenly on the back of a cocktail napkin, or whether or not the ghostbusters are allowed to be girls.
As someone who has dipped heavily into nerdy things, who has even identified as a ‘nerd’ in the past, let me say this: fuck nerds.
Art is wonderful. Culture is essential. Being a fan of things can be transcendent. But if art gets boiled down to a basic comic strip, if culture becomes a dehumanized, collective escapist fantasy, if being a ‘fan’ means reducing any creative endeavor to whether or not something matches the source material, whether or not it validates our personal prejudices, insecurities. And ineptitudes, or just a set of stupid memes and hashtags, then those things don’t mean anything anymore. Just more capitalist fast food. The mainstreaming of nerd culture has eased up the stigma of being different and really (really) liking offbeat things, but it has also elevated nerdiness to almost a virtue. Yeah, it’s cool that you are able to publicly embrace whatever you like, whether you like it as a stand in for real human and life connections or just because you like it, but if you can’t even see the beating heart behind the thing you love so much, I would suggest that maybe you suck. Also, the government doesn’t owe you a girlfriend, Ron Paul is an idiot, you should really learn how to change a tire, prepare a meal without a microwave, get some exercise, and spend time in the actual company of other people. Tumblr doesn’t count. Also, why are nerds always the ones worrying about the zombie apocalypse when we all know that no nerd would survive the event?
In summary, if you’re more worried about what hue of purple Thanos’s skin is than the moral and human arc of Tony Stark, you’re a shitty fan. Plus, the Ghostbusters ARE girls.
Andy Rooney approves of this message.
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