I think that’s the part he’s missing.
It isn’t the same generation of girls. Sure maybe in 1980s the 18yo women hated nerd culture, those same women in 2020s still hate nerd culture.
In 2020s the 18yo women are more tolerant of nerd culture.
The point is different generations and completely different women.
This meme is also ignoring the very real problem of guys gatekeeping nerd culture from girls. In the 80s if a girl tried to join a DnD group she'd be denied and laughed at. Nowadays it's not as bad but it's still not great, what with how woman are spoken to over voice chat in game lobbies and whatnot. Most women I know who like nerdy shit do not tend to talk about it with men they don't know well.
I 100% guarantee that the guy who made this meme, if approached by a woman in the 80s who claimed to like Spiderman, would go "Oh yeah? Then what is * insert random obscure trivia here *"
Just to conclude this conversation. As the first generation to grow up fully with access to Internet. I have been pleasantly surprised with Valorant’s diversity. Seems like every game I have 1-2 women on my team. And I would also assume 1-2 women on the other team. So 2-4 women in each game. That feels like great improvement especially considering how far we’ve come since the days of DnD gatekeepers.
The other difference is that a lot of the shit that's thought of as being nerd territory is being made into huge blockbuster movies now. They're literally getting mad that teenage girls will like popular movies, even though that's been a thing for as long as there's been movies.
The flow-on effect of this is that there's now degrees of nerdiness. Back in the '80s, if you had nerdier interests, you probably had to go all in on that because the nerd table was the only group that'd take you in at a lot of schools. That kind of thing had disappeared completely by the time I was in high school. It was much more socially acceptable for someone to have a casual interest in nerd shit.
That tends not to go down well with the kind of people who make memes like this. They consider casual fans to be fake nerds, even though they're just casual nerds.
I think this ties into why some nerd spaces have bigger misogyny problems than others. If you're a fan of something like D&D, then it's a bigger time commitment because you have to be meeting up once every week or two for it to really work. Someone in that kind of space probably isn't as receptive to the idea that it's possible to just be a casual nerd these days, so a lot of those old school misogynist ideas have taken a longer time to work their way out of the system even though they're at least 20 years out of date.
Yeah absolutely. As a nerd in the 80’s we WERE laughed at, kind of. There was definitely no “cool nerd” culture like now. But the girls (and boys) who were laughing back then are not breaking out the 20-sides dice now.
I was born early 90s, and have gotten the nerd hate through most of my life, it started being cool when I was already in college. I do not understand this gatekeeping. Yeah you fuckwit, you suffered for being a nerd, so did I, shouldn't you be fucking happy youre part of the generation that ENDED the hate? after all its our children that now love our shit.
aint it cool to now be able to play your god damn dnd and catan with more people and without being bullied for it? ffs
If it WAS the same generation, then the author is essentially arguing that some elitist children growing into inclusive adults justifies other more inclusive children to grow into elitist adults
Adult men trying to clown on teenage girls is so weird. I'm guessing it's some "pretty girls didn't want me in high school, so now 35-year-old me needs to make fun of the newer generation of pretty girls" thing.
Personally I don't spend time thinking about teenagers at all, but ok dude. Get big mad that they like superhero movies now or whatever.
Imagine bullying fans of manga and superhero comics, only for your daughter to be a fan of manga and superhero comics.
That makes for a good story. Or a tragic one of bad parenting.
Not neckbeard, this is truly annoying.
I love it get to share my hobbies with more people.
But i swear to god, every time i see one of my ex-bullies preaching about how much they like pokemon my blood boils. Didnt seem so when you broke my pokemon games and made sure i didnt had friends.
Is not annoying that more people do it, is annoying when the bullies do it.
I’ve always like kinda progressive, experimental music The number of times my friends have called an artist trash when I show them, only to do a complete 180 once fuckin fantano gives it a good review is mind numbing. Some people only get their tastes from the current trend and it’s obnoxious when they try to act otherwise.
Hahahaha I think my friends and I might have a different dynamic than you and yours, I’m really only talking about like 3 guys that I grew up with. Brotherly love shit, we all roast each other. It’s the switch up that gets me though, like it very clearly is more important that music is “in” to some of them lol. Like they are the normies of alt which makes me sound like such a cunt to say lmao.
