I Don't Like Hanging Out With Nerds

...or, "How Time Corrupted the Nerds."

I remember being a kid in the late 90s and early '00s and getting picked on for being something of a nerd. It was already starting to turn over, though, with the culture becoming more and more mainstream the older I got. It wasn't like I got beat up for liking Batman. I got made fun of here and there and sometimes, occasionally, it was because I had some sort of nerdy stuff around, but more often than not it was just because kids are fucking rude and they would grasp for any straw. So maybe I'm not the be all, end all of experience here, but I'm doing this anyway just because I'd love to say that being a nerd doesn't seem like all that proud of a thing now.

Honestly, I don't even like hanging out with nerds anymore. I think too often, that turns into a pissing contest of purity. You say you like a thing and then some idiot has to chime in with “YEAH BUT DID YOU SEE THIS OTHER THING? IF NOT THEN I JUST DON'T SEE HOW YOU'RE A REAL FAN!” And it's like, Jesus, turn it down, buddy. It's just a movie. Not like we're at the Conference of Nations here. If I like a thing, that just means I like it. Not looking to join the fucking debate team here.

And in recent years, with the ballooning of Marvel, Star Wars and Disney into a grotesque blob devouring everything in sight, it's hard to be sympathetic to this kind of aggro fan posturing. It's cool to like the stuff, I've enjoyed some of it, but at some point you're also basically getting pumped up and angry defending the 1% of entertainment. You're basically like “don't be so mean to this untouchable billionaire behemoth!” This especially applies to Star Wars. Jesus, the bitching I've heard and read about these new movies, you'd think they had paid for these people's housing and food needs for years.

That isn't even the worst of it. You hear worse things from women who try to enter the nerd kingdom's gates. Awful tales of sexism. And I'm glad I don't have to suffer the annoyances of any minority trying to wade into the public discourse. Just look at any time Marvel or DC tries to introduce a new incarnation of a character who's black or a woman or gay. Online, things have gotten perilously toxic at times, such as the 'Gamergate' fiasco that really showed how awful and toxic these people were, sending death threats, screaming misogynist garbage.

Nerds got to the top and then proceeded to act like the exact people they hated, discriminating and pushing people around. One thing nerds love is a quote from a nerdy movie used in some other context. So for me this whole thing is like when Harvey Dent said, “You either die, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” The whole predicament is basically the story of so many “I'll show them” nerd fantasies. We all had 'em, the whole idea of “they're making fun of me now but I'll get rich and punish them someday,” but it's become a reality for some people. There's a NYT editorial that goes into this with more finesse than I could, about people like Elon Musk. There's a dark side to every kind of person, and any ideal is somewhat corruptible, unfortunately.

I get how it happens. Nerd-dom is basically just liking something in a real, intense way. You don't just watch or read or play the thing passively, but actively consume, sucking up every morsel of information like Kirby from Smash Brothers (see, another reference). A lot of the time, that kind of devotion comes with a loneliness or something missing in real life, and a lot of young teenagers have that because life is tough to put together when you have almost no autonomy. But most of us grow out of that and become productive and well-rounded adults, to some extent anyway.

But some people don't grow out of it, and that portion seemed to grow more vocal as the internet got bigger. They turned their loneliness and social ineptitude into a weapon. Who knew how they'd gotten there? They just never seemed to click with real life. Never fit in. I guess we used to laugh at people like this for being fat Star Trek cosplayers who lived in their mom's basement. Now, I guess they're the same people, except they're angrier through a lot of time spent behind a screen reading conspiracy theories and getting angry at 'PC culture' for leaving them stranded in the dust. But the world has never been totally fair and at some level, if you're born into a first-world country to a family with money to afford the internet for you to read those conspiracy theories, you have to take some responsibility.

So I barely ever even refer to myself as a nerd. I enjoy a lot of 'nerd media' and don't care if people know it, but I stop short at calling myself one. I don't like the context anymore. I think it's given birth to some toxic shit.

And honestly, with the proliferation and mainstreaming of nerd culture, what do bullies even make fun of kids in school for anymore? Is it back to race, socioeconomic class, the simpler stuff of days of yore? I dunno.

13 Reasons Why and all the controversy surrounding

A lot of buzz these days about 13 Reasons Why, the new book-to-Netflix adaptation about a teenager who kills herself and leaves behind 13 tapes explaining what led her to that point. I’ve heard praise for it and also, recently, a lot of criticism based on how the show treats suicide.

