The female appropriation of nerd culture

LamiaQueen · 2015-10-23T19:07:51+00:00

Gonna be solipsistic here and take this personally. I've been gaming since I could push buttons on my Grandma's Nintendo and I've been reading fantasy and scifi since I could read. It's not an appropriation of culture if you've grown up in it.

That said, yes, I hate what feminism is trying to do with it. They already killed Lara Croft, who knows who they'll ruin next. It's not a political platform and they need to stop trying to make it one. It's entertainment.

wuboo · 2015-10-23T19:19:05+00:00

Ya know, there's actually a lot of research on this topic. Even in the late 80's and early 90's video games weren't all in the domain of men. Roughly a fifth of gamers were women. Perhaps as characters and storylines in video games became more diverse (i.e. more inclusion of female characters) more women could get into video games. I think it's awesome that most games these days let's me choose my gender. Fable was a great game, but I was stuck as a dude.

In terms of anime, sort of the same thing. There really isn't a female equivalent of Naruro or Luffy. I only follow Attack of Titan because Mikasa is a badass and I'm waiting for the day Ynir and Krista get together.

goatismycopilot · 2015-10-23T20:31:02+00:00

This is not nerd culture but it is similar. I grew up loving hockey because my whole family did and growing up I was told that girls did not really like hockey and that women only liked sports to get male attention or because the guys playing were cute or some other bullshit. I also played recreationally with other women for a while.

I still dabble in the free fantasy leagues and frequently win ( you don't get anything, they stick you in a winner's league the next year ) so my advice to women who like nerd culture is to ignore the defensive sounding bullshit barfed out by people like MOS. I am not really into any other sports big time and was not ever overly interested in jocks, I just liked hockey.

FallingSnowAngel · 2015-10-23T21:45:49+00:00

As a result of games/CGI becoming more photorealistic

I think this has very little reason to do with why women might have become more interested in video games, especially when you consider what titles tend to be more popular with women.

andrewisgood · 2015-10-23T22:11:09+00:00

Bah, one last post here, as video game stuff is a huge interest of mine. So, the game over thinker on Screw Attack did a video on the 9 lost heroines in video games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XyhtgRQB7s&index=7&list=PLY_6uAtgkYXkDrzRQIpSeLwm7J9Pyb374

The point of the video is two fold. It's to show that yes, video game developers do create female characters, and have been for a long time, and two, the OP's premise is complete and utter bullshit that women have always been in video games. One in particular is the number one character on the list, Francheska from Krion Conquest. The game is a bit of a rip off of Mega Man, but looks pretty fun. I recently bought a plug n' play console with a bunch of NES and famicom games on it, and that was on it, and I lost my shit in excitement.

The main criticism of the video is at the end when discussing male and female characters in the same arenas, he brings up this one character, Princess Athena, and puts her side by side with Mario, and you can tell how one gender is represented over the other.

terminator3456 · 2015-10-23T21:12:26+00:00

What does this have to do with sexual strategy?

Take your WOMEN ARE COMING FOR MUH VIDYA to KiA.

throwinout · 2015-10-23T19:01:55+00:00

Nerd culture has money now, that's why women are seeking to come into it. It was mostly men who built nerd culture, and now women are saying "hey, how come this isn't representative of me?" So they want to take something that is already great and call it their own rather than building their own shit.

Bill Burr had a bit about it on Conan.

deathbycactus · 2015-10-23T19:57:04+00:00

I think you're basing your entire perspective off anecdotal evidence. Which is fine, it's not wrong in your eyes, but isn't universally true. Lots of girls have been interested in video games for as long as men, we're just in the minority. I was hugely into Pokemon as a young kid (~6 or so) and picked up other Gameboy colour games as result, then got an Advance, I played a few old PC games (Twinsen's Odyssey, MYST, Sim City, Flight Simulator etc.) then I played Runescape (before 07!) for god knows how many hours and got into other really dorky/anime MMORPGs. Now I have an XBox and PC for Steam and play way more hours than a lot of guys I know. I never did/do it for attention, I just love gaming. So if we're going by anecdotal evidence, then here's proof that it's not just recent interest from women. A lot of other girls are the same, but it was seen as such a "boys thing" which probably dissuaded a lot of young girls. Until now.

