Disagree. If anything I think it reinforced nerd stereotypes even worse - all it did was shine a light on a culture that was basically in the shadows. Nerd culture has been perpetuated by a variety of factors:
1. Twitch / livestreaming / YT - e.g. sub counts = "look at how many people actually do like gaming"
2. Affinity groups to video games - e.g. NBA players love Fortnite (among other professional sports...see HyperX commercials with Embiid, Hayward, etc.)
3. Marvel movies - comic book reading is the ultimate nerd fascination. Marvel movies are consistently the most watched movies in the last decade.
4. Commercial success of tech startups - Zuck/Gates are the ultimate nerds who are now the envy of every banker on wall st.
I disagree as well - I think the author is confusing "normalization" with "popularization". Big Bang Theory is for people to laugh at nerdiness, not with it.
Along with the cases that you've listed, I think a clear case of normalization would be Stranger Things and DnD.
Yeah... the Big Bang Theory wouldn't have been greenlit, much less have become a hit, if the stereotypes it presented weren't already known and considered "funny" by mainstream culture.
What normalized nerd culture was the World Wide Web. Everything you mention either started or was catalyzed by the web.
And before the web, even owning a computer at all, much less knowing how to use it, made you a nerd to begin with.
I find this show actively uncomfortable to watch. It doesn't normalize anything, it just mocks it using caricatures and awful stereotypes within the framework of an extremely traditional and lazily written sitcom.
It's a series filled with Steve Urkel-level parodies of nerds. I chuckled at Urkel as a teenaged nerd in the 90s. Especially when they (sometimes) humanized him more it was ok, instead of just having him the butt of every joke. But a series where the main characters are all the butts of the joke and supposed to represent me (according to other people) isn't really that funny.
> It's a series filled with Steve Urkel-level parodies of nerds.
Not really. Steve Urkel was a nerd, but in the show that just meant “annoying personality”. The characters in Big Bang Theory might have annoying personalities at times, but at least had interests and attitudes that demonstrated they were actually nerds, not just annoying.
Urkel was into engineering and science and such, right? I mean IIRC he built that machine that turned him into Stefan. Maybe a robot at one point? Dunno, that's long enough ago to be pretty fuzzy, but I remember "making stuff with math and science shit" being among his nerdy traits.
He was "into engineering and science", yes. But it didn’t mean anything beyond that; he didn’t do any engineering besides occasionally something would magically appear. And he liked “science” but not any particular part of science. They didn’t talk about anything that he liked more than “science”.
It would be like if someone said they liked “movies”, but never mentioned a single movie that they enjoyed, or actor, or director, or anything. Just they’re really into “movies”.
Big Bang Theory has many flaws, but it is so far better than Steve Urkel or Screech. If I had been a kid when Big Bang Theory came out, having some positive nerd representation would have been wonderful. And in Big Bang Theory the characters are represented positively—the show clearly likes the characters, to use Roger Ebert’s terminology.
There was one episode where Sheldon spends a considerable amount of time ranting about Windows 8 with no relevance to the plot at hand, laugh tracks abound. I haven't watched since.
It genuinely made me uncomfortable; not because I like Windows 8, mind you. It was just so uncanny and out of place.
That was the whole point of that diatribe. It was out of place, which was why it was funny. I do know (and have been) people who have done this on this topic.
Personally, for me, it dipped pretty far into uncanny valley from its execution. I'll concede the notion is pretty funny though, having experienced the same from my stint in IT.
BBT is based on displaying stereotypes and then ridiculing them. As someone who studied CS and now works in IT, I've met quite a few people who actually have to deal with the very issues that this show makes fun of, and let me tell you: being a social outsider is not as much fun in the real world.
I have a hard time imagining how in this day and age the same ridiculing of stereotypes would fly without a giant backlash if the show were about:
- Women
- Homosexuals
- Non-white people
- ...