The show is basically what I said - a girl, Hannah Baker, kills herself and leaves behind 13 tapes explaining why she did it. Her friend and would’ve-been-boyfriend Clay is the main character and we see things through his eyes as he listens to them and figures out this unwinding mystery of sorts. I was drawn into it almost immediately - not in the least due to the incredibly thick suspense and tension about it. It turns into this bat-shit crazy thriller set in a high school with this group of teenagers trying to keep those tapes hidden and save their own asses from the mysterious crimes that begin to unfold. I couldn’t help but be invested. It was exciting shit. I had to find out what was really going on.

What I did find was also a very well done and poignant show about the teenage experience, the isolation, the confusion - it had powerful and relatable themes, and it wasn’t just a show about suicide so much as it was a show about the whole experience of being in that world and going through these problems. The way the show tells these interwoven stories of escalating isolation, bullying, sexual assault and more is compelling and important to show on screen in some way.

Now, going forward - keep in mind that I have a fairly laissez-faire approach to art. I believe you should be able to talk about absolutely anything in your art if you're going about it with the intention of expressing a sincerely-held truth that you believe. That said, obviously opinions will vary on the execution of those things. That's where pretty much every discussion, debate, etc over film criticism and the meaning of films, especially in terms of important real-world topics, comes from.

This is an unreliable narrator story. We’re seeing things solely through the eyes of these kids, and a lot of it tends to ring true - as high school students, they don’t have the breadth of knowledge to recognize depression or see the long-term consequences of all their actions like the bullying. People can kind of suck and kids are mean to each other. The way the side characters are developed in the wake of the suicide is also excellently done, with a lot of attention to detail and important social commentary woven in there as well. And there are scenes of Hannah’s parents trying to reconcile what happened - they didn’t see the suicide coming either. It happens. No one thinks something like that is about to come their way. I can believe it.

What the show DOESN’T feature is a more in-depth look at Hannah’s own psyche or whatever it really was inside her that made her want to kill herself - the kind of deep depression or illness that, maybe, it could’ve been. So I get why that troubles people, because it seems on the surface like it’s trivializing or glamorizing suicide. But we don’t really see inside Hannah’s thoughts. We just hear her words on the tapes, and teenagers like her character are not fully formed in the way that they can rationally explain everything up front. That’s all we’ve got - it’s an unreliable narrator thing and it isn’t supposed to be the Truth, per se. I took this as a show about bullying and about the American teenage experience, with the suicide as a theme as well, but not as some way to explain or rationalize suicide - merely to present it as a stark fact of something that happens, without offering a true explanation, of which there usually is none. Sure, you get the tapes, which is an over the top and unrealistic thing, but it’s just used as a way to convey this story in an artful manner and move it along to get the point across.

Though I appreciate that people critique this aspect of it - some have said it’s sensational and teaches kids that after their suicide, they’ll be important; that sort of thing. It’s a fair argument. I am not sure how suicide should be handled in fiction. The best we can hope for is that it opens up the lines of discussion. Either you shouldn’t do it at all, or you should do it in such a way that discussion is encouraged. I think this did well for the latter. After watching the little featurette on Netflix, "Beyond the Reasons," I think the creators and cast were doing their best and I can side with them here.

And you can find a number of articles where mental health experts decry the show’s portrayal of suicide in that it could cause more suicides, or make it look fashionable or glamorous. I understand that. It's a thin line to walk. As I said, I’m not sure what the 100% reliable way to show these topics on screen is. In the final episode, they show this incredibly awful, graphic depiction of Hannah killing herself. The creators say they wanted to hammer home how suicide isn’t the right decision. Opponents say it could encourage more people, particularly young kids, to kill themselves. I think the existence of this scene, and the show, are enough to make the argument that this is exactly why we need to be more active in talking to kids and making sure this does not happen. We should be so open and honest about these topics that we can prevent as much of it as we can. That’s the value of this show and what good art about serious topics should aspire to do.

You should know what your kids are watching and you should talk to them about important stuff like bullying, rape, suicide, etc when applicable. 13 Reasons Why accentuates the reasons for that. I can understand the critiques of this show and I am not saying they’re not valid. In fact I think they’re part of the discussion I think is so important. Keep talking about this stuff.

The national suicide prevention hotline is 1-800-273-8255.

Image copyright of its original owner, I do not own it.