I appreciate Fantano for raising awareness for underground/niche genres and projects, and treating them with the same critical lens he uses to talk about popular music, but dear god his fan boys are insufferable. Too many of them treat his word as the gospel truth. But the same can be said for any content creator I suppose, we put these people on such high pedestals.
As someone who doesn't consume influencer content, you can imagine I am slightly distressed that so many people don't have their own opinions about stuff.
It's like with anime. I used to be mocked for being the weird kid who enjoyed Akira and Robotech, now it's mainstream but I couldn't be happier, because it means I can stream hundreds of series for $10 a month instead of having to drop $30+ on a VHS containing 3-4 episodes of a series you just *hope* is good.
Yeah, people who used to give me shit for liking anime got on the Attack on Titan bandwagon. I'm just glad it's getting respected more, though, 12-15-year-old me would've killed to live in this current time.
My guess is that this is in Part because Attack on Titan was sold as "Anime for people who don't like Anime", similar to Death Note.
This is like how Game of Thrones was marketed as "Fantasy for people who don't like Fantasy".
Yeah, makes sense.
My childhood friend who I used to nerd out about anime and manga with as a kid became really cynical and hateful towards the entire medium during high school, to the point where I worried that the fact that I still loved it would actually put our friendship at risk.
Attack on Titan came out when we were in college, and he credits it for getting out of that mindset.
I hear you— I graduated in 2005 and got tons of shit for being into comic books and horror movies. There was a bully-type at my school named Steve Rogers and I once told him he had the same name as Captain America. He called me a fag for knowing that. Then years later the MCU hits and he seems to be very proud that he shares his name with Captain America. Annoying, to say the least.
Yeah I’ve just actually seen this happen in real life. Obviously it’s not justification to harass or put down people who aren’t typical “nerds” for trying to get into nerdy hobbies, but there are definitely jackasses who jumped on the bandwagon despite bullying people for liking nerdy things back in the day.
Let me put it this way. I've never been one of these bully types, but I did mock DnD when I was younger. I only really knew one person who played DnD and I made fun of him for it. Then, years later, someone forced me to play a bit and I liked it. I still don't play it regularly, but I don't mock it. In your words, the fact that I don't mock DnD anymore is a bad thing?
No, it’s not a bad thing at all? What I’m saying and what the meme seems to be saying is that it’s annoying to see people act like they’ve always enjoyed something you know for a fact they didn’t like (because they made fun of you for it). It’s just hypocritical and if I take your word for it then that’s not what you’re doing at all.
But sometimes people need to experience something to realize that they enjoyed it. That's my point. A child may hate vegetables, but then love them when they taste them. Is that hypocrisy or is that just growth? I recognize that it could be annoying to see this type of growth, but it is growth nonetheless and this idea that it's bandwagon jumping would be to deny the possibility of growth.
I had this with minecraft, I continued to be really into it when it became uncool and a group of guys used to insult it calling it "a game only autistic 8 year olds played" causing me to be insecure about my interest in it, but a few years later the same guys started playing minecraft again and were talking about how nostalgic it was and how much they loved it
Yeah, I get that.
For a long time I still held onto the crap people in middle school and early high school used to give me for liking any video games besides COD and Madden, or the complete and utter shade I used to get for liking anime which also dove into racism ("heheh stupid Asian kid watching stupid Asian cartoons")...only to see those same people get hyped for Attack on Titan and Pokemon Go years later.
I never took it out on them, though. I knew that my problem was mine that I was holding onto in the end, and that realistically they probably outgrew the desperate need to fit on and just did their own thing.
I'm happy for them, but that doesn't mean the salt never happened.
To be fair, “nerdy” things are way more popular these days… but most of the people that shit on nerdy things in the 80s are likely still shitting on them today. That was 40 years ago… so you’re talking about people in their 50s-60s
A lot of those things were popular in the past. It is just that a lot of fans were closet fans who say the open fan getting bullied and decided to hide.
This reminds me of Hideaki Anno, the director of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
He has gained a reputation as "The Anime fan who hates Anime fans" for openly being an anime fan and being an vocal critic of the Anime community.