But apparently, "nerds" are a safe enough as a group that coming up with a skewed portrayal of them that lends itself to making fun of is okay.
Yeah, you go ahead and laugh about those tech freaks... why should the school bullies get all the fun...
I frequently get asked why I don't like the show from non-nerd friends and this is _exactly_ why, your friends description is perfect. The entire thing is just offensive and reinforces both negative nerd and sexual stereotypes for the profit of others. It is very much nerd blackface.
Because it very much is. Blackface isn't bad because it's just stereotype driven mocking. It's bad because people in a position of power (white people) profited from pretending to be people who had none (black people) while simultaneously reinforcing stereotypes that help keep them powerless.
Nerds and comedy writers do not in any way form or shape share this dynamic.
I mean, sure, I'm all for lawyer jokes. (What's the difference between a lawyer and a catfish? One is a bottom-dwelling mud-sucker and the other is a fish.) And when they complain, I can point out that the alternative is that we erect the guillotines in the parking lot.
On the other hand, there are a lot of people to whom the nerd stereotype more-or-less applies, but who are not tech billionaires, prominent scientists, or otherwise powerful. And they're the ones who get to pay the consequences of the stereotypes. If you are a Silicon Valley millionaire, that you spend time arguing that the Hulk can beat Superman is a quaint eccentricity. But if you aren't BBT is just another source of ammunition against you.
Where this is a legitimate complaint, it would be better served to look at it as ablism, in that the show is absolutely screwing with people who are autistic through Sheldon.
Generally speaking, though, nerds who can fit in socially with other people are not losing jobs for being nerdy. They're not being killed for being nerdy. They're not even being beaten up for being nerdy on any kind of major scale, and certainly not as adults.
There's simply no comparison to be had here. We, as nerds, are not oppressed for being nerdy. Our feelings being hurt is not comparable to slavery or jim crow.
> ...people in a position of power... profited from pretending to be people who had none, while simultaneously reinforcing stereotypes that help keep them powerless.
Anti-intellectualism is a very real force in American politics, with a sizeable power base of its own. To some extent, I think we can indeed blame shows like BBT for things like, y'know, having Mr. Orange Man (who used to be on frickin' reality TV, as we all know) as POTUS.[0]
[0] (Not that Hillary Clinton was that much better, either. We were quite lucky to have Barack Obama as president for eight years, he was a lot more sympathetic to the sane, "intellectual" outlook on policy than the average politician in the US!)
You have comedies parodying all those things. While the show did make fun of the nerd things they also gave most of them good qualities and successful lives and they were happy about being nerds.
It seems it is just a sensitive subject for some nerds but look at for example Modern Family. The gay couple and their friends are mocked for tons of gay stereotypes for example.
I'm not homosexual, but have you seen the portrayls of such on the likes of 'next top model', 'queer eye...', and honestly just about any mainstream media now that I think about it.
They're petty much all caricatures of 'offensively eccentric negative-female- characteristics high-pitched limp-wristed men with obsessions for fashion and celebrity culture'.
Its exactly the same thing and pretty standard...if i was less cynical, id think it should of created more of an uproar...
I'm sure I could come up with examples for the other groups...
Well, we now have positive queer role models in other shows mixed in with those caricatures, which is leaps and bounds above what we used to have. Go back and watch In Living Color's Men On Film, which is one of the more "positive" portrayals. I find it incredibly cringeworthy today.
Shows like Next Top Model and Queer Eye play up their queerness for ratings, but that's actually progress: queer folks (actually played by other queer folks, not straight people parodying us) are being queer on camera, and people want to watch them for that. Millions of people. It's actually the point of those shows. That's huge!
Commonly people's first reaction to things they don't understand or things that are unusual is fear. I used to resent Will and Grace for being over the top, contrived, and playing on stereotypes. But I think, like Big Bang Theory, however cringeworthy the humor is, they've both put gay folks and nerdiness in prime television slots. People watch them, and they become less "foreign" to millions of televison watchers. They're made relateable (simply because not as many folks would watch it if it wasn't), and in turn nerdiness and queerness are made relateable and understandable. I don't need to watch either, but... I don't have to. It's not for me.
