This is probably the nerdiest board of all so I'm gonna ask you people

One of the most popular comedy shows on television glorifies autism and other neurotic behaviour

>We cool kids now

Shouldn't you be happy? You won. You are the popular kids in whatever shitty movie you think life is now. You sound incredibly bitter over shit that happened in high school

>Back then, being a nerd meant you were actually smart

Make no mistake, I'm not mad at all. And I wouldn't go back if I could.. I'd lose almost 2 decades of media. It just weird to me. It's like you see people say one thing one day and then do the opposite the next. That's all.

You do realize the teenagers who bullied you in highschool are not the same people who watch Big Bang Theory right?

Millennials are people born in the 80s and 90s. You're thinking of Gen Z which are being born in the 2000s+

What the fuck are you talking about? Have you never known someone for more than a day? You can easily watch people try to jump on the 90's nostalgia bandwagon. It's incredibly obnoxious. Which was the gist of my point. I'm not trying to make some big stand, kid.

Everything was better in the 90's.

I don't think he's referring to teenagers specifically but also in regards to people who had no interest in the nerd culture growing up then suddenly of only recently they want in.

I knew people from high school that used to give me shit for listening to Daft Punk and now they act like they're the biggest Daft Punk fans or someshit on plebbook. And all I can think about is "fuck off you never liked their shit until Tron Legacy came about"

>Why was nerd culture in the 90s so much better?

I think its quality control. Before web 2.0 there was a much higher barrier to entry for work. this combined with a smaller -culture- meant that the stuff that did make it was of a generally higher quality than we have now.

That being said, there's alot of shit that came out before, but there was no web 2.0 for them to be spread, so they mostly fizzled out, as magazines were the spread of nerd culture.

Another thing to note is that the internet was starting to be used, but it didn't really pick up so people looking for other nerds had to attend fan clubs and head to game shops and interact with actual people, like with arcades. The in person social gaming beyond meeting with friends is very dead compared to arcade meet-ups.

>because of MTG
I'd argue that the tcg hurt tg nerd culture more than anything, since it bridged collectors, gambling and nerds. Its subsequent popularity along with pokemon and its tcg gave us a huge rush of derivative shit that nobody plays anymore.

Its hard not to get rose-tinted when talking about early experiences with nerd stuff though, one of my favorite memories was playing in a battletech pod as a brother-sister team. Keep in mind that sci-fi was pretty mainstream with sg-1, b5, tng, ds9, and red dwarf.

Fair enough, but that still begs the question as to why he's even mad in the first place. Who cares what some asshat from highschool likes or dislikes? Absolute worst case scenario, said high school guy is just chasing trends, and by proxy making the thing the guy likes more popular, making it more money, and insuring it will continue for a longer time

fpbp

Look you start to get old and your tolerance to bullshit slowly starts to wane. We're mad because these people who say they liked this stuff were all full of shit anyway. By the time we're full old we don't entirely remember why we're annoyed but we know someone was talking a whole pile of shit anyway.

The idea that this makes you better than others wasn't around in the 80's. It's an affront to every Gen Xer. Millennials use stuff like this to attempt to justify their existence in a sea of people that care less about each other than they ever have. But you shouldn't have to justify your existence to others.

>Absolute worst case scenario, said high school guy is just chasing trends, and by proxy making the thing the guy likes more popular

Said high school guy was in high school 20 years ago and would start fights over it. Because it was high school, dumb shit really. Following trends just because they're popular now just makes you a sad person that lacks passion and creativity of individual self.

I know. Because it hadn't been diluted to appeal to mass markets. That's why.

e.g. the Internet used to be amazing because the only people one it were other nerds and their kids. No matter who you met online, they had to be, because only nerds had both computers and modems and knew how to use them, and then did use them for fun. Tradewars, Legend of the Red Dragon, Doom, and Duke Nukem were some of the most fun I ever had on computer networks.

Then AOL came and fucked up the world.

Magic was awesome when it was a surprise runaway success for a bunch of geeks, but when it started censoring its own artwork (contrast Revised Unholy Strength with 4th edition Unholy Strength) to sell in Wal-Mart and appeal to children, it started to suck. Anyone remember that edition in the late 90s that was specifically aimed at children, with simplified rules and super big text? Fucking awful.

AD&D 2nd edition was still relatively hardcore. See: Dark Sun, with cannibal halflings, rampant slavery, and all sorts of un-PC stuff ripped straight from the classics of sword and sorcery. It eventually morphed into the abomination of 4th edition, where the designers literally tried to emulate a cartoony online game.