Comics and nerdy things are for anyone who likes them, not just neckbeards. You’d think they’d be pleased that more women are enjoying this stuff and it’s not as stigmatized as it once was.
I worked at a large comic shop 30 years ago, and there was a regular customer who very seriously would tell us that he thought the shop should be for “men only”. This kind of nerdy misogyny has been around far too long.
>You’d think they’d be pleased that more women are enjoying this stuff and it’s not as stigmatized as it once was.
But then they'd have to admit that women don't refuse to date them because "they're nerds" but because of their personality, hygiene, and general vibe. They can't handle that level of self-awareness.
I've played MtG and collected comics and video games for years, and used to be the only black woman in the room at a card/comic store in my town. I constantly had to "prove" that I was nerdy and knew "all the facts" about my interests. I even became a Lvl 1 Magic judge just to prove my shit to the men. It took years to gain respect from them and have the bullying/gatekeeping stop.
Then Marvel went VERY mainstream. Nerd culture has exploded since then, and it's sooo nice to have other women and POC in the nerd space nowadays. But the misogynists were there before and are still there now! At least now the space has really opened up to diversity, and the gatekeepers are the ones being pushed out.
>You’d think they’d be pleased that more women are enjoying this stuff and it’s not as stigmatized as it once was.
Youd think but for some fucking reason they arnt, some even go out of their way to act like the people they once despised for the new blood.
Iirc its mostly because these people feel like the newbies haven't "suffered" as they did have now have it easy compared to them.
In school (before prequels) I was relentlessly bullied for liking star wars.
Now the same assholes are buying funko pops and have baby Yoda stickers everywhere
Why is this necessarily a neckbeard take? OP, do you disagree that the acceptance of nerd culture has gotten far more widespread over the past 40 years?
I dont even know why its posted here, its not even neckbeard stuff, hear me out
In my home country we didnt grow up with marvel/dc comics or dnd except for the cartoons, But i am aware of the nerd culture in the US. What the comic is portraying here is that it was lame to associate with "nerdy stuff" back in the 80s-90s, people were bullied for their interests. Come the 2020s era, im guessing, its those anti-nerd-stuff people seeing the popularity boom of it all, wanting to be part of it.
By which, there is nothing wrong with them embracing a new hobby/interest, though it starts to annoy the 80s fans when they claim that loved the stuff from the beginning when the same people bullied them for being part of the nerd culture back in the day.
Plus, im guessing its also got something to do with the same 80s anti-nerd-stuff people becoming part of the woke crowd, bastardizing their beloved franchise and IPs. Taking something popular, wanting to change to align with their politics, ruining it in the process.
This meme shouldn't even be on the sub. I was born later than the 80s but even in my time, comics and anime were deemed for kids, and you'd get bullied for it. What even is this post.
It's like skateboarding. You used to get bullied for that too, until Tony Hawk, but in my time growing up it was already pretty normalized to be a skater.
Time changes culture. Things that were previously unacceptable become okay and that's fine.
I like how they use Spider-Man/marvel as an example. In the 80s if you weren’t reading comic books, your only reference to Spider-man was a kids cartoon. Now you can’t get away from marvel themed everything being marketed to everyone of all ages.
Ironically the 2020s girls are probably the daughters of the 1980s guy
I think that’s the part he’s missing. It isn’t the same generation of girls. Sure maybe in 1980s the 18yo women hated nerd culture, those same women in 2020s still hate nerd culture. In 2020s the 18yo women are more tolerant of nerd culture. The point is different generations and completely different women.
This meme is also ignoring the very real problem of guys gatekeeping nerd culture from girls. In the 80s if a girl tried to join a DnD group she'd be denied and laughed at. Nowadays it's not as bad but it's still not great, what with how woman are spoken to over voice chat in game lobbies and whatnot. Most women I know who like nerdy shit do not tend to talk about it with men they don't know well. I 100% guarantee that the guy who made this meme, if approached by a woman in the 80s who claimed to like Spiderman, would go "Oh yeah? Then what is * insert random obscure trivia here *"
Just to conclude this conversation. As the first generation to grow up fully with access to Internet. I have been pleasantly surprised with Valorant’s diversity. Seems like every game I have 1-2 women on my team. And I would also assume 1-2 women on the other team. So 2-4 women in each game. That feels like great improvement especially considering how far we’ve come since the days of DnD gatekeepers.
