“No, unfortunately
we’re really not. Think about the people who say you’re not a
Whovian unless you’ve watched every episode of every season
involving every Doctor. Think about the people who say you don’t
like a particular comic unless you’ve read every issue. Then there
are the wrestling otaku who claim you can’t like Daniel Bryan
unless you’re familiar with every match he ever had in ROH or every
other indy organization he’s ever worked for. Fandoms can be the
most exclusionary groups I’ve ever encountered. My take on it, like
what you like and the rest be damned.”
“I just heard somebody
say, ‘I was a nerd before it was cool.” C’mon nerds, we’re
better than that!”
That was my post and I
was admittedly being kind of snarky, but the statement did bother me.
Not as much as the opening comment up there, but I’ll get to that.
To address the “before
it was cool” thing – just stop that kind of thinking right now.
Nobody here was the first nerd. And anybody who grew up after A
New Hope
was released doesn’t really
know what it was like before being a nerd was cool. Because we have
all had the luxury of a single franchise that is adored the world
over that is massively
nerdy and that got the nerd foot in the popular culture door, so to
speak.
Yeah, I still got picked
on. I was called “Batfaggot” when I showed up to school in 1989
wearing a Batman t-shirt and some kickass Batman Chuck Taylors that I
wish I still had, except that I went home that day and stuck them in
the back of my closet and never wore them again. I was mocked
mercilessly by a group of cheerleaders for talking about GI Joe comic
books at school. Luckily for me I have always been a big guy so there
were only a couple of occasions where I was physically abused (not by
the cheerleaders) and they had nothing to do with being a nerd –
those were because I was a white boy in the wrong situation.
But that’s nothing.
That’s the cruelty of children looking for a target. Ever since May
25th,
1977 things have been changing. Science fiction, comic books,
animation, fantasy, and literature have been able to become true
forces in the world of pop culture.
And don’t get me wrong
– obviously there was popular genre fare before Star
Wars.
Lost In
Space,
Star
Trek,
The
Twilight Zone;
the list goes on and on. But there was something about Star
Wars
that broke the floodgates. Or at least put a crack in the dam. There
is something so appealing and accessible about that movie that just
wasn’t present in previous franchises.
My point is that nobody
under the age of 40 was a nerd “before it was cool”.
Now, I understand that in
the last decade those genres that we love so well have experienced an
even bigger jump in popularity. Our society is changing and embracing
all manner of things that have previously gone on behind closed doors
or were only spoken of in closely knit groups. Now we have
supermodels wearing comic book-inspired clothes, high-end jewelry
designers making Green Lantern Power Rings, and these ridiculous
Batman shoes:
My point in saying,
“We’re better than that” is that we should do our best to be an
all-inclusive community that support each other’s interests and
enthusiasm. Not trying to one-up folks who might be newer to things.
Before I cue up the “Mr.
Drummond has a Serious Talk with Willis and Arnold” music, let me
go right ahead and say that I’m no paragon of nerd virtue. In
trying to find my voice over the past five years I’ve said mean
things about people that didn’t deserve it, I’ve gone to cons and
broken most of the cosplay etiquette rules, I’ve talked down about
other people’s fandoms, and I’ve just been a dick in general on
more than one occasion. I’m not proud of this stuff, but I’m not
going to hide it, either. It’s all here in Needless Things. I’m
not going to go back and edit old posts to try and make myself look
better.
But I am trying to be
better. Last year, Dan Carroll
said something that really got to me – “Promote what you love
instead of bashing what you don’t.”
I know he didn’t make
that up, but I’ll always attribute it to him because it comes
through in everything he does. The man may not have been the first to
put the words together in that way, but everything I’ve seen about
him embodies that phrase. And when I heard that, it made me take a
look at myself and what I do and realize that everything I say has a
potential impact on somebody, somewhere. My words on any given
subject could well be a person’s first impression. So if I’m
being a dick and bashing steampunk, somebody who isn’t even
familiar with the genre or Alternate History might dismiss it
entirely and miss out on all of the wonderful things that go along
with that term.
On the other hand, if
somebody who has never heard of Dragonlance
hears me being all stoked about it, they might go check it out. Maybe
they love it like I did, maybe they hate it. But at that point it’s
up to them. And if I just keep my big mouth shut about stuff that I
don’t like (or more likely don’t understand), then folks will be
able to form their own, untainted opinions about things and I won’t
have crapped on anybody’s parade.
I’m meandering a bit
here, but this is a tough – and real – topic and I don’t deal
with those a whole lot. My point is that those of us that might feel
we’re the “Real Deal Nerds” have a responsibility to perpetuate
and grow the culture. And positivity is what does that. I’m not
saying we need to print up tracts and go out recruiting, but let me
paint a picture:
Imagine you’ve just
discovered the world of Middle Earth (the books – not, like, a
for-real Middle Earth). I know, I know, we had all finished The
Hobbit,
Lord of
the Rings,
The
Sillmillirilllium,
and all of the other resource materials by the time we were three.
But not everybody in the world does that. So imagine that as a
grown-up you’ve just discovered all of that. You go to Dragon Con
and you see a group of people that are easily identifiable as
hobbits, dwarves, and maybe a wizard. They look like they’re
straight out of the books. It’s exciting to see such things in real
life and you approach the group.