Long story short, geek culture became a victim of its own success and began to be watered down into crap for mass appeal.

>I was 11 when Magic came out, played it from Unlimited edition.
>ran games in AD&D 2nd
>was a huge World of Darkness fan; even played Jyhad (which is what Vampire: The Eternal Struggle was called originally) and Rage
>Earthdawn 1st, Shadowrun 2nd, etc.

>Millennials
>80's
>90s

"Demographers and researchers typically use the early 1980s as starting birth years and use the mid-1990s to the early 2000s as final birth years for the Millennial Generation."

Huh.

>Anyone remember that edition in the late 90s that was specifically aimed at children, with simplified rules and super big text? Fucking awful.

Portal? Some of the cards from that are still quite good to this day(Summer Bloom, Cruel Bargain, Gift of Estates etc.) It's funny how some of the Portal sets was meant for a simpler game ended up still printing some extremely powerful cards in its original sets and later on.

Yeah, I think that was it. It followed Weatherlight and Mirage.

I wouldn't know if any of its cards were good or not, though. I bought some packs, saw where the game was headed, and sold my cards. That $1000 paid for a couple of months rent in my first apartment.

Millennials are anyone who was 18 or younger when 2000 came about.

So yes, if you were born on or after 1st January, 1982, you are a Millennial.

Because we where the growing pains of the nerd culture.

Nerd of that time where really nerds. We didnt had girls, not a lot of friends, and so on.

Today is trendy to say that you are nerd. Fuck, even porn actress that suck a field of dicks per day say they are "a bit nerdy". Fuck that, if you have sex whateaver you want, is attractive, need glasses and play angry birds, this dont make you a nerd.

The nerd culture of the 90s where the best because it was the appex of the culture. The nerd culture today is over.

That means that my 2 year old daughter is a Millennial.

Needs revision.

/thread

Because the Jews got involved and fucked it up by appealing to autists queers and transmentalists

>Being nostalgic over being a loser
But y tho?

I thought it was generally established and known that all births after 2000 are Generation Zers.

Go home /pol.

Protip: Senior members of FASA (Battletech, Mechwarrior, Shadowrun, and Earthdawn) were Jewish.

Dumb faggot. KYS.

>Mega Drive-Super Nintendo Wars
>Best Wars

Because even for being a loser, I was young, didnt had to thing about adult problems and mine life was just shitty when compared to Chad Thundercock. Even so, It was alright.

I didnt had a gf when I wanted, but fuck, that new Streets of Rage 2 was a hell of a substitute. Contra Hardcorps too.

Maybe you're right. I've never heard that term until recently.

Per capita real GDP growth was 4% back then. Now it's 1% to 2%.

I mean I can go on and on about trigger warnings and speech controls and people being much less sex-positive now. Or how in those days the internet was new enough that cool amateur projects could work without being self-consciously "indie" but really the economy explains most of it. People are anxious, under-employed (or outright jobless), and up to their eyeballs in debt. Shit's less fun when Real Life sucks so hard.

There are several definitions. I do this for a living and every demohraphics text has their own breakpoints. In real life, generational cohorts are fuzzy.

I hear Generation Z all over the place, when people bitch about those damn tweens that gush over 50 Shades and Justin Bieber, that hoard to the latest Taylor Swift tracks and dream of being as hot as a Kardashian.

But the same people that complain about Generation Z are bitter Millennials looking to a younger generation to bitch about, just like Generation X turned on the Millennials and the Baby Boomers turned on Generation X.

>Shit's less fun when Real Life sucks so hard.

But that's backwards. Escapism is most attractive when real life sucks. It's the whole point. It's how scrawny unattractive nerds became the standard bearers of roleplaying games, etc. in the first place, and why they still disappear into MMORPGs where they can pretend to be heroes and beauties.

Yeah, but now our escapism is dreaming about having a job we enjoy, a house we can afford, and a family we can raise. Sci-Fi requires hope for the future, and Fantasy requires imagination. Both of those things are dead.

See this is my point. "Nerd culture", whatever the fuck that even means, wasn't better back then. You were just a kid, and everything was better. Twenty years from now people are going to be complaining that this generation of gaming was the last good one, and they aren't going to be any more right

> I do this for a living

Lemme throw this at you. It may be of interest to you that there is a real, qualitative difference between the oldest millennials and the rest of them, that may not be apparent to someone not in that group (I am, you may not be).

