The article’s length planning and argumentative process are too bad to feel like AI slop.

It's human slop.

  Years ago I published a part of this text in an essay. I was never happy with the original (artistically speaking) so I cannibalised parts for this new essay and memory-holed the original.

Could have been put in a few short sentences, most of which would be wrong.

Back in my day, "nerd" meant actually being an intellectual. You know, reading books, doing math, being interested in physics, etc. How did consuming comic book slop become false signaling for what Nerdom once was?

I don’t think the author’s thesis is right, and actually his first inclination is correct. No one starts liking nerdy stuff because Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos does, because no one really wants to be them. They want their money, success, etc. but not to be them, in the way you’d want to be a movie star or athlete.

So I think it’s an under-discussed thing that the art forms which lend themselves to the most profitable “ecosystem” are ones that get pushed in a commercial-driven culture. You can only make so much money by selling people a book or an individual print / painting. Much better to sell merch for your media franchise, which includes books movies toys, etc.

I don't buy the article's thesis because tech bros are neither spending on the sector nor are they popular.

I have a simpler explanation, also applies to the 'Otaku-fication' of anime. Miyazaki complained that the people making anime now do nothing but watch anime. Try making Patlabor II now. Same for comic adaptions, upside to them is you can do them if all you ever did was watch TV and read comics. Many games now exclusively deal with the tropes of games.

In a culture where the dominant activity is media consumption you get a Baudrillard-like media-on-media ouroboros without any reference to base reality

>> while most intellectuals are nerds, not all nerds are intellectuals. In fact, the majority of nerds aren’t intellectuals.

I'd argue that this is a recent phenomenon that started at exactly the same time the author claims nerd culture finally became dominant, which he associated with the LoTR films.

Nothing mainstream is ever intellectual, and anything that reaches vast audiences simply ends up with a lot of people on the bandwagon trying to imitate it.

Nerd culture is no different from hippie culture or jazz culture, in that 99% of the people who want to claim it are followers. Who would've been afraid of it or laughed at it when it was still underground.

That being said: Because I'm a nerd from the 80s, it's incredibly galling to watch 20 year old idiots wearing it like a skin suit.

> the rise of science fiction or the prominence of science popularizers in the culture

Nothing has done more damage to science and education than science fiction and the heavy handed politics usually injected into it. People are rarely into scifi for the science at all. It's a mostly pretentious and anti-intellectual group. Look at all the dogshit we step in every day about "AI", "the technological singularity", or "living in a simulation". Where do you think the terms came from, and who do you think are the biggest believers in those delusions?

> Now I’m one of the adults and suddenly everyone is a nerd. In fact, nerdom is one of our last uniting cultural forces.

It's a very low effort means of finding acceptance and recognition through trivia and groupthink. Some of the most lowbrow, petty, and generally horrible people I've ever met refer to themselves as "nerds". A cursory glance at reddit would demonstrate this all on its own.

Talented people don't go around putting a label on themselves or promoting ideologies.