Like you said, a lot of the sudden interest from women likely has to do with more diverse platforms and a wider range of genres. What's wrong with that? How is it hurting you in any way? How does one even "police" a game like Candy Crush or whatever other stupid mobile games many women play? Obviously there's some over-sensitivity about sexism in gaming, but to deny that there's no sexism at all is either ignorant or disingenuous. Personally, I don't give a shit if female characters are half-naked and have impossible body proportions. I do care when they exist as nothing but props (so glad Metroid changed that). The fact of the matter is that video game times are changing, and if developers don't appeal to a large part of their clientele then they're missing out on profits. Plus, more women getting into gaming means more couples can game together which is always fun and pretty decent bonding.

rulenumber303 · 2015-10-23T21:19:13+00:00

All of these were almost entirely the domain of men in the 90's/early 2000's

What you're saying is that in the 90s/early 2000s you hung out with a lot of guys (and only guys) into those things. I was born 1970 and entered fandom in the early 1980s... there were always somewhat more guys than gals in any broad fandom scene (back then we roughly divided it into media fandom and lit fandom) but it never really fell below 74/25.

What I have observed (after lengthy conversation with a male fan my own age about our different experiences of fandom in the late 80s) is that female fans were given entry into the older/upper/bnf echelons of the fannish community faster and more easily than young guys were. Young guys were repeatedly told to fuck off when older guys didn't want them around.

How old are you BTW? I was probably cosplaying (though we didn't really call it that back then) when you were still in diapers.

exit_sandman · 2015-10-23T23:59:06+00:00

What I think is funny about the whole debate is on the one hand always the insistence that men are notoriously immature Peter Pans while women of course are totes mature yet when nerd/gaming culture somehow gets into the spotlight not as something people want to get rid off, but as something that's worthy of note, suddenly teh gurlz should enjoy the same attention and are as important as a target demographic as the guys.

However, reality is that women are a minority among gamers and, short of exclusively pandering to female priorities, always will be. Because women are less likely to get into gaming in the first place and more likely to quit for good: most of the girls I grew up with who did play some Amiga/C64/whatever stuff during their childhood dropped that hobby around puberty, becoming a lot more invested in socializing than in pwning goombas. My male friends on the other hand pretty much without exception played games to some degree or another and didn't stop until much later. I observed a resurgence of female computer literacy in the late 90s, when the internet became a thing and computers suddenly started a lot more to be about actual communication and socializing and not just gaming. Of course games will focus on boys and men and also continue to do so under these circumstances.

andrewisgood · 2015-10-23T19:44:13+00:00

Women have always been into video games. It's just, generally they weren't represented or poorly represented. I don't think I've ever met a woman who hasn't either been an elapsed gamer, a current gamer or got out of gaming then got back into it. I say this as someone who has never gotten more random women coming up to me before in my life until I got the triforce tattooed on my hand (much to the annoyance of my girlfriend).

I also like Anita Sarkeesian's game videos (well, admittedly they can be dry and and boring at times), but for instance, everything said about game franchises that I know, like Zelda, is pretty bang on.

belletaco · 2015-10-23T19:05:18+00:00

No way, you're underestimating how much little girls played video games. We had computer games like Oregon trail (which I got from another girl for my birthday), there was also tons of Barbie computer games, still, games. Also, if you grew up with brothers, you would have access to video game systems. I would have to fight my brother to make him let me play mortal Kombat but that was my shitttt. I also got their hand-me-down gameboys. I would assume most 90s kids in America grew up with this stuff. Im not a HUGE gamer, I have some steam games and I really enjoy playing them. I have a super inconspicuous now though so no one knows I am a female to avoid the "gamer girl" bullshit people insist on perpetrating.

betterdeadthanbeta · 2015-10-23T19:05:02+00:00

Yup, this is pretty much how it is with anything in life.

1) shit is hard. Women let men pioneer, entrepeneur and trailblaze it up, take all the risks and do all the work.

2) shit becomes easy, socially acceptable and or profitable. Women suddenly realize they can participate despite their slightly inferior brains and weaker, pregnancy ridden bodies.