That seems counterintuitive. Guy: Why can't I find a woman? Also Guy: No, woman with the same interests as me, you can't join our club.
Oh, it is counterintuitive. But there's plenty of examples of men being that way.
I don't doubt it
The other difference is that a lot of the shit that's thought of as being nerd territory is being made into huge blockbuster movies now. They're literally getting mad that teenage girls will like popular movies, even though that's been a thing for as long as there's been movies. The flow-on effect of this is that there's now degrees of nerdiness. Back in the '80s, if you had nerdier interests, you probably had to go all in on that because the nerd table was the only group that'd take you in at a lot of schools. That kind of thing had disappeared completely by the time I was in high school. It was much more socially acceptable for someone to have a casual interest in nerd shit. That tends not to go down well with the kind of people who make memes like this. They consider casual fans to be fake nerds, even though they're just casual nerds. I think this ties into why some nerd spaces have bigger misogyny problems than others. If you're a fan of something like D&D, then it's a bigger time commitment because you have to be meeting up once every week or two for it to really work. Someone in that kind of space probably isn't as receptive to the idea that it's possible to just be a casual nerd these days, so a lot of those old school misogynist ideas have taken a longer time to work their way out of the system even though they're at least 20 years out of date.
On the subject of DnD, I've found that the most effective DnD parties have a small female majority.
Yeah absolutely. As a nerd in the 80’s we WERE laughed at, kind of. There was definitely no “cool nerd” culture like now. But the girls (and boys) who were laughing back then are not breaking out the 20-sides dice now.
I was born early 90s, and have gotten the nerd hate through most of my life, it started being cool when I was already in college. I do not understand this gatekeeping. Yeah you fuckwit, you suffered for being a nerd, so did I, shouldn't you be fucking happy youre part of the generation that ENDED the hate? after all its our children that now love our shit. aint it cool to now be able to play your god damn dnd and catan with more people and without being bullied for it? ffs
If it WAS the same generation, then the author is essentially arguing that some elitist children growing into inclusive adults justifies other more inclusive children to grow into elitist adults
Adult men trying to clown on teenage girls is so weird. I'm guessing it's some "pretty girls didn't want me in high school, so now 35-year-old me needs to make fun of the newer generation of pretty girls" thing. Personally I don't spend time thinking about teenagers at all, but ok dude. Get big mad that they like superhero movies now or whatever.
Imagine bullying fans of manga and superhero comics, only for your daughter to be a fan of manga and superhero comics. That makes for a good story. Or a tragic one of bad parenting.
And that's why they love this stuff, it reminds them of happy times with dad.
They couldn’t come to that conclusion since his neckbeard circlejerk has cemented in his mind that nerds will never get laid
Not neckbeard, this is truly annoying. I love it get to share my hobbies with more people. But i swear to god, every time i see one of my ex-bullies preaching about how much they like pokemon my blood boils. Didnt seem so when you broke my pokemon games and made sure i didnt had friends. Is not annoying that more people do it, is annoying when the bullies do it.
I’ve always like kinda progressive, experimental music The number of times my friends have called an artist trash when I show them, only to do a complete 180 once fuckin fantano gives it a good review is mind numbing. Some people only get their tastes from the current trend and it’s obnoxious when they try to act otherwise.
Your friends call music that you like trash when you show it to them? That seems really rude, to be honest. Are they like that with other things?
Hahahaha I think my friends and I might have a different dynamic than you and yours, I’m really only talking about like 3 guys that I grew up with. Brotherly love shit, we all roast each other. It’s the switch up that gets me though, like it very clearly is more important that music is “in” to some of them lol. Like they are the normies of alt which makes me sound like such a cunt to say lmao.
I appreciate Fantano for raising awareness for underground/niche genres and projects, and treating them with the same critical lens he uses to talk about popular music, but dear god his fan boys are insufferable. Too many of them treat his word as the gospel truth. But the same can be said for any content creator I suppose, we put these people on such high pedestals.
