[capableweb]

Indeed. And "real" nerd culture has just became deeper, and more specialized. Back in the day, a lot of the nerds were into the same type of things, while now there are sub-groups. Some nerds are anime-nerds, others are programming-nerds, and not every programming-nerd is an anime-nerd, and vice-versa. And the amount of nerd-sub groups is huge, every quarter or so I encounter a nerdy topic and sub-group I had no idea about before.

[ehnto]

Being from a small rural Australian town, it was amazing when I found my nerds in the big city. You do end up a bit pigeonholed when everything gets too specific. I think that is why I like makerspaces and things like that. You get all sorts.

[capableweb]

I had the same experience. It wasn't until I was around ~15 or so I discovered our tiny place actually had two whole other people who were into computers. At one point, I moved to a bigger area and discovered there were full groups of up to 20 people per group that also liked computers. Opened up a whole new world.

[Ekaros]

There are so many groups and most of them don't regularly pop up in mainstream culture.

The fact that mainstream has co-opted many of the past nerdy things doesn't mean they are gone. They have just moved to new not so visible things. And those are hard to see in sea of all the content produced. Independent podcast and comics are a thing. And then there is novels and such from China, Korea and Japan. Some of these more mainstream already lot less.