I feel like I haven’t been giving enough nerd service on this blog considering the name of the site. I was tempted to do a brief review of Killzone 2 but I don’t think it would have been funny or insightful. All I can say is, if you own a PS3 go buy this game now.
I have decided to start a weekly installment where I will touch on some current observations or happenings in the nerd world. This first installment is a little lengthy. It is necessary though to detail what it really is to be a modern nerd or what I believe it means to be one. Two major areas are currently under assault by faux nerds. Computers and gaming.
I feel like I haven’t been giving enough nerd service on this blog considering the name of the site. I was tempted to do a brief review of Killzone 2 but I don’t think it would have been funny or insightful. All I can say is, if you own a PS3 go buy this game now.
I have decided to start a weekly installment where I will touch on some current observations or happenings in the nerd world. This first installment is a little lengthy. It is necessary though to detail what it really is to be a modern nerd or what I believe it means to be one. Two major areas are currently under assault by faux nerds. Computers and gaming.
This is not some guide to becoming nerd chic. First off, there is no such thing as nerd chic. It was a made up oxymoron by dumb fucks that picked on nerds their entire life. When they realized that they needed to start doing nerdy stuff to survive in the current technological world they attempted to convince themselves and others that it was somehow cool to be nerd. Hipsters are the worst offenders of nerd chic but I would need five blogs to harness the hatred I have towards them so I will just leave that be. Claiming to be nerd chic would be like claiming to be chubby thin or retard Mensa. Chic is the antithesis of a nerd. This is not to say all nerds are without style or the ability to be fashionable, it is that those characteristics are completely independent of being nerd. Nerd will never have anything to do with clothes, that is unless it is a trench coat or cos-play. Nerd is core quality.
This is the primary misunderstanding I see most people having about nerd. Nerd doesn’t become some lifestyle choice in which you chose specific attire or trends to be a part of to fit in. Nerd is something you realize when you sacrificed the chance to “level up” with real life friends in order to level up in a game. Nerd is when you know about the technical specs of all your friend’s TVs and not just your own. Nerd is when you are disappointed that an instruction booklet is thin.
With so much tech readily available, nerd has become emulated and diluted. Casual gaming (re: the Anti Christ. Wii can go suck a dick) and the bastion of douche over at Apple have set nerds back tremendously. Go watch the episode of South Park from last season where the Goth kids keep getting confused with the new trendy Vamp kids. They kind of seem similar, but are completely different. The disparity that episode captures is just like the disparity between actual computer nerds and want to be computer nerds. I have nothing against Apple as an alternative for people who simply don’t want to fuck around in the PC realm or want some specific Apple software, or the people who simply could care less. I do, however, have a problem with people who think they are hot shit or somehow now nerdy because they own a specific computer. It just so happens that a lot of Apple owners have now become the prototypical product snob. To some extent I don’t blame the consumers as much as I blame Apple. They have done just as much to perpetuate this snobbery. Look no further than the shoot-yourself-in-the-face-it-is-so-pretentiously-named, Apple Genius Bar. You are not a computer nerd and never will be if all you have used is an Apple computer. It would be like someone who only read the Cliff’s Notes clamming to be an expert on the book. (actual people who program for Macs are excluded, any programmer is 100% nerd. Linux users are full computer nerd too. If you ordered Unbuntu on accident, sorry you aren’t nerd, you are just a moron)
Learning how to deal with all the weird errors, configurations, drivers and the occasional god awful Windows releases like Millennium Edition (I like Vista) are a rite of passage. An analogy I can think of is, who do you think would be more knowledgeable about cars? A guy who has a new BMW that is fantastic and seldom breaks down? Or the guy who has an 86′ Civic that constantly breaks down and he needs perform little fixes here and there to keep going? Sure the BMW is a more refined machine but you are learning more about the inner workings of your car when you have to tweak and fix it to keep shit going. 90% of what I know about computers and electronics has been from fixing and trouble shooting them. This is a key nerd tenet, the desire to always want to know more about something and to want the “advanced mode” of something and not a dumbed down version.
Listen up Apple asshats and pathetic PC users; just because you figured out how to have Skype and a RSS feed on your desktop doesn’t make you a computer nerd. The people who programmed those pieces of software are nerds. The people who used beta versions with terrible GUI’s are nerds. You are simply using the final product of catering to the lowest common denominator. So congratulations, you knew enough to buy something really expensive and trendy. Just like how you can’t buy used Japanese school girl underwear legally on eBay, you can’t buy your nerdom.
This same dilution and emulation applies to the current trend in gaming. Gaming used to be something only for the reflectively pale shut-ins who saw the sun as seldom as they did vaginas (Internet vaginas don’t count). Now you have Nintendo Wii’s all over the place in TV shows and movies. The Wii has completely penetrated pop culture. When a video game was mentioned in a show, it used to be something generic like Playstation or Nintendo, yet clearly the actor was holding a PC joystick or Xbox controller. No one but nerds knew that this was a grave insult, but we let it slide. Now all of a sudden, if in Tropic Thunder Matthew McConaughey referred to the game he was playing as a Xbox or Playstation, people would have a shit fit and call the movie out on inaccuracies. Well, fuck all of you. Video games have been awesome for a long god damn time. The Wii has contributed nothing to the gaming world other than training a new generation of girls how to give champion hand jobs while balancing on a plastic box. As a gamer you think I would be happy right? More people playing video games, not as awkward to admit you are a gamer now? Wrong. Fuck that toy of a system. That is all the Wii is, is a god damn toy. The Wii is the short bus of gaming. No one on that bus knows they are a retard, but everyone on the real bus points and laughs.
Listen up Wii players. You aren’t a gamer and you never will be. Sure, gamer nerds own Wii’s but no gamer nerd owns just a Wii. You are playing games made for children in remedial reading. Good job! You beat Wii Tennis and Bowling. Maybe next you will master Wii : Tie Your Own Shoes. I don’t want to discourage people from playing video games. They are fantastically fun and pretty easy to pick up once you get the hang of one or two. (sorry real video games are hand job simulator free, you may actually have to learn four or five buttons!)
To conclude I want to briefly mention the Chupacabra of gaming and tech nerdom right now, that is of course, gaming on cell phones. Holy fuck, not only is it the lamest thing possible but consumers have already collectively spent millions of dollars for these games. Play your Tetris and Block Breaker, those are simple games that are fine on the cell phone platform and I don’t really consider them gaming. However, actual video games are being developed for cell phones. The greatest travesty happening right now is Metal Gear Solid for iPhone. MGS has been a premier franchise for over a decade. It prides itself on intricate story lines, incredibly deep character development and well paced action and espionage game play. Recently the first in game footage for MGS Touch came out and it is a joke. When you see an enemy you tap him to shoot him. How much lamer could shooting someone possibly be then taping them with your finger? Might as well just shout “Bang” at the screen. Let your phone just be a phone. I fully support smart phones with browsers and what not, but gaming does not belong on a phone, especially a touch screen only phone. I shit you not; Dance Dance Revolution is coming out for the iPhone. If people mocked the dissimilarities between real dancing and the original DDR, imagine how dumb you are going to look dancing with your fingers on a cell phone.
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