The Real Revenge of the Nerds

My junior year in college, the school’s Gaming Guild imploded over what has, to those of us who remember it, come to be known as “the G-word.” This was Geocon (pronounced “gooey-con,” after our mascot the geoduck). I wasn’t in on the drama, but I know there was a lot of it. Senior year, there wasn’t a Gaming Guild. That’s how extreme it was. And the anime club, the Giant Robot Appreciation Society, decided to fill the gap with an anime convention. Which is still running and has gotten huge, to the mild surprise of those of us who were there the first year.

Cons in general are big business. If you can’t send a group to Comic Con, are you even in business for geeks? The MCU is big business; even their flops make more at the box office than the comic movies of my youth, even in many cases adjusted for inflation. But I am old enough to remember the “Get a Life” sketch from Saturday Night Live, and of course the Simpsons with Lucy Lawless and all the people thinking she was really Xena. Nerd culture is extremely big business these days, and people who predicted that are doubtless very happy to have done so, if they’re making money at it.

A lot of things along those lines are surprisingly successful. Even in the days of The Love Boat, it was generally agreed that your career had tanked if you were performing on a cruise ship. These days, it seems everyone’s got a themed cruise. You can cross the beams with a Star Trek cruise, complete with George Takei. Or Jonathan Coulton, if you’d rather. There are music festivals of all genres, from country to emo to electronica. If you’re interested in cats or knitting or motorcycles, there’s a cruise for that. It’s amazing. I even found one called “The Big Nude Boat” that assures you it’s not for swingers, just for nudists.

But okay, all of that feels like leaving your house. I can get that. So have you considered listening to podcasts? They’ve really come a long way! There are podcasts for literally anything. The ‘80s. The ‘90s. Arthur. Pro wrestling, if you can’t afford that pro wrestling cruise. (Of course there’s a pro-wrestling cruise.) Animorphs and Goosebumps. Podcasts hosted by all sorts of people you’ve heard of. Conan O’Brien, of course. But Shaquille O’Neal has a podcast. Alan Alda. Leonard Maltin, if you’ve been wondering what Leonard Maltin is up to these days.

If I were the sort of person inclined to make fun of other people’s interests, I’d be really hesitant about doing it anyway, because it turns out you are going to be hearing about it for years, I guess. I’m sure there are cultural punching bags that have sunk without a trace, but it seems as though the current belief that you should unapologetically keep loving what you love means these things are spreading. A lot of us grew up on comics and are happy that our love is no longer shamed in the same way. (No, actually, I don’t want to hear about your superhero fatigue.) Sure, it’s all capitalism; people have realized that there’s money to be made. But I’d rather be sold to than shamed.