3) women flood in crying about "oppression" that kept them out (actually their own lack of ability/interest in difficult areas)

4) women start making rules to make things more woman friendly. Be it lowering physical standards in the marines, to wanting to eliminate the draft but yet still be full citizens, to raising the "glass floor" so they don't have to work the dirty dangerous jobs like men have been doing. Women hate the thought of true equality that would make things harder for them.

Christian_Kong · 2015-10-23T19:32:01+00:00

I don't think women are much more into games and nerd culture than they were before, and I've been into board/videogames for a very long time. The "hot" female nerds get spotlights and news articles, but they are few and far between, many to push their model/acting careers(I believe Olivia Munn is a prime example). Bullshit feminist articles about nerdy shit and the misogyny within are jut article from people that want to bitch for bitchings sake.

Some studies say women are making up near 50% of all video gamers by some studies but those studies include anyone who plays casual mobile games which is a different market than the high budget gaming industry.

As for women policing nerd culture it's just feminist turds and tumblr babies being offended at everything on the planet including nerdy things. There is no appropriation, they don't give a shit about anything other than having a new topic to complain about so that their articles don't get lost amongst the common feminist articles/arguements.

[deleted] · 2015-10-23T18:53:55+00:00

I learnt to read when I was 2 in 1981 and I have been reading fantasy ever since. I got into Sci-fi in around 1987.

I didn't really get into video games until I was older as my family had no money for them.

But I still don't think its only recently that girls have become interested in video games.

andrewisgood · 2015-10-23T21:07:49+00:00

If I can go further into Anita Sarkeesian, she seems to be public enemy number one for nerdy misogynists. She makes criticisms of game content. She does make criticisms of other things, but she's mostly known for games and that seems to get the most hate for. I hate when people say she's a phony gamer. I've seen the video where she said she felt she didn't know much about the subject matter in this video that causes SOOO much controversy, and a video like that is why I dislike the people who hate on Anita Sarkeesian.

I've discussed this before, but I'm a hardcore video game collector. 745 games across 35 or 36 consoles, I've discussed the number before. People probably think I'm pretty hardcore, and I don't think I am. I do play all the time, but I don't spend hours and hours on it. For awhile, I didn't play games and I couldn't criticize or discuss games and gaming culture due to lack of knowledge. But, all of a sudden, I got back into it and now I'm where I'm at with it. I think that was the case with Anita. She was into it for awhile, she got out of it, then she got back into it. Why is that so hard to believe?

The biggest shocker from her videos is simply how not shocking they are. She talks about before every video that you can still enjoy content while still criticizing. I've criticized pro wrestling many times, but I still love it. There are many factors I wouldn't like to see, why can't they be discussed? I feel that a lot of the hate against her goes into bad conspiracy theory territory, be it her being a con artist, fake gamer, or she steals people's gaming content, because apparently fair use only exists for some people I guess.

neostoic · 2015-10-23T22:19:58+00:00

To correctly discuss nerd culture you have to define it first. It's always about dedication. Liking Star Wars does not make you a nerd. Star Wars is mainstream and always was mainstream. But if you're a 35 year old bald guy who wears slave Leia costume, yep you're nerd. Same with games. A lot of this debate happens over really mainstream games and people from all sides seem to forget that pop culture is always going to be as simple and inoffensive as possible to the broadest audience possible.

YetAnotherCommenter · 2015-10-24T02:44:46+00:00

Okay, I've written extensively on this topic at the Honey Badger Brigade, but I want to make it clear that what Mytheos Holt has described as the "#WarOnNerds" is not a "female" appropriation of nerd culture.

It is a hipster/SJW appropriation of nerd culture, partially driven by politics but also partially driven by mainstreaming of several "nerdy" IPs.

These hipster/SJW types are not universally women (there are tons of "goony beard men" involved).

Most women in general still have little interest in nerd culture broadly speaking.

Do gender dynamics play a part? To an extent I think they do - we all know about male SJWs engaging in White Knighting and other behavior. Even some male nerds turn traitor and sell out nerd culture to go White Knight for "women in gaming" - clearly, this behavior is just an outgrowth of the "real men protect and provide for women" gender role forced on males. Since male nerds are gender-nonconforming, they see White Knighting as a way to live up to society's concept of Real Manhood and thus validate their often-questioned masculinity.