I don't know if your description of the men on Queer Eye is apt. It's a reality show, which admittedly doesn't mean the hosts aren't acting, but the show is hosted by a cast of all homosexual men. Being in the age we're in, it's easy to go find more content that shows the hosts aren't acting for Queer Eye, and perhaps they're being their genuine selves.
Jonathon Van Ness, has a podcast, and has done some Youtube content over the years, and doesn't seem to portray a different "character" than he does on QE.
Mainstream media, especially in the last 10 years, has really changed the way homosexuals, and other LGBTQ+ are presented and seen. I would argue that it's a lot less problematic, and more genuine than it's ever been. HBO's 'Looking' did a decent job of portraying the spectrum of gay men that exist today. (Not a particularly great show otherwise). Amazon's 'Transparent' does an incredible job of highlighting the fact that sexuality exists on a spectrum, and those people can be hyper-fem, hyper-masc, and anywhere in between.
As a gay nerd, I personally think it's important we see all kinds of LGBTQ+ identifying people, and shows like Queer Eye have done that.
ug, honestly I don't want to go down this rabbit hole now, but there's no contradiction between "actually being that way in real life" and making money off of projecting a negative stereotype in mainstream culture.
There's real bored obsessive housewives, black inner city gangsters, Mormons with large families, and yes, even people who act a bit like Sheldon. But the thing about culture is that negative portrayls accentuate those behaviors and supress their contrasts in general cultural visibility. The portrayls of male homosexuality has everything to do with a particular cultural expression and shoeboxing in western culture.
And like the big bang theory, there's a fine line and tension between exposure and acceptance of a subculture as a good thing, and a mockery/caricature.
obviously I'm all down on the negative side, i feel bbt is unwatchable but I knew other nerds where I used to work who liked it. It's not my place, but given my similar negative feelings towards hyper-gender- portrayls of femininity (and that's generally what's emphasised in mainstream portrayls of gays) celebrity and fashion, and the gay people I do know IRL (we're not in America), i almost feel offended for them.
At a higher level though, I'd point out that using YouTube as an example of where someone 'seems the same as their character' is highly flawed. By now, I would hope everyone assumes all celebrities are playing characters all the time in all media. it's literally their product...
Are there any trans main characters in a broadcast TV series? Not Netflix original, not Hulu, not satellite or cable, but ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox free-to-air broadcast TV. I can't think of any off the top of my head, and I think that comes down to the demographic targeted by broadcast TV: People fifty or older.
> According to the analysis of audiences of 5 networks measured using Nielsen’s Digital Content Ratings in September 2018, 59% of live TV viewers ages 13 and older were in the 55+ group, compared to just 5% who were aged 13-24. The median age of a live TV viewer worked out to 56. MarketingCharts’ own research – US Media Audience Demographics – has found that weekly broadcast TV viewers are skewing older over time, and cable TV viewers also have a growing skew towards older adults.
Also, let's look at the other broadcast medium, radio:
> While the age distribution of network radio listeners skews towards the 45+ demographic, a large share of Americans of all ages listen to network radio. The study also points out that listeners are spread across the US and tend to represent an attractive group in terms of their income and education levels.
Also graying, but more slowly. And, yes, it's a trend:
(Graph on the bottom shows median age of radio listeners increasing.)
My point is this: Shows made for broadcast media are not going to change because the people making those shows know their demographic and aren't going to shed viewers by doing things their audience considers controversial. Viewership numbers are low enough already. Broadcast media is in a death spiral and whatever stereotypes, representation, and lack of representation it currently has is what it's going to have from now until it goes dark.
Chaz Bono was on The Bold and the Beautiful, but as a guest character.
