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.

Review: Scott Pilgrim vs The World (2010)

Director: Edgar Wright

Starring: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong, Jason Schwartzman

Website: www.scottpilgrimthemovie.com/

"You're pretentious, this club sucks, I have beef. Let's fight."

-Scott Pilgrim

I am so out of loop with popular culture. What the hell is Scott Pilgrim? Who is he? I was first introduced to this franchise by seeing the commercial for the movie when I was watching The Big Bang Theory. It looked like an interesting enough plot – a kid has to fight his girlfriend’s seven evil exes to date her and keep her. I didn’t know if it’d be good, bad, whatever…but it piqued my interest. So I figured I would go see it in the theaters when it finally came out. And what’s my take?

I…think my mind was just blown when I saw this. It was so crazy and so over the top that I had no idea what to make of it. Starring the apparently infamous Michael Cera, this weird little action/romance story is told in a highly strange and stylized fashion. When a new scene starts, they often pop up a little black comic-book-esque box by them with white text explaining some facts about them, often humorously. Scenes vary wildly in length, some lasting five minutes and others less than one. The movie likes to parody video games and use terminology and clichés from them to further the story – in one scene, the hero decides to stand up for himself and fight for himself over anyone else, and as he flaunts his newfound power, the words “Scott gained the power of self respect!” are narrated in a deep voice and flash on the screen in blinking neon.

See? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this. This movie is completely original. Well…except for the comic it’s based on, but shut up, I know what I’m talking about in this review!

Even the writing is completely off the wall. In the first few scenes, the titular Scott Pilgrim (Cera) has a conversation with his band (made up of a token regular guy named Stephen, a stoic, monotone redheaded chick named Kim and a guy named Young Neil, who is not in the band, but just lives at the house they play in) about inviting his new “fake high school girlfriend” Knives into the house while they play. They’re really concerned that she’ll break up their nerd-dom and not be able to handle it. The dialogue is so winding and so convoluted with things that would just be otherwise retarded or ridiculous. Like when Ramona says “I was just a little bi-curious,” the enemy character replies “Well, I’m just a little bi-FURIOUS!” That line is so horrible that I’d want to smack whoever wrote it. But in this movie, I’ll buy it. I really will.

I will now go through some of the exceptionally noteworthy scenes in this movie:

There’s one scene where Scott beats a Vegan opponent by making him drink milk, I think it was, that turns out to violate the ‘Vegan Police’ code, getting him stripped of his ‘Vegan powers.’ I couldn’t make this up, people. There’s the all-time special effects wonder of the world when Scott and his band face off against the dastardly and short-lived threat of the Kazayanagi brothers, resulting in a chaotic explosion of shining beast-like holograms, neon lights and multi-colored fire that will make your eyes bleed with how cool it is. And there’s one scene near the end when Scott has to fight his ‘negative self’ for some reason that nobody really cares about, because it’s awesome either way. It cuts away to Ramona and Knives outside when Scott walks out with his ‘negative-self’, joking and laughing like old friends. Scott says that his negative self is a really nice guy.

See? I love the comedy in this movie. It’s so innocuous and so dorky that it becomes absolutely side-splitting when it’s at its best. It’s just great, it really is.

The acting is good. People will bash on Michael Cera whenever they get the chance, but he does a really good job here. His delivery is hilarious and his facial expressions are always really funny with how naïve they are. I’m not familiar with a lot of his movies, but he does good here. I can tell you that. Mary Winstead as love interest Ramona is wonderful, as she is good looking and versatile – funny when the movie calls for it and also soft and vulnerable or cold as ice whenever needed, too. Kieran Culkin and Anna Kendrick bring up the backbone along with the delightful Alison Pil as Kim. And the seven exes are always over the top and fun, too.

So, detractors from the score? Well, I was amazed with how far up its own ass it could get when it really tries. That Vegan Police scene I mentioned above was about where the line was crossed, although it was already flirting with that when a girl’s hair highlights are literally punched out. These scenes are still enjoyable in their own way, but I can’t help but feel that the film kind of winds up in its own special effects and nerd-isms at times. But maybe that’s part of the appeal.

This film should in all respects suck a whole lot. But it works. It really works, in one of the most oddball fashions ever. All the film’s extravagances and eccentricities are done with a hefty sense of irony, but in the same way, even the irony is ironic, like they’re ribbing the kinds of snot-nosed indie films of this usual sort, in a good natured way. There’s also a ton of homage to video games and video game culture, as well as to anime and comic culture, too. It’s a delightful hodge-podge of influences that, combined with the film’s crazy exuberance, really makes an entertaining watch. The characters are delightful, the humor is spot on, the action is wondrous and the plot is a ton of fun. Scott Pilgrim is a winner. Revel in its supreme nerdery.