And with the female SJWs, there's the Female Power Fantasy at play - successfully attempting to enlist male agency in the service of the woman. After all, nerdy pasttimes divert male time/effort/money/agency away from protecting and providing for women, and (gender-typical) women cannot let that stand! Note how they often use insults against nerdy males that are socially emasculating: "manbaby" "manchild" "virgin living in mommy's basement" etc.

But honestly, I cannot see this as females acting "en masse" to appropriate nerd culture (which has always had females within it, albeit a minority). It is really a bunch of young hipsters with PC ideologies and media jobs, many of whom are women. But women as a whole aren't engaging in this.

It should also be pointed out that this isn't the first example of an "appropriation" of nerd culture; the PS2 and mainstream/mass-market "bro games" like CoD and Halo and FIFA and Madden etc. brought in a lot of relatively gender-typical males into gaming, but thankfully they've mostly stayed confined to various specific IPs rather than destroyed the whole medium (and Steam, PS4/XBO's use of X86 CPUs, and the proliferation of indie have certainly allowed alternatives to "bro games" to flourish). Nor were they ideologically driven or ideologically united, unlike the SJWs.

ExtraWingyScapula · 2015-10-24T04:35:42+00:00

I have been playing Starcraft for longer than you have been able to consciously bring yourself to orgasm.

If you think men had a hard time being nerds in the 80's and 90's, double that for women. The only people who did share our interests visibly were boys...and they legit were afraid of us. I was the only female Magic player at school and I got shit for it from both boys (who were afraid of girls) and girls (who said I wasn't a real girl if I liked sci-fi).

It's not appropriation to want characters who look like you in games. Deal with it.

HalfysReddit · 2015-10-23T18:59:05+00:00

I think you're taking a lot of this too seriously IMO.

Most gamers have never heard of Anita Sarkeesian and never will. She holds near-zero influence on the gaming community and is only relevant to people who like arguing about her. I'm still not convinced that she's not just working an angle - stir up controversy, stay relevant, get paid.

Know what does influence gaming? Money. Money makes the wheels of Capitalism turn. Until killing hookers in GTA becomes counter-productive to turning a profit, shit like that isn't going anywhere.

cuittler · 2015-10-23T20:19:27+00:00

What do you think of this analysis of the recent interest women have taken with nerd culture?

It's not recent interest, it's a resurgence of interest which was diverted after video game marketing started targeting boys in the late 80s/90s. A little history goes a long way.

The video game industry created something of a chicken-and-egg situation. When it conducted market research during the '80s and '90s, it found that more boys than girls played video games. Boys were more likely to be involved with new technology, more willing to be early adopters and more encouraged by their teachers and families to pursue science, technology, engineering and math in school. Girls have always played video games, but they weren't the majority. In wake of the video game crash, the game industry's pursuit of a safe and reliable market led to it homing in on the young male. And so the advertising campaigns began. Video games were heavily marketed as products for men, and the message was clear: No girls allowed.

According to Simeon Spearman, a senior innovation strategist at marketing agency Engauge, this kind of marketing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. "If you look at the advertisements for games in the 1980s, you not only had an obvious assumption on the part of the marketers that video games were going to resonate more with young men, you also had them casting young men in the lead roles. They're cast in a way that perpetuates that stereotype â the belief that young men are the audience."

The ads made no distinction between different genres of games being for different people. Even nonviolent games like Tetris were painted with the same masculine brush when they appeared in ads for the Game Boy. It was, after all, the Game Boy, not the Game Girl.

Game designer Brenda Laurel started her career at Atari and Activision as a programmer and producer. She later founded Purple Moon, a studio dedicated to making games for girls, before it was bought out by Mattel. She says the studios she worked for assumed a male audience, even though there was no demographic subtlety.

"Generally speaking, it did not occur to any of the companies I worked for that they should be looking at female audiences for games," she says. "It was always, 'Oh of course girls don't play games.' I got that so many times. 'Of course girls don't play games â why are we going to waste money on this audience that doesn't exist?'

"Where in fact, the nonexistence of the audience was a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we did Purple Moon, one of the criticisms we got was 'Why do you need special games for girls?' I was like, 'Dude, everything else is for boys and you don't even know it. You're taking it for granted all this time.'"