Sadly trans inclusion in casting has been pretty damn abysmal across the board. My impression is that most audiences are actually willing to watch something different, but the people making casting choices chose often not to cast them.
The funny thing about this post is that BBT is full of misogyny, homophobia, and racism. Like, chock full of it. And yet the most frequent complaint about it is about how mean it is to nerds.
I mean, the real thing is that nearly every sitcom is full of these things that apparently won't fly according to the post I was replying to. They're literally the background noise of network evening TV. Chuck Lorre's other big contemporary show is no better on these fronts and isn't about making fun of nerds.
So they're not actually things that are unacceptable. They're just so normal people don't even notice them until they're aimed at a trait they identify with.
Yes. I really don't like the Jewish stereotypes at all. (Interestingly, the guy who plays the "Jewish Guy" Howared isn't Jewish, but the actress who plays his non-Jewish girlfriend "Bernadette" is.)
It normalized an easy-to-digest parody of nerd culture, perhaps. Nothing honked me off more than people watching BBT and thinking they understood "people like me".
Surely the same could be said of nearly any network sitcom involving a subculture or demographic. That's kind of the idea of broad entertainment.
The problem comes when the parody comes at the expense of the culture - that's exploitation. But by the time BBT was airing and popular, nerds were, and remain, to a certain extent a privileged class, not an oppressed one. They have high-paying jobs, ordinary successful lives, and look back at the old stereotypes of pocket protectors and social awkwardness with a sort of bemusement. Nerds are not a vulnerable class and haven't been in a long time. Nor is "nerd culture" particularly cohesive.
That may not be the case when the group being parodied is genuinely being oppressed or discriminated against and is often not in a position to push back against that. Exploitation in that case can be real and harmful.
> Nerds are not a vulnerable class and haven't been in a long time.
The ones who get a CS degree and get a good high paying job, sure.
The ones still in middle school? Not so much. The ones who aren't programmers? Not so much. The nerds growing up in communities where free thinking and geeky passions are looked down upon, sometimes violently? Not so much.
And those kids will reach adulthood dealing with some rather nasty issues. Everything from not having learned great socialization skills, to a poor self image, to a lot of stuff in-between.
Stereotypes are bad, having a show that treats people as 1 dimensional disposable arch-types that exist only to be laughed at, is bad, no matter who the subject matter is.
> Kids being bullied and remaining friendless in school due to being nerdy is not a rare occurrence.
Is this still the case in 2019?
I was friendless (not bullied) for much of middle and highschool (2006-2010ish) not because I was nerdy, but because I was socially awkward and didn't make any attempt to fix it until later in highschool. It feels like a lot of people are mad at the show making fun of socially awkward people, which is completely separate from being nerdy.
Is this a problem in real life? If I start talking to a stranger, my nerd level doesn't come into play. My ability to have a normal conversation is the only thing that really matters.
> Surely the same could be said of nearly any network sitcom involving a subculture or demographic. That's kind of the idea of broad entertainment.
No, it isn't quite the same thing. ESR actually points out the specific problem with BBT in this excerpt from the blogpost I linked:
> Bleagh. This is supposed to be a show about geniuses? It’s not. It’s a show about a dimwit’s idea of what bright people are like. The slowest person in my peer group could out-think and out-create any of these sad-sack imitations of “smart” on any day of the week. These actors are not bright, and don’t know how to fake it on screen.
(emphasis added). The comparison to blackface that someone else made, however inherently contentious (for eminently understandable reasons) is indeed on point.
It's always amusing to me that people who pride themselves on emotional intelligence and inclusiveness will ask things like: "is your (nerd) friend we're going to dinner with more Sheldon or Leonard?".
If you press them on this, you then get some flavor of "ok but you know what I mean..."
Yes, there's a big difference between riding the zeitgeist and actually influencing it.
There is something oddly nice about an older person saying "Oh, just like Sheldon!" (or sometimes Moss from the IT Crowd) if I mention dungeons and dragons or online games.
