The Nerd Shield: How Geek Culture Has Made Us Believe that The Walking Dead and The Big Bang Theory are Good TV Shows

I’m not sure when it happened, but it suddenly became okay to be nerdy. I am not certain whether this was a result of popularizing Geek Culture (i.e. The Lord of The Rings, Twilight, comic book films, The Big Bang Theory, video games, etc.) or if it was just the natural progression that comes with graduating from the cut-throat social order of high school into a more accepting world, but the evidence is tangible.

Most of the people I know, to some degree, are nerdy, myself included. If I said this ten years ago, when I was still in high school, I would have offended most of the people I associated with, but now they would tend to agree, although possibly half-heartedly.

So what happened? Did society as a whole become more welcoming to “outsiders” or did the unending quest for status in high school make us deny our geeky tendencies?

High school was (and probably still is) hell for a nerd, but I tend to believe that popular culture has made it far more tolerable, perhaps even cool, to have nerdy hobbies, interests, and proclivities, to the point that people will self-identify as nerds.

Why, then, does every nerd I know need to feel like he or she is discriminated against?

Fitting In By Standing Out

Speaking from personal experiences, high school was suffocating. I wasn’t bullied or picked on, but I never felt confident enough to express any part of me that I felt would reduce my already minimal status, specifically my enjoyment of the trading card game, Magic. College was a liberating experience, where I was able to find a place where I could fit in and be comfortable.

Although my hardships weren’t nearly as difficult as other people’s, I do empathize with the inability to live openly without fear of criticism.

(Side note: If it seems like I’m coming out in this article: I’m not. But I do recognize that concealing your sexual preferences is a much-more-intense version of the point I’m trying to make.)

When I was finally able to get to a point in my life when I literally did not give two shits about what other people thought about me, I was a happier person. No longer did I have to lie about running into Robin Williams at Target, when in reality he stopped by a gaming shop where I was participating in a Magic tournament (true story; I think he was looking for Warhammer miniatures (which I imagine he used to create a musical children’s program)).

Now, not every nerd has shared my personal experiences, so I cannot speak for all of us, but I do identify with many of the people I meet. We exchange similar stories about feeling oppressed and the sense of freedom when we could finally be ourselves without judgment. It is a really redemptive revelation.

So why do all these people insist that they are still a fucking minority group, getting oppressed and discriminated against at every fucking moment?

Nerdgasm

The problem with the popularization of Nerd Culture is it universalized the aspects of ourselves that made us unique. It took our niche interests and gave it the Disney/Coca Cola/Wal-Mart stamp of approval. It is similar to the process to that Hot Topic took in turning the Goth fad into a marketable style for brooding teenagers.

I’m not going to go all Hipster and preach that being mainstream is simply worse than being underground (an argument for another article), but I will say that I hate when something I love is watered down for mass consumption, thereby losing the very essence of why I appreciated it (this should be called “The Fergie Effect”).

My title for this blog is The Nerd Shield, on which I will now elaborate. One fantasy fighting tactic I have learned from watching TV and movies is that a shield can protect you from being struck by a sword, but at the cost of reducing visibility, reaction time, and movement; the bigger the shield, the more negative the impact. You may make yourself safer from a sword blow, but you open yourself up to getting shanked by a dagger.

As nerds, we have learned to carry a metaphorical shield to protect us from bullying, disapproval, condemnation, and our own shame. One major way that these shields are manifested is through the glorification of Nerd Culture. We revel in seeing Peter Parker become Spiderman, Leonard make out with Penny, or The Walking Dead become the most-viewed show on cable; these validate of our lifestyle choices.

Herein lies the dilemma: because Nerd Culture has been transformed into a product of broad appeal, it no longer functions as the original possession that set us apart from the popular high school crowd, i.e. cheerleaders, jocks, rich kids. Comic book heroes are now as much theirs as they are ours.

Our Nerd Shield has become so large that it has blinded us from seeing an attacker, slowed us from responding, and has now trapped us underneath its weight. Geek Culture cannot be a reasonable shield if non-nerds (or at least those who don’t self-identify as nerds) are engaging in the same media.

Why The Walking Dead and The Big Bang Theory Suck Balls, Un-Objectively

If you saw my article title on Facebook and scrolled down to this sub-header, you saved yourself a few minutes of reading at the expense of missing the entirety of my argument. But if you really don’t have time, I should still be able to convince you that these two shows are pungent piles of poop, covered in Captain Kirk stickers, wearing t-shirts with catch phrases, and concealed with scattered comic books, like a shitty snowman.

I’m not a complete hater; the first season of Dead and first few seasons of TBBT were excellent and I thoroughly enjoyed them, but recent episodes are not only not good, they are straight up terrible. This opinion sounds like my inner hipster coming out (once again, material for a different blog), but I believe that mainstream success has ruined these shows.

The Big Bang Theory: How to Scam an Entire Community

I’ll start with Big Bang, the self-appointed homage to Geek Culture. I ask you, which of the characters would you like to be friends with? If they were real people, who would you like to hang out with?

Raj? No, his inability to talk to women sober is more annoying than goofy.