I'm among the oldest, born in '82. People my age and slightly younger than I (3 years or so) are different from the rest of the cohort. We are stronger, less fragile, more determined people who function better as adults. The reason, I think, was the wars of the early 21st century.

I was 18 on 9/11. More than half the boys I graduated high school with joined the military, including me (Army). We were the men who conquered Iraq and defeated al Qaeda. At an age where many millennials are graduating college and getting their first full time jobs, we were blooded combat veterans with multiple tours, dead comrades, wives, and children.

It's probably only a footnote in the study of generational behavior, but I feel compelled to mention it. I spend all day, every day on a college campus surrounded by Millennials and they (we) largely deserve the shitty reputation of weakness and extended adolescence. But there is an exceptional group.

Nope, because Nerd at that time was an outcast where today normies uses as a badge of honor.

Fuck, there is even sitcoms about nerds now.

Ppl will not complaing about gamming because technology is always improving.

But is OK to complaing about nerd culture dying because that has nothing to do with the improvement of the technology used by the nerds, but their lack of social skills.

Yesterday normies called us outcasts as nerds. Today normies posing as nerds call outcasts as creepy.

The names may have changes but the thing is still going on.

>Sci-Fi requires hope for the future, and Fantasy requires imagination. Both of those things are dead.

Wow. This is the real grimdark, right here.

My favorite card in Magic is from Portal. Devoted Hero for life.

This, right here, this "X did not exist" meme. Do you realize the enormity of the lie you are spreading?

Ok, OP, I'll bite. What makes you say nerd culture was better? I mean, seriously, throw us a bone here. There's gotta be something which makes you make that claim besides just "I liked it better," right?

well, Dungeons and Dragons was a TSR product, and then got bought out by Wizards of The Coast, who in turn got bought out by Hasbro.

>I'm among the oldest, born in '82. People my age and slightly younger than I (3 years or so) are different from the rest of the cohort.
I'd extend that to >almost< all millennials born in the 80's (the ones closer to the 90's are more of a mixed bag, like the cohort I belong to). I was born in '89 and I very much get the impression that compared to much later millennials (like '94 and onward) there's some weird break or difference between us because of the times we grew up in that they didn't. Like, the closer to and earlier in the '80's you're born, the less of a typical millennial you are.

But like I said, a mixed bag. '88-'92 are the years I'd say the rot really was set into the millennial generation.

>web 2.0
You keep saying that but it's pretty clear that you have no clue what it means.

Fake nerd detected.

>90s
Get on my level scrub.

>RPG

I was full nerd in the 90s but I was scared of playing RPG here in Brazil.

Niggas where way too much into. I remember of one that after a session, he owned like 35 golden coins to the kid playing as the barbarian. The kid demanded the golden coins but he said it was just a game and he would give it back in another session.

Fucker killed the kids, ripped his head off, took his mom credit card , went to the ATM and took exaclty 35 reais.

Like nigga, its just a game.

You'd think that that was true, but IMO it's not. Look at all the periods with the most vibrant periods of creativity and fun. The Roaring 20's. The 1960's. The 1980's (often derided by liberals because Reagan but by nearly any economic measure a fantastic economy). And the 1990s.

There's an old graph matching stock market returns to average women's skirt hemlines. It's supposed to illustrate a spurious correlation, but both have a common cause: economic growth. Skirts were very high in the 20's for their time, and of course the 60's, 80's, and 90's were all periods when the miniskirt was back in style.

What happens is this. When the economy is growing, people have money in their pockets. They have disposable income. They have hope for the future. They aren't working overtime because they're scared of being laid off. They can afford to blow time and money on leisure.

That puts money into the hands of the creative class. RPG companies make money. They can afford to commission artists and hire freelancers. They can afford print runs of supplements that they might otherwise have sat on. FLGSs can stay in business and afford to stock slower-moving product.

Think back on the 1990s. Vampire the Masquerade imagined the Gothic Punk Universe (as they called it then): a gritty world where tragically hip, angst-ridden anti-heroes strut around with superpowers fighting immense but pretty abstract threats to The World. As CS Lewis once put it, an hour with a real toothache would expose all this maudlin handwringing for what it is. I suppose that makes 9/11 the real pain that exposed the emptiness of it. Or, if you like, the great economic downturn that we're still in almost a decade later.

Anyway, while you'd think that economic growth makes people turn off their computers and put away their splatbooks and go out and enjoy life, the truth is that it's when things get depressing that both the hobby industry and we the consumers lose steam.

