[krapp]

> Since when was being a nerd about consumer preferences?

Being a nerd has almost always been about consumer preferences. Everything from baseball cards to anime, comics, D&D, video games, all of the staples of nerd culture are also consumer culture.

[freehorse]

But you are picking the most commercial sides of what is described as "nerd culture" and identifying them to "nerd culture". Exactly this is what is criticised (imo). And even among these "staples" you can find a lot of no/low/anti commercial things and sides. In the videogames for example, you also have pirating, modding communities, indie/free/unfinished games. There is some consumer part, but there have been aspects that are not.

In any case, I am not sure anything of this has to do with "being a nerd" per se, if I even get to understand how to properly define a category based on a term that has most often than not served as an exonym (or used to). But if I ignore this part, I would say that stuff like eg marvel comics is akin to fast food, and now it goes from being a "nerd's fast food" to being "normie's fast food". In either case, making stuff like "marvel comics" a definitional point of being a nerd seems absurd to me (and I have read tons of marvel comics in my life).