Member-only story
Nerd Processor
The Decline and Fall of the Modern Nerd
The sad saga of how fandom transformed from being about love into hate and intolerance
Traditionally, nerds were always portrayed as outsiders looking in: Gazing at the high-school groups of popular athletes and cheerleaders, the cool kids, and all the others who never had a Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Guide fall out of their backpack while rushing to class. Things have changed. It’s a nerd’s world, where geeks dominate pop culture and entertainment, and the studios and publishers and so on peek inside, in hopes of figuring out how to constantly appease their new nerd overlords.
As a young nerd, I understood I was an outsider (in fact, it was made abundantly clear on many occasions). But suddenly I’ve become a member of pop culture’s new ruling class — and it has me wondering if I need a plan to escape.
For the first time since high school, I have felt genuine shame in telling people I am a nerd. When I have had occasion to tell someone I’m a Star Wars fan, I immediately feel the need to qualify it by adding, “but I’m not one of those crazy assholes you hear about.” I love Game of Thrones, but I can’t think of the series at all without also remembering all the hate spewed about the final season. There are an increasing…