It might be a very simplified and / or exploitative version of nerd culture but at least there's an instant point of reference for us both.
Agreed, but even then, I'd argue that particular parody of nerd culture has already long since been normalized. Maybe all BBT did was broaden it a little bit, but a parody it remained.
It normalized an easy-to-digest parody of nerd culture, perhaps.
Isn’t this true of almost all subcultures that get co-opted? This sort of thing reminds me of IFLScience. No one ever loved science. Certain parts of it just became popular.
TBBT is a show written by non-nerds trying to describe what nerds are, and failing miserably.
I have tried more than once to watch it and every time I felt actual physical discomfort at how bad the whole thing was; Even though the show is not strictly about nerds but rather a parody of SV culture, I find HBO's Silicon Valley to be so much better at describing nerds than TBBT - at the very least I can actually laugh at the jokes and there are slight hints that the writers actually know what they are talking about.
Having lived in LA for 15 years I met and became friends with some writers. I can't speak for the BBT writers but a lot, if not most, of the writers I met were pretty nerdy. Sometimes you need to write what makes your audience laugh rather than what makes you laugh. They earn a paycheck just like the rest of us.
I haven't watched The Big Bang Theory regularly in a long time but I always enjoy it when I catch it in re-runs. A lot of people claim to hate it because it makes fun of "nerd stereotypes". I never found it insulting, though. Exaggerated, sure, but it's a sitcom, it's supposed to be exaggerated. A lot of the fun of the show is the characters "taking the piss out of each other" [1]. Not everyone will like that kind of humor but it's pretty common in sitcoms and a lot of people seem to enjoy it.
It seems to be common for people who dislike BBT to complain that it ridicules nerds as a class. I don't think that's right at all. Does anyone think that "Scrubs"[2] ridiculed doctors and other healthcare professionals as a general class?
Aside from being incredibly unfunny it completely misrepresented nerd culture and that's why it was so popular amongst the largely nerd-free network tv audience.
For a more accurate picture still taken to absurd extremes watch Mike Judge's silicon valley on HBO.
It is not just Sheldon who is extremely sexist in their group. Here are Pop Culture Detective's video essays highlighting misogynistic and toxic-masculine behaviour of all these "nerd" characters:
I tried watching this show once and it wasn't about nerds, it was about what non-nerds think nerds are. The laugh track on top of that drove me crazy. It was unwatchable. I genuinely don't understand how it was so popular.
It's always interesting to me to hear people complain about the "laugh track" in shows like BBT, but then herald Monty Python as if it were some paragon of comedy, considering it also contains a "laugh track." I'm not speaking about your comment in particular; I have heard from many folks that they hated BBT because of the recorded laughter.
It didn't have a laugh track. They used laughter from the live audience. They did edit that to do things like take out people with really weird laughs, and they often used the laughs from a different take than the one that made it into the final edit because no matter how funny a joke was on the first take, it will not seem very funny on the 10th take.
This show made me realize that there are two distinct groups of people with zero middle ground: Those who enjoy or at least don't see anything wrong with it, and those who feel they are represented (poorly) in the show, and intensely dislike it.
The first group usually tends to compare the second group to the show's characters ("he's such a Sheldon") and doesn't see anything wrong with that, either.
So many people complain about the characters...but when I was a student at Caltech pretty much everything that people complain is unrealistic or wrong about nerds on BBT was there in people I knew. It's just more concentrated in the BBT characters whereas it was spread among a dozen or two people that I knew.
What bugs me as a Caltech alum is that Sheldon had an office at one point that had a geology lab directly above on the next floor, which is ridiculous.