...

I am sure everyone here is aware of phony gamer girls and people like Anita Sarkeesian.

lol, this is such a bogus attitude

Many of Sierra's audience were women in their 30s. They were by no means the majority. But the studio knew, based on the feedback it got, that it had a diverse audience. According to Cole, the attitude that games were for men didn't exist, at least it didn't exist at Sierra at that time.

"I remember when Sierra released a King's Quest game where the lead character was Rosella, a female character," Cole says. "We received the silliest letter ever from this guy who was calling Roberta a feminist for wanting to have a female as a main character. We passed it around the company and everybody at Sierra was laughing at this guy for being upset because we had a female main character.

And if you're still not convinced female gamers are a significant sub-group:

"I've always known there were some games and genres that attracted a heavier male audience than others, like shooters for instance," says Brenda Romero, a developer who has worked in the game industry since the early '80s and has been credited on titles such as Wizardry, Jagged Alliance and Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes. "With the popularity of shooters, maybe we say, 'Well, men play shooters and then shooters are the most popular game,' then we can take this logical leap to say 'Men play video games â it's predominantly men."'

But Romero points out that if we go back to fall 1993, two significant things happened in gaming. One is the release of Doom, which heralded the start of the male-dominated first-person shooter genre. The other, in the same year, is the launch of Myst, which had an overwhelmingly female player base. "Myst dominated the charts, and we don't say games are dominated by women," Romero says. "So I've never felt that way. The Sims has more female players than it has male players, but I don't use those statistics to paint all of games."

In fact, the 1990s is filled with exceptions. There's Tetris on the Game Boy, which was popular with both men and women. Tim Schafer's LucasArts adventure games perform well across the board, demographically. Sim City was more popular with women than it was with men. By the end of the 1990s, we already had Bejeweled.

"Maybe our perception of the problem is the problem, rather than there actually being a problem," says Ian Bogost. "We're not looking at diversity in the marketplace. We're looking at where there isn't diversity and we're saying those games are the most valid games."

http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2015-10-23T21:34:45+00:00

What do you think of this analysis of the recent interest women have taken with nerd culture?

I think you're taking a large scale cultural shift and attempting to explain it as women lying about what they're really into because women in previous eras weren't into it.

Nerd culture is a huge field but there are some common threads; mainly that was is popular now is what kids in the later 1980's/1990's grew up with.

During the 80s and 90s childrens television was dominated by Western animation (Batman, Superman, the Xmen, etc) which were a product of the original 1950's/1960's geeks getting ahold of the production process. It stands to reason that a child growing up in the 1960s, reading Xmen comics after school and building an identity around that (the geek) would go on to produce geeky material later in life, as artists first and then directors/producers as their career became established. Similarily, 1990's childrens television was also dominated by eastern animation (PokeMon, Yu-Gi-Oh, etc) for basically the same reason.

At the same time, home computing and gaming was catching. Once again, in the 50's, 60's, and 70's computers were the real of the geek, as they were prohibitively expensive which meant they were only accessible to the rich and to STEM students (who, lets be real, are typically geeks). But in the 1990s the PC was released, and at the same time, console gaming had advanced to a point where it was possible to move past gimmicky arcade-style games into games with some substance; while pacman may be a challenge, it is far less immersive that Super Mario 64 or Golden Eye.

So what we have in the 1990s is a) childrens programming produced by geeks, focusing on geek subject material and b) a revolution in gaming wherein engaging, complex games are now possible for the at home audience. The result is that both boys and girls growing up in the nineties are raised with this material, and now, in the late 2000's/2010s, you're seeing a large scale cultural focus towards being a geek; being a geek is no longer considered a bad thing but rather means being part of the culture. And, yes, this title is accessible to both men and women, because both genders would have grown up watching the same cartoons, accessing the same games, etc.

When it comes to your OP, I don't think these nerd girls are being "disengenous". I believe they are genuine fans of the material and just because they don't love to play games like COD doesn't make them any less of a nerd; I don't see men calling out other men on their inability to name every character from Sailor Moon even though it's anime just as legitimate as Pokemon or Dragon Ball Z

If you're a younger guy and you feel threatened by women who identify as geeks, maybe you need to reconsider what it means to you to be a geek and how much of that is based off of actually doing geeky shit v. defining yourself against others. If you're an older guy, maybe you're just old and not ready to accept that the culture you built is moving forward without you?