Once you get close you
can overhear their conversation and they’re making fun of another
group across the lobby that are wearing blue wigs and have gigantic
swords strapped on their backs. You hear the words “losers” and
“weirdos” and “stupid”. But for all you know those
blue-haired people are a bunch of weirdos – probably are, as a
matter of fact, if the LOTR people say so – so you approach the
group. They ignore you super-hard until you finally speak up and ask
them about their costumes, which is when one of the dwarves rolls his
eyes without looking at you and says that yes, of
course
they’re from Lord
of the Rings.
And they all kind of chuckle or make that “pfft” sound.
At this point you’re
probably no longer interested in talking to people about Tolkien
because they might turn out to be douches like this crew. And it’s
entirely possible that your enthusiasm for Middle Earth will have
been killed just a little bit because of this interaction. And you
might not ever go back to Dragon Con.
Now imagine the opposite
– you walk up to the group and they eagerly begin to explain their
costumes and which characters they are and how to make hobbit feet.
This leads to discussion of the books and further costuming and
whatever else. Common interests outside of Tolkien’s works might be
found. Everybody has fun. Next year you have your own costume. Maybe
not with that group necessarily, but that interaction gave you the
enthusiasm and confidence to do it. On top of all that, you will
continue to spend money on that nerd interest and perhaps even expand
to others, increasing and perpetuating the field.
I am not saying that I am
that enthusiastic person. But I know I should
be and I want
to be.
I think a lot of us that
run in the nerd circles have been hardened over time. I know I’ve
been lured into displaying my enthusiasm for things, only to have it
turned in my face and mocked. I think anybody who has a niche
interest might be a little wary about sharing. A lot of the time
rightly so. But Dragon Con is not the place for that. We’ve all had
hard times, but Dragon Con is where we go to be ourselves and have
fun.
Mr. Beau Brown is another
guy that has impacted my point of view. He holds Dragon Con up as an
almost sacred event. Last year during a podcast interview for ESO,
Beau pointed out how much he disliked it when people put down other
people’s fandom. I didn’t say anything. I had been that guy. And
I felt bad about it. Who am I to judge what somebody else is into?
Believe me – I have come to realize that there are plenty of people
who don’t understand a guy in a luchador mask. Even
at cons.
There’ve been a couple of times where people have said things that
I could have gone without hearing. And I don’t want my writing to
make anybody feel small.
I suppose part of this
revelation has come with the increased exposure I have been getting
over the past year or so. Before I felt like I was just writing to
entertain my friends and a select few people who happened to find
Needless Things online. Now I am really starting to understand that
there is a wider audience out there. I know there are people that
follow this site and take things that I write very seriously (don’t
do that – I am an idiot). I have the opportunity to make some
people feel badly or the opportunity to maybe introduce a lot of
people to some really cool stuff.
And now, with no segue
whatsoever, I am going to address the quote that kicked all of this
off. Go ahead back to the top of the page, because I’m sure you’ve
forgotten it by now.
Okay.
So that quote bums me the
fuck out because I know exactly the sort of people she is talking
about. They set themselves up online, behind their computers, and
pretend they are the kings of a certain thing – whether it be
Doctor Who, comic books, or wrestling - whatever. They have situated
themselves on top of a false hill and any who try to ascend that hill
to join them will be shoved back down by their landslide of bullshit.
Not a whole lot of people
have seen every episode of Doctor
Who.
Given the conditions surrounding many of the First and Second Doctor
stories, I’d guess that number is, maybe, ten.
Nobody is an authority on
comic books. We can all have opinions, but none is “right”. This,
in particular, is a point of contention with me. Why does anybody
have to be right about anything? Where must there be a final word?
Why can’t people express divergent points of view without anybody
“winning”? If somebody else wants to believe that Hawkeye is
better than Green Arrow, that’s fine by me. I don’t agree, but I
am okay with the fact that they don’t agree with me. Chill out.
(I wrote this a good bit before the Affleck-splosion that happened last night. And if you're wondering, I am pro-Affleck.)
As far as wrestling goes,
anybody that claims they’ve seen even half of Daniel Bryan’s indy
work is full of shit.
The bottom line is that
if you’re the sort of person that would rather lord your knowledge
and experience over others than share it and perhaps gain new
perspectives, then you can just stay on top of your imaginary hill,
all by yourself. Come down when you’re ready to act like a grownup.
The lady that made that
comment is a cool and talented writer who is new to a lot of things.
She has a wonderful perspective on those things – wrestling in
particular – and doesn’t deserve to have some internet shitbags
bringing her down. If only the most experienced and “knowledgeable”
people can take part in a pastime, then things are going to get stale
pretty quick.
The point of all of this
is try not to be a dick. I’m not saying you have to like everything
everybody does. There’s plenty of stuff that does not make a lick
of sense to me and that I simply cannot fathom how people can be so
into it. But I’m just gonna try to not talk about it. I want to try and be
productive, in some way, with everything that I do on Needless
Things; and mean-spirited mocking just isn’t productive.
That’s not to say that
I won’t be negative from time to time. If I buy a bad product or
have a bad experience you guys are going to hear about it. While I am
going to do my best to refrain from unwarranted mockery, I am still
going to tear the shit out of things that I think deserve it. Like
Mattel.
Oh, and if any of my
long-time, faithful readers are concerned that this new outlook might
affect my DCW recap – don’t be. Those worthless slobs are still
gonna get hammered come my Dragon Con recap.
-Phantom
Well said, sir. Well said.
ReplyDeleteSee you at Dragon Con.
Bobby
Thanks, man! And yes - you will. We have a GI Joe panel Sunday night at 7 PM in the Marriott M303-304!
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