They're heavily caricatured. There seems to be the implication that this is just how engineers / nerds are. Sometimes, sure, plenty of those people exist. However, in my experience, it's not that widespread. It's way more common for engineers / nerds to be way more socially adjusted, and well rounded. Making a show where the characters embody the worst stereotypical traits of their subjects causes distortion to the point of becoming unrealistic. In my experience only around 1 in 5 or fewer would even begin to approach these extremes; however if you watched the show you'd expect the numbers to be stacked in the other direction.
I wonder if past generations felt this too -- this feeling that the as you get older, popular culture seems to twist itself to pander to your tastes and attitudes. I had assumed that I had this feeling because I was in the most sought after advertising demographic. Now that I'm into my 50s though, it seems like it's still happening, and perhaps even faster than before.
As we enter 2019, celebrities are rushing to play Dungeons and Dragons, The Big Bang Theory has better ratings than NFL football, Game of Thrones is the top HBO show, and the most popular movie in America is from a comic book. It's a weird world.
Nowadays I'm a bit saddened that my attitudes have shifted to become more close-minded, like my fathers. Adults playing Dungeons and Dragons are somewhat pathetic, comic books are boring kids stuff, and "fantasy" is for people who have dull lives. I don't subscribe to all of that, but remembering how angry I was at my father for belittling the fantasy escapism that I was so wrapped up in, it's odd to find myself agreeing with some of his sentiments.
I guess this thread is one more proof of why there's less and less funny shows coming from the U.S.
Nerds, scientists, engineers or developers can be make fun of like everybody else.
Sure BBT is not really a good show, especially after the first few seasons, sure it jokes about adults reading comics, but they also got hot wifes, go to the ISS and get Nobel prize.
The most damning thing is that people in this very thread praise Silicon Valley. You do realize that, besides being more realistic and better written, the people on this show are also way more ridiculous and despicable than in BBT? But somehow you're less offended, interesting.
I wonder if support people are offended by IT Crowd ahah.
The weirdest thing about sitcoms, to my mind, is how they are always focused in on this group of 4-8 close friends who live in close proximity and spend all their time together. It just doesn't match up with anything I've seen - real people drift around, interact with a bunch of different people, do their own thing. Maybe there are people that live like that, but I just haven't seen it.
I'm hardly offended by the show despite being a nerd. I think it's because I'm Chinese and there are no characters that I strongly associate with. In fact, I can't recall many asian characters on the show. "Fresh Off the Boat" on the other hand...I can see myself being very uncomfortable watching.
I'm not saying it's bad or anything. Just that in the same way some people find watching TBBT uncomfortable (and I don't), this show may do the same thing for me.
I'm confused by this thread. Are people still social outsiders just for being "nerds"? I feel like people are mixing up being socially awkward and being nerdy.
It's much easier to be a social outsider when you're socially awkward. I don't think I've ever seen a nerd who is socially strong be outed from a group just for being nerdy...
This is coming from someone who was nerdy and socially awkward for much of middle and highschool and didn't really have friends. Once I started working on my social abilities (which is not easy, to be fair), making friends was easy.
This entire thread sounds like the "gamers are the most oppressed group on earth" meme. Maybe it's a generational thing, but "Nerd Culture" was normalized when people stopped caring about the concept of nerds. I don't think I've met anyone under 30 irl who strongly identifies as a nerd the way people in this thread do.
A little off topic but a genuine question. Am I the only one who cannot stand shows with canned laughter?
My other half thinks it's odd but I hate punch lines being ruined / unfunny jokes having a laugh track over them. Which unfortunately makes big bang theory pretty unwatchable for me among others :(
1. Twitch / livestreaming / YT - e.g. sub counts = "look at how many people actually do like gaming"
2. Affinity groups to video games - e.g. NBA players love Fortnite (among other professional sports...see HyperX commercials with Embiid, Hayward, etc.)
3. Marvel movies - comic book reading is the ultimate nerd fascination. Marvel movies are consistently the most watched movies in the last decade.
4. Commercial success of tech startups - Zuck/Gates are the ultimate nerds who are now the envy of every banker on wall st.