[salmo]

I think this is the lifecycle of all 'nerd' sites. Slashdot went this way, Digg, Reddit, and we're seeing it here.

It starts with insightful stuff, knowledgeable people, real discourse. Reddit may have been special because at the time the community also prided itself on kindness.

But then 'nerds' go from people who have insight and opinions on esoteric topics, to people that like Marvel universe movies. Basically it gets popular and then it's no longer a niche group.

I think this happens with social media and "the kids" as well. As soon as your mom is on it, it's dead and you move on to the next one.

But we see it now. It's gotten to where most of the time I have to collapse the first few threads because they turn into fanboy arguments (pro/anti-apple, intel vs. AMD, copyleft vs liberal OSS licenses, etc, etc.).

[chakkepolja]

> But then 'nerds' go from people who have insight and opinions on esoteric topics, to people that like Marvel universe movies. Basically it gets popular and then it's no longer a niche group.

I hate how "nerd" came to mean edgy video gamer teens in popular culture.

[salmo]

Yeah. It was like once things that were 'nerdy' became cool (comic books, sci-fi, video games, etc.) all of a sudden everyone was a nerd. I guess that's good and bad.

It does feel weird though. I don't watch comic book movies (or many movies for that matter), because I'm usually teaching myself about something nerdy: history, electronics, math, systems stuff, a new programming language, etc. It kinda goes back to the original idea of someone oblivious to pop culture because they're buried in pursuits most people find boring.

I stared using 'geek' because I liked the sound of it better, but realized it's just a 'nerd' synonym to most.

I just wish we had a word for folks that get annoyed when people don't use Demorgan's to fix their conditional statements to be more readable, or like to read primary sources, or whatever.

[chakkepolja]

> I stared using 'geek' because I liked the sound of it better, but realized it's just a 'nerd' synonym to most.

It seems to refer to video gamer culture even more than "nerd".