[deleted] · 2015-10-23T20:03:13+00:00

God forbid that women ever have interests that are outside of what the RP echo chambers tells us their interests should be.

Try actually listening (not talking) to women every now and then and you'll find that they have as many kinds of varied interests as men do.

peacockpartypants · 2015-10-23T19:06:09+00:00

Women also view it as a way to appear more attractive to men

LOL. Until very recently actually, it didn't seem like a bonus to be a girl into video games, unless you already ran with that "anime/video gaming" kind of crowd.

There was always "that" group of people who enjoyed those things, including women. More recently things like Comic Con have become more culturally acceptable, and that may have very well attracted new women into it, but to dismiss women entirely, as if none of them ever enjoyed video games or even anime is just plain false.

You probubly hate Sailor Moon with a passion that would burn my retinas, but you better believe that show inspired a lot of girls at the time to get into anime.

Women are admittedly a minority in the culture, maybe a few just hopped on the train but there's one big, big thing here you're missing. For a teen, young woman, whatever... to go full on gamer/anime girl is essentially to become a social pariah among the majority of her female peers who want to go get pedicures together type. It's not "cool" to them, never was, never will be. It's still a niche kind of scene, even if its more acceptable, which I think is a good thing.

VermiciousKnidzz · 2015-10-23T20:10:49+00:00

both men and women alike pretend to be nerdy because its a weird/cool/hipster thing now.

people get mad at women tho, because lots of guys associate video games with their own masculinity. it calls to mind when guys make fun of other guys, saying "you play like a girl"

really ridiculous imo. guys get really insecure about women liking the same things they like, and then think they're superior because they aren’t interested in boybands or contemporary literature.

i've had the privilege of knowing a couple people who design/score video games, a few of which being women, and it's really bizarre that people reading my post right now think they're "just in it for the nerd culture"

edit: also calls to mind the current Star Wars trailer, as soon as something isnt dominated by white guys everyone gets offended

vinegarbubblegum · 2015-10-23T19:14:30+00:00

why am I not surprised a RP dood is a gamer who has a bone to pick with Anita Sark?

Ursula K Le Guin needs to have a word with you about women and so-called nerd culture. Ellen Datlow is the queen of editing sci-fi. There is no king. It needs no king.

Did you actually play Depression Quest. That shit was groundbreaking. Maybe not a great "game" in the sense that someone who wants epic RPG or FPS might be into, but it explored some great themes and uncharted territory.

What do you think of this analysis of the recent interest women have taken with nerd culture?

It's great. We're going to a lot new games. I understand if I use the word "diversity" i might start a race war, but i'll be damned if I don't find myself like female produced content as a male.

You are right though about one thing, fake nerds fucking suck. i blame the big bang theory.

[deleted] · 2015-10-23T21:29:41+00:00

[permanently deleted]

alreadyredschool · 2015-10-23T19:28:44+00:00

There is only one thing that sucks about women in nerd culture: Thirsty betas.

FirionDarklight · 2015-10-23T19:40:10+00:00

Isn't that geek culture?

[deleted] · 2015-10-23T21:48:32+00:00

Gaming culture is weird in that I've personally grown up with it, and so many people who claim to be a part of it seem to want to keep it to themselves exclusively like it's their "precious". There are less accusations of who is a "casual gamer" nowadays, but it's still so weird for so many people to associate a product as their identity.

Yonderlander · 2015-10-23T21:57:43+00:00

Bullshit. I was playing the acorn electron then master system a decade before I knew 'nerd culture' existed.

LUClEN · 2015-10-23T22:02:22+00:00

That's the market at work. Just let it do it's thing. Unless you have no trust that the crap will fail as it's supposed to then this should not be an issue.

boomadley · 2015-10-24T01:03:16+00:00

I can only speak from my own experience, I game because I love the game. I wouldn't spend 170 hours in Skyrim just to make a point.