Many of my students are veterans, and I've noticed the exact same thing. When we talk, they have a maturity that other students their age lack (of course) but also I feel like I connect with them in a way that I can't with others their age.

Like I said, in spite of all the quibbling about definitions, generational cohorts are very fuzzy. And I don't think your point is a footnote: it's an important caveat about the whole model. Cohorts are united by shared sense of identity and shared experiences. But A) it's not the ONLY source of identity, and B) different people go through life stages at different times and so might better resemble people older or younger than their birthdate might suggest.

When 9/11 happened, the stereotypical Millennial was a kid, or at least saw himself that way. While you were making life-or-death decisions as a grownup, responsible for the lives of your fellow soldiers and the civilians you were protecting (and for killing the enemies hiding among them). Meanwhile, others your age were college freshmen reading about it in a book or blog, or maybe waving a sign in a protest march. You experienced it first-hand, most of your compatriots heard about it on Comedy Central.

In other words, you grew up early. You were "old for your age". The other kids enjoyed a delayed adolescence, and have more in common with kids younger than them.

So you're exposing an important point about generational cohorts. It's much more about self-perception and identity than it is about numbers on a calendar.

Cause it was main streamed, our video games were not on tv, our rpg games were either for stupid or satanic to most, our sci-fi novels were written for adults not YA , our TV shows were made fun of.
Ive seen construction workers in NES shirts with zelda tats on the neck these days. Back in the 80s you did not ask a girl out wearing your comming soon dragon warrior 4 shirt.
It was cool becuase if you saw some one wearing or talking about nerd shit you were both insainly likely to be out casts, no dude bro's have youtube channels about FPS games and call you lame still. So our culture and activities were watered down for the masses, it was better only in that it was not so popular and we had a tighter "culture". Now grandma and nfl players are online talking about the web, it used to be very difficult to be a nerd in society, now its nothin.

So yeah it wasnt better per se but, we used to be more tight nit

Nah, it actually sucked. I was there for it and it was terrible. It just seems better in retrospect because the good stuff survived and is still talked about and the dreck has been forgotten.

A cogent explanation, grounded in experience. One of the best posts I've seen on Veeky Forums. 10/10.

>KYS

Fuck off normalfag.

The 90s was pretty bland for being a nerd but the 80s was an interesting time to be a nerd. I remember watching 60 Minutes with my parents and it was the segment inquiring about the acusations that D&D was some form of devil worship and was a catalyst for kids to take their own lives. It was the first time D&D was really ever mentioned on TV! I was startled by the ignorance and felt so betrayed. You have to remember that 60 minutes was a very respected show that was praised, in those days as the best of the best in journalism. Well It was my first lesson to question everything..and there began my long standing hate for the main stream media.

>grounded in experience

Backed by nothing. I call bait.

Thanks!

>Fuck, there is even sitcoms about nerds now.

The 80's called, they want me to tell you that they did this better, too.

And by better, I mean A LOT better.

tfw nobody remembers The IT Crowd

I dont remember any of these desu.

Every decade has its gems. Even this one.

> 90s best time for nerd culture
I don't think you remember the 90s correctly friendo... Be honest user... Were you even alive during the 90s?

The way I remember it was it was super hard to find legitimate game stores. The ones you *did* find were hybrid comic/game stores that were usually more about comics than games.To top it off, they normally focused on the CCG flavor of the month.

Let's not even go into the stupid zeitgeist of game design in the 90s with horrible, needless crunch fucking up RPGs. The lack of good board games was also sad; Catan was the only well known game out of the US and people thought Robo Rally was a good game.

So in short. Fuck off OP

Watched this just because of that polish semen demon.

The prooceded to cum gallons of semen to het SFMs of Miranda Lawson on /gif/

My dick now has scars because of it. Totally worth it tho.

Exactly my point schlomo shekelburg - churning out generic shit and playing up to autism

Bullying doesn't make autists any better, it makes them kill themselves.

Also, autism is genetic. It's not caused by a lack of bullying, and autists get bulled all the time. It's just that now the tests we use for it detect more high-functioning spergs, who then proceed to go online and bitch about other people. Seriously, learn the facts.

It meant you were a sad and lonely kid who thought he was smart because movie nerds were smart. But real life isn't a movie.

>Autism was also at an all time low, as bullying was still rampant,
Autism was at an all time low because the memediagnosis for kids doing kids things was ADD or ADHD and the treatment for the two differ.

