Furious pop cultural obsessiveness seemed like righteous, antagonistic fun when we started this column eight years ago. But somewhere along the line, that particular strain of hyperbolic fanboy zealotry curdled. Maybe it’s because geek culture is no longer niche—quibbling about Wakanda’s vibranium reserves is different when Black Panther has evolved from an obscure comic into a billion-dollar blockbuster. Maybe it’s the access and amplification afforded by social media. When I staggered out of the execrable Pearl Harbor in 2001, I didn’t have the option of tweeting “@michaelbay you are a witless explosionmonger” and entertaining the hope that the Dark One himself might actually see my post. Or maybe it’s that the banal, clichéd megahit Big Bang Theory has rendered all forms of geek-rage banal and clichéd. All I know is that angry nerdery no longer fills me with a sacred sense of purpose. And it’s not just that these newly empowered nerds have sucked all the fun out of pop culture pedagogy; it’s that they’re actively ruining society. Fulminating about the canonical importance of Greedo not shooting first has metastasized into badgering fledgling stars off the internet for having the temerity to be female. (Don’t even get me started on Kekistan Pepes, deploying their red pills and sociopathic edgelord hate memes to own the normies.) Meanwhile, wealthy, entitled egotists—the “Notch” Perssons and Travis Kalanicks of the world—are giving geeks a bad name. Nerds rule the world now, but they’re doing a shit job of it. And that, my fellow didactic dweebs, makes me really angry.
Debut: Jun 2010 | Status: Ongoing | Appearances in print: 75
“I had a reputation around the office for being this nitpicking pop culture pedant. I was raised that way. When I was a little kid seeing Star Wars for the first time, I remember my dad leaning over during the climactic scene to tell me that, scientifically, there would be no air to carry the sound of the Death Star’s explosion in the vacuum of space.” —Chris Baker, former senior editor and writer of Angry Nerd from 2010 to 2016
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WIRED@25: More Retro WIRED
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