Baldr209 · 2015-10-24T01:44:49+00:00

IRL I have only ever met a handful of women that were into nerd culture. which begs the question of why the overwhelming majority of the community (men) needs to bend over backward to accommodate the vanishing minority (minority.)

blametheboogie · 2015-10-24T04:26:53+00:00

I love anime...always have. But I won't tell anyone I like it. Especially given my social status...it just wouldn't go over well. But I follow seasons...and watch it...and I wouldn't do that if I didn't like it.

adrixshadow · 2015-10-24T07:45:42+00:00

Females will always adapt to the changes of time.

Even if they are hopelessly bad at it.

energyvolley · 2015-10-24T09:20:22+00:00

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ifelsedowhile · 2015-10-24T10:00:58+00:00

nerd culture in general no, but girls have long been fans of anime. maybe it's not the case of North America, but in Europe anime were always popular among girls and because of that a huge number of shojo (=for girls) anime and mangas have been imported and adapted since the late 70s.

wazzup987 · 2015-10-24T14:48:43+00:00

I think its the same reason men get involved with feminism, to get a romantic partner.

I remember nerd/geeks be outrocized as well. My only gripe is with the 'redecorating' the faddy one are doing. not necessarily mind SJWs (which are plague unto them selves) but find trash talk to be impolite. most get it but there are some that dont. there other issues is the chicks that come in and expect to be treated differently. sorry no. the phrase there are no women on the internet comes to mind.

before BP loses there shit

there are no women on the internet

basically mean there is no special privilege for being female online. You opinion is no more valid than any oneelses. this may seem innocuous on a forum like this but back way back when and now (to a lesser degree) there where a lot of chicks that would come on to forum like this one or four chan be like 'listen to me because vagina', or 'my opinion matters (more) because i have a vagina'. (note those reflect sentiment not direct quotes for the logic impaired). on the chans this spawned tits or GTFO and cam whoring. in which the claim 'im girl there fore X' was met with tits or gtfo and if tits appeared it was met with cam whoring (attention whoring). This was and still is (to a much lesser degree mind you) a problem on a lot forums.

in MMos like WOW and eve my friends that play them report this is still rampant (and exploitable).

now i have seen this but as i have aged i have seen less of it. maybe it because i moved from console to pc and there are only hand full of games i play online now (CS go, Rainbow six siege when it comes out), and most of the chick on there get 'it'. maybe if i was playing cod it would be different.

I know on twich there is a problem with chicks opening up a instant of a game turning on their web cam and just talking to the web cam not even playing the game.

IME it used to be a larger problem in games now its not.

as far as i can recall anime has large female following.

fantasy i dont follow (aside from GOT)

chicks in to scifi (books) are pretty uncommon but not unheard of.

scifi shows are gain a little bit popularity.

I dont follow comic really

table top especially rpgs are starting to get popular from what i ahve heard

but i am mostly a gamer and biblophile.

As i said above i am fine with women coming in BUT dont redecorate and be sensitive to the fact the nerdom was and still is the 'safe space' for social out casts. usually with Aspergers or other social malodies. dont you dare fucking creep shame them. you came into space full of people in other context you would label as 'creeps', you dont get to complain about that when you come in to their safe space. Also as per the art, feel free to make you one but mess with our stuff. so like i said your welcome in but don't redecorate the place, you didn't build this. this was space built by and for social out casts you dont get to complain when the natives dont like fucking with there shit,.

basically my worry is cultural gentrification.

itsalreadybeenthrown · 2015-10-25T05:01:14+00:00

Cultural appropriation is a crock of horse shit.

wub1234 · 2015-10-25T17:22:30+00:00

"What do you think of this analysis of the recent interest women have taken with nerd culture?"

It's complete rubbish. Every girl / woman I've met who is interested in the things you've mentioned is sincerely interested in them, and more passionate about them than I am.

wonderingwhether54 · 2015-11-19T18:51:25+00:00

uhhhhh.

What do you think of this analysis of the recent interest women have taken with nerd culture?

What analysis?

Xemnas81 · 2015-10-23T19:43:11+00:00

Nerd culture as it really was back in the day

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/12/29/24517E1100000578-2890393-Heyday_Dustin_rose_to_fame_thanks_to_the_hit_nineties_show_Saved-m-11_1419885309341.jpg

Nerd culture as most