Is it me or has being a nerd become trendy?

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It was Scott Adams’ Adventureland! It was pretty much the first microcomputer game— it didn’t need a university mainframe to play. My favorite was Pirate Adventure, but Adventureland was a good one, too. I don’t think I ever beat any of them, but my Dad could beat The Count. That one always scared me, though… 🙂

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Who gives a single iota of poop what’s cool. If you like those books and games read/play them!
 
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Many old msdos games you can run on a dos emulator like dosbox or such.

I have boxerapp and have played games like betrayal at krondor.
 
One thing that’s changed since I was a bookish kid and deep into science fiction and fantasy (and superhero comic books at roughly the same time) is that the mainstream popular culture has become increasingly about science fiction, fantasy, and superheroes albeit via mediums of film and television… I’m not sure what the turning point was, whether it was ‘The X-files’ or ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ or Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies or the Avengers movies. In a way it’s what I always wanted, but at the same time, this stuff doesn’t belong to ‘me’ or ‘us’ anymore, but to the entire planet. It’s a bit like when your neighborhood gentrifies; at first you’re excited about the new cool bars and restaurants and boutique shops, but then you notice that the hardware store is closing because they can’t afford the elevated rents and everything has become about entertainment.
 
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Mainstream science fiction and fantasy is also way better written since the 90s.
 
Uh, the cool kids. They can’t be cool if they aren’t trendy. Like: “Ewww. Are those clothes from the '80s?”
 
As someone who read those old Marvel and DC comics, and who learned storytelling and world building, there are only so many things you can do. And while the costs for special effects for TV have come down, the concept designers still need to get paid for props and sets. Comic books never had that problem. The data-driven number crunchers, or bean counters, decide what stays and what goes, and test to find out what the audience prefers. I come from a generation that was not raised by the internet, we went to libraries, and we had many face to face occurrences and friendships. This current media generation of creators have a much narrower vision by default.

TLDR. I’ve been reading a wide range of things all my life. Sitting down with a book about a subject you know nothing or little about seems counterintuitive. For some, the internet is everything, and “we can’t do it the old way because it’s old.” I know people who work at Marvel and DC. I have no interest in current comic books.
 
LOL I love Sturgeons Law and quote it all the time.
I know there’s really good and thought provoking older speculative fiction. But the stuff served up in the mainstream TV was pretty awful.
Or at least less good.
Compare for instance, 80s Battlestar Galactica with 2000s Battlestar Galactica.
 
It might be a product of years of media that portrays popular kids and jocks as bullies and villains with the nerds and social outcasts being the underdog heroes. I mean, who doesn’t like a good “revenge of the nerds” type story.
 
Haaa Haven’t heard that term in years.The word of choices ce in the late 60’s 70’s
 
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Also, “popular” no longer means “well liked”.
It now means “socially powerful”.
 
I’ll just be sitting over here with the rest of the Hufflepuffs reading about hobbits while y’all debate my coolness… 😉
 
I dunno, I guess because a person can be well liked without being a jerk. Actually, people who aren’t jerks are usually better liked than mean people.
So it’s a bit weird to me that popular=mean people.
A person with the right power and alliances can be a jerk and get away with it, but not necessarily be well liked.
 
@(name removed by moderator) and if you’ve read Simon Reynolds’s book ‘Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past’ you’ll know he argues that this is a new condition affecting all of popular culture, including music. If he’s right it would explain why music today sounds so derivative and undirectional (i.e. not ‘going’ anywhere).
 
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I think I know what you mean. I’ve been listening to 70’s era prog rock lately, just to see how they tried to force the music to grow up (with mixed results).
 
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