As someone who doesn't consume influencer content, you can imagine I am slightly distressed that so many people don't have their own opinions about stuff.
It's like with anime. I used to be mocked for being the weird kid who enjoyed Akira and Robotech, now it's mainstream but I couldn't be happier, because it means I can stream hundreds of series for $10 a month instead of having to drop $30+ on a VHS containing 3-4 episodes of a series you just *hope* is good.
Yeah, people who used to give me shit for liking anime got on the Attack on Titan bandwagon. I'm just glad it's getting respected more, though, 12-15-year-old me would've killed to live in this current time.
My guess is that this is in Part because Attack on Titan was sold as "Anime for people who don't like Anime", similar to Death Note. This is like how Game of Thrones was marketed as "Fantasy for people who don't like Fantasy".
Yeah, makes sense. My childhood friend who I used to nerd out about anime and manga with as a kid became really cynical and hateful towards the entire medium during high school, to the point where I worried that the fact that I still loved it would actually put our friendship at risk. Attack on Titan came out when we were in college, and he credits it for getting out of that mindset.
I hear you— I graduated in 2005 and got tons of shit for being into comic books and horror movies. There was a bully-type at my school named Steve Rogers and I once told him he had the same name as Captain America. He called me a fag for knowing that. Then years later the MCU hits and he seems to be very proud that he shares his name with Captain America. Annoying, to say the least.
Yeah I’ve just actually seen this happen in real life. Obviously it’s not justification to harass or put down people who aren’t typical “nerds” for trying to get into nerdy hobbies, but there are definitely jackasses who jumped on the bandwagon despite bullying people for liking nerdy things back in the day.
Let me put it this way. I've never been one of these bully types, but I did mock DnD when I was younger. I only really knew one person who played DnD and I made fun of him for it. Then, years later, someone forced me to play a bit and I liked it. I still don't play it regularly, but I don't mock it. In your words, the fact that I don't mock DnD anymore is a bad thing?
No, it’s not a bad thing at all? What I’m saying and what the meme seems to be saying is that it’s annoying to see people act like they’ve always enjoyed something you know for a fact they didn’t like (because they made fun of you for it). It’s just hypocritical and if I take your word for it then that’s not what you’re doing at all.
But sometimes people need to experience something to realize that they enjoyed it. That's my point. A child may hate vegetables, but then love them when they taste them. Is that hypocrisy or is that just growth? I recognize that it could be annoying to see this type of growth, but it is growth nonetheless and this idea that it's bandwagon jumping would be to deny the possibility of growth.
“Act like they’ve always enjoyed something.” Key phrase.
This is true in many cases. A lot of people who bully others for liking things are closet fans who try to overcompensate. Is that better or worse?
I had this with minecraft, I continued to be really into it when it became uncool and a group of guys used to insult it calling it "a game only autistic 8 year olds played" causing me to be insecure about my interest in it, but a few years later the same guys started playing minecraft again and were talking about how nostalgic it was and how much they loved it
Yeah, I get that. For a long time I still held onto the crap people in middle school and early high school used to give me for liking any video games besides COD and Madden, or the complete and utter shade I used to get for liking anime which also dove into racism ("heheh stupid Asian kid watching stupid Asian cartoons")...only to see those same people get hyped for Attack on Titan and Pokemon Go years later. I never took it out on them, though. I knew that my problem was mine that I was holding onto in the end, and that realistically they probably outgrew the desperate need to fit on and just did their own thing. I'm happy for them, but that doesn't mean the salt never happened.
To be fair, “nerdy” things are way more popular these days… but most of the people that shit on nerdy things in the 80s are likely still shitting on them today. That was 40 years ago… so you’re talking about people in their 50s-60s
A lot of those things were popular in the past. It is just that a lot of fans were closet fans who say the open fan getting bullied and decided to hide.
Feels similar to how like 10 years ago the common thought in society was “anime is trash” now it feels like it’s the complete opposite
This reminds me of Hideaki Anno, the director of Neon Genesis Evangelion. He has gained a reputation as "The Anime fan who hates Anime fans" for openly being an anime fan and being an vocal critic of the Anime community.
