3 ms·
When I grew up, "nerd" effectively meant "weird loser". The dictonomy was not between the athletic and the intelligent but between the popular and the unpopular
by jltsiren 3y ago
When I grew up, "nerd" effectively meant "weird loser". The dictonomy was not between the athletic and the intelligent but between the popular and the unpopular. The bullies and the bullied. The normal and the abnormal. Those with common interests and those with weird ones. Popular kids seemed more athletic, because it was socially acceptable to be interested in sports. Unpopular kids seemed more intelligent, because taking your studies seriously was often socially unacceptable.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago"incel" is probably the more relevant term in 2023. isolated, awkward, with 'weird' interests (e.g. 4chan, H-games, trolling). less of a pure "loser" implication than 1980s nerd. more of a "loser, but also creepy, and an outside chance of them shooting up the place"
- psunavy03 3y agoAnd that term is still problematic. Just because a straight man has a lousy love life doesn't automatically make him a misogynist or a potential spree killer. If anything, that feeds into those freaks' arguments that men are entitled to sex or affection. Yes, I'm familiar with the existence of the weirdo subculture that coined the term. But there's a lot of technically "involuntarily celibate" straight men in the world who are just between relationships, haven't met Ms. Right yet and don't want to cat around, or aren't regularly getting laid for any number of other reasons, but who just do what normal people do and deal with it. Using the term "incel" to describe the weirdo losers who feel entitled to women's attentions and affections without any effort on their part is arguably legitimizing their creepy argument.