>the nerdiest board

Nah, that'd be /pol/. At least we know when we're playing make believe.

>Why was nerd culture in the 90s so much better?
Because people nowadays confuse nerds with geeks, just as you did just now.

Nerd culture remains relatively the same, due to the high intelligence entrance barrier.
It's the geek culture that went mainstream, and therefore, got commercialized.

Remember the difference, kids:
A nerd is an antisocial loner and his choice of hobbies is just the result of his inability to socially interact with other people.

Where the nerd uses the hobby to escape the everyday stress of interacting with people, the geek uses the hobby to seek out the very same interaction with people.

tl;dr basically, nerds - hobby first, socializing last, whereas geeks - socializing first, hobby second or even third.

>Also, autism is genetic

Autism rates are rising, especially in silicon valley. Not just high-functioning (where your detection rates point applies) but severe cases as well. There's a theory about assortive mating floating around right now, but ultimately like most neurological disorders we don't know. Seriously, learn the limitations of the research. "best guess from experts" != facts

fuck off /pol/, can't you shits stick to your own fucking containment board?

Nope, because nerd implies smart. /pol/ are in the "stupid / social reject" quadrant, they just aspire to be "smart / social rejects" like Veeky Forums. Unfortunately: not gonna happen.

They're basically wannabe losers on every board they participate on, including their own.

I was born in 88. What would I be then?

>Autism rates are rising
The diagnoses of Autism are rising, which is to be expected as access to medical and psychological healthcare is improved and the stigma towards mental illness is dropped.

The heart of the "Nerd" is being a social outcast. People forget that THIS is what originally defined a nerd. These outcasts were usually the smart dorks, weirdos, Yes fans, and shit like that. These outcasts, being sundered from normal human interaction flocked to video games, fantasy and sci-fi novels and movies, comic books and roleplaying games as a means of escape.

The problem began when the hobbies got confused as the core of the social group. They were not nerds because they played videogames. They played videogames because they were nerds and all the cool kids were out being social.

Then it got into the weird Nerd Chic. If you remember that the core of nerd is being an outcast, Nerd Chic is rather confusing.

I kind of feel like the expansion of cell phones and the internet were the deciding factor in the change.

>Dissing on Robo Rally
How does it feel to be so wrong.

>Nerd Chic is rather confusing.
No more so than Pop Punk.

>nerd culture
Fuck off with this. The idea that "nerds" are a demographic is a construct of shitty sitcoms. The truth is people that like comics, board games, card games, roll playing are typically normal folks with a few aspies mixed in. The people you see at your LGS are more likely to wTch football on Sundays than go home and code in a basement. It wasn't better before simply because it's never been that consolidated in the first place, and the 90's fucking blew anyway.

As far as the content and health of the individual hobbies, most have never been better, with the exception maybe of comic books, which I have heard are doing poorly in the past few years.

It was because NORMIES STAYED OUT OF MY HOBBY REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEe

Nerd Culture in the 90s is better because you remember Magic the Gatheting and forget Spellfire, Wyvern, and the Sim City CCG

>Sim City CCG

I didn't! Still have my promo NASA card!

/thread

>the retarded adults around me

It's like you are speaking to my soul

> comic books, which I have heard are doing poorly in the past few years.

I've been hearin this too. I really hope they get their act together to bring in some fresh blood. I'm not sure how much they can keep milking Captain American and Superman

More like you can't have one with the other.

Define "better".

Certainly there was a lot more acceptance than the 80s and a lot less drama and push to be inclusive than there is now.

I'd say that it being "better" probably came from it having a specific niche culture that got appealed to hard, as opposed to the current attempt to figure out how far brands can be diluted to maximize sales without alienating the core target group that drops stupid money as individuals.

What really irks me is all the people cashing in as Nerd media personalities because they rely on getting shit wrong and really emphasizing those points.

I guess there's no real change though in my daily life. I still don't interact enough with the community as it were to really give a fuck. I've always hated 90% of the people in the fandom for being tedious pedantic wankers desperate to establish a pecking order and then climb it using nerd cred.

I guess I'm slightly irked nobody gave a fuck until girls starred getting involved in large amounts. Like when it was just dudes and unpopular girls nobody cared it was a toxic filth hole, but now little darling Debbie got revealed as a filthy casual and got her feelings hurt, now it's a tragedy.

What? Yes you can

>implying Veeky Forums is smart.

I think pol is retarded just as much as the next guy, but don't kid yourself.

It's the writing.