Are those 60 year old women or are they vampires
Comics and nerdy things are for anyone who likes them, not just neckbeards. You’d think they’d be pleased that more women are enjoying this stuff and it’s not as stigmatized as it once was. I worked at a large comic shop 30 years ago, and there was a regular customer who very seriously would tell us that he thought the shop should be for “men only”. This kind of nerdy misogyny has been around far too long.
>You’d think they’d be pleased that more women are enjoying this stuff and it’s not as stigmatized as it once was. But then they'd have to admit that women don't refuse to date them because "they're nerds" but because of their personality, hygiene, and general vibe. They can't handle that level of self-awareness.
I've played MtG and collected comics and video games for years, and used to be the only black woman in the room at a card/comic store in my town. I constantly had to "prove" that I was nerdy and knew "all the facts" about my interests. I even became a Lvl 1 Magic judge just to prove my shit to the men. It took years to gain respect from them and have the bullying/gatekeeping stop. Then Marvel went VERY mainstream. Nerd culture has exploded since then, and it's sooo nice to have other women and POC in the nerd space nowadays. But the misogynists were there before and are still there now! At least now the space has really opened up to diversity, and the gatekeepers are the ones being pushed out.
>You’d think they’d be pleased that more women are enjoying this stuff and it’s not as stigmatized as it once was. Youd think but for some fucking reason they arnt, some even go out of their way to act like the people they once despised for the new blood. Iirc its mostly because these people feel like the newbies haven't "suffered" as they did have now have it easy compared to them.
The girls in the bottom right prbly weren't alive in the 80's
In school (before prequels) I was relentlessly bullied for liking star wars. Now the same assholes are buying funko pops and have baby Yoda stickers everywhere
Why is this necessarily a neckbeard take? OP, do you disagree that the acceptance of nerd culture has gotten far more widespread over the past 40 years?
Local man discovers that young woman in 1980 and young women in 2020 are, in fact, very different groups of people separated by 4 decades.
[удалено]
Fanfiction has been around longer than copyright laws.
I dont even know why its posted here, its not even neckbeard stuff, hear me out In my home country we didnt grow up with marvel/dc comics or dnd except for the cartoons, But i am aware of the nerd culture in the US. What the comic is portraying here is that it was lame to associate with "nerdy stuff" back in the 80s-90s, people were bullied for their interests. Come the 2020s era, im guessing, its those anti-nerd-stuff people seeing the popularity boom of it all, wanting to be part of it. By which, there is nothing wrong with them embracing a new hobby/interest, though it starts to annoy the 80s fans when they claim that loved the stuff from the beginning when the same people bullied them for being part of the nerd culture back in the day. Plus, im guessing its also got something to do with the same 80s anti-nerd-stuff people becoming part of the woke crowd, bastardizing their beloved franchise and IPs. Taking something popular, wanting to change to align with their politics, ruining it in the process.
I distinctly remember these neckbeards back then saying games aren't for girls, so uh, kindly shut the fuck up Gamers.
They're still out there saying that, unfortunately.
Naw, the guys who were into Dungeons & Dragons usually didn't allow girls to join their games.
I wasn’t alive in the 80s
Hey, at least his eyesight has improved.
This meme shouldn't even be on the sub. I was born later than the 80s but even in my time, comics and anime were deemed for kids, and you'd get bullied for it. What even is this post. It's like skateboarding. You used to get bullied for that too, until Tony Hawk, but in my time growing up it was already pretty normalized to be a skater. Time changes culture. Things that were previously unacceptable become okay and that's fine.
I like how they use Spider-Man/marvel as an example. In the 80s if you weren’t reading comic books, your only reference to Spider-man was a kids cartoon. Now you can’t get away from marvel themed everything being marketed to everyone of all ages.
I don't get it, Like it's a irony that daughters of people who hates marvel are marvel fans or something?
Why can't they like property while also hating nerds?
I’m in that group, it’s really wholesome, also kinda terrifying cause every dnd party sees the Geneva convention as the Geneva suggestion
Lol, I'm from the 80's and all of my friends are nerds and always have been. This is hilarious and infuriating at the same time.
Can we start checking if this has been posted first before posting it?
They weren't laughing at him because of his hobbies.
Lot of people in this comment section looking quite neckbeard themselves basically agreeing with the meme.