4 ms·
The purpose of TBBT is not to entertain nerds, it's to acclimatize everyone else to the new normal where nerds hold a form of status. In 2013 nerds can be very
by avrilkiki 13y ago
The purpose of TBBT is not to entertain nerds, it's to acclimatize everyone else to the new normal where nerds hold a form of status. In 2013 nerds can be very rich, their fields can be very influential, and their intelligence can be useful to normals.
Normals, however, don't understand how to relate to nerds in a post-high school environment. Their previous social training has been to simply ostracize and bully. TBBT teaches normals a new way of relating to nerds: tolerate them, make friends with them, turn a blind eye to their social awkwardness and weirdness, and trade your cultural capital for the nerd's intellectual and financial capital.
Nerds can be useful to normals. Nerds can be good friends if you understand how to handle and bracket their awkwardness. They can even be good boyfriends if you understand how to handle them--Leonard can benefit Penny with his intelligence, devotion, and wealth even if he isn't cool.
TBBT isn't aimed at nerds, it's a primetime mainstream TV show.
The author is right that the public is laughing at the nerds not with them. However TBBT still represents a sea change in the public representation of nerds--now nerds are not to be ostracized, rather they are to be tolerated.
- vorg 13y agoThe word nerd doesn't mean nowadays what it meant 20 or 30 yrs ago. It's been appropriated by business sorts as a label so they can pass themselves off as creators of genuine stuff as part of their sales routine. Look at most of the nerds nowadays and ask if these people are really "persons of above average intelligence who don't care about their appearance"? Real nerds tend to use the aspie label nowadays.
- avrilkiki 13y agoThe nerds on TBBT really are real nerds. All of them. They are different flavors of nerd. Sheldon is the aspie pervert creep. Raj and Howard are creepy manchildren. Leonard is the low self-esteem self-conscious self-hating type.
- judk 13y agoPervert? You may be projecting your nerd hate a bit. Howard is the only pervert.
- nhebb 13y agoThe Portlandia Nerd PSA hits on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir3v5yDk9Ws http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir3v5yDk9Ws
- vorg 13y agoDidn't know about this show. Like the line "I'm a real nerd. I actually use these glasses to see!"
- insertnickname 13y ago>Real nerds tend to use the aspie label nowadays. What...? That's idiotic... You don't have autism just because you're a "nerd".
- vorg 13y agoAspie is short for Asperger's, which is only a very mild form of autism, not that people calling themselves aspies necessarily have Asperger's syndrone, though some do. Many aspies have appropriated the term, however, because they know the business sorts calling themselves nerds will be repulsed by the term, and won't want to steal it from real aspies anytime soon.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- insertnickname 13y agoCalling it a "mild form of autism" is not really accurate.
- sampo 13y ago> laughing at the nerds not with them I think there is quite a lot laughing at normals going on in TBBT, too.
- avrilkiki 13y agoBut is the laughter at those properties that MAKE them normals, or is it at those everyday abnormal things that particular normals have? Honest question... i'm not sure
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago>They can even be good boyfriends if you understand how to handle them--Leonard can benefit Penny with his intelligence, devotion, and wealth even if he isn't cool. You seem to be implying there are many fewer nerd-couples than I've actually seen.
- avrilkiki 13y agoHow am I implying that? Read it like this: They can even be good boyfriends if... TBBT is suggesting the tentative possibility that the BEST among the nerds, the best looking, the smartest, the richest, could maybe be worth dating. Maybe. That's all.