Wolowitz? I think five minutes of him is more than I could take.

Sheldon? For fuck’s sake no! His own friends barely tolerate him.

Leonard? Ok, I can concede that he might be fine to spend time with, but still seems like a strict downgrade over the nerdy friends I already have.

Now if you mention Penny, then you must be a dude, because Penny’s only two redeeming qualities are that she is gorgeous hot attractive and she hangs out with nerds. Don’t worry bro, you will find your Penny.

To get further into the issue, the show was once a collection of clever references that made its audience feel smart. Remembering the Psych 101 lesson about Pavlov’s dog or recognizing a Star Trek reference made us think that the show was speaking directly to our personal interests, which no other mainstream show was doing.

But TBBT is produced by Chuck Lorre, the same guy who produces Two-and-a-Half Men. Let me repeat that so it fully sinks in: the same guy who is in charge of making the decisions for Two-and-a-Half Men is also behind your beloved geek show.

Early seasons of Big Bang were clever and viewers properly rewarded it by making it the top-watched comedy on basic cable. Now I’m not sure if the writing got worse or the pressure of appealing to a broader audience led to it being watered-down, but the end result is undeniable. The show is now a will-they-or-won’t-they soap opera sprinkled with basic (and I mean BASIC) jokes referencing Lord of the Rings or Stephen Hawking.

The show that was supposed to be glorifying our individuality is surviving on reputation alone. If you want to watch a Friends-like show (which is still one of the best sitcoms of my lifetime) then Big Bang is excellent; just don’t delude yourself into believing that it is really the testament to geek life that it claims to be.

The Walking Dead: Just Put It Out of Its Misery

The problems facing The Walking Dead are similar; characters that are forgettable (honestly, would you be sad if any/all of the characters died? Couldn’t they just recast the entire crew without a major ratings drop?), unrealistic situations (really, a horse doctor who performs miracle surgeries?!), and a fan-base obsessively devoted to the source material.

Unfortunately, I am not very familiar with The Walking Dead comic series beyond casually flipping through one at Barnes & Noble, nor am I an aficionado of comic books in general. But I have stacked produce for a living, allowing me to say the following with authority: just because two apples look similar, does not mean they will taste the same. Fruit that is rotten to the core can look fresh and glossy on the outward-facing surface of the display. Dead is a piece of rotten fruit, relying on its shiny veneer to mask its unpleasant interior.

Once again, the nerd shield has zombiephiles blinded. I will concede that the best thing about the show is gruesome zombie kills, but the acting is atrocious, the dialogue sounds fake, the plot is stupid, and the show is ignorant at best– borderline racist and sexist at worst. It has all of the trappings of zombie genre, but is seriously lacking the quality that nerds have come to expect from their programming. Most of the time, these items are maligned, like The Green Lantern, but season one success (and a steady diet of headshots and katana piercings) has made the nerd community less critical.

Your love of the comics or zombie flicks doesn’t force you to love, or even like, the TV show. It is alright to think of them as two separate entities; nobody puts the Buffy  movie on the same pedestal as the television show and NOBODY puts Twilight in the same conversation as Buffy.

The best comparison I can make for Walking Dead defenders is to the people who still claim that the final season of Lost was salvageable. It was a travesty that permanently damaged the entire series and you know it! Don’t try to convince me that a rotten apple is sweet or that the purgatory timeline made sense!

Look in the Mirror and See the Pimply, Glasses-Wearing, Scraggly-Beard-Having Face

If you’ve made it through the first 1,700 words of this article (1,700?! How am I ever supposed to manage a Twitter account?!), it is safe to assume that you either consider yourself a nerd, or else you’re my mom (sorry about the cursing, mom). If you proudly accept the title or nerd, it is time to take a serious reflection about the realities of your life:

Are you well-educated and intelligent?

Do you have a close group of friends, with whom you share common interests?

When you wake up, are you excited for life?

Is there someone you love? Who loves you?

Do you work at a respectable, well-paying job?

Is there an event down the road that you are greatly anticipating?

Are you happy?

If you answered “yes” to a majority of these questions, then who gives a fuck if there is some hypothetical bully out there who could hypothetically make you feel ashamed about who you are?!

You see, I believe the deep-seeded fear of bullies is what drives us to hoist up our shields and defend against attacks, but in doing so, we have actually exposed ourselves to close attacks(this shouldn’t be a surprise; nerds aren’t known for upper body strength).

Now that Nerd Culture is mainstream, we cannot be satisfied just because we got acknowledged; that sort of thought process lets us settle for veiled mediocrity. We have to hold ourselves to higher standards of entertainment and not get swept up because our favorite comic “met expectations” or “could have been worse” (*cough* Avengers *cough*).

For me, the pinnacle of what I expect from a superhero movie was The Dark Knight; a film that felt both original and iconic, focused on being the best possible movie rather than meeting minimum expectations, and appeased both comic books aficionados and casual fans alike.

It is too late to reclaim Nerd Culture, but if we hold film-makers, producers, and studio heads responsible for their products, we can make sure that the end result is worthy of our approval. And the first step is to never get swept up in the hype because being a nerd is about individuality, not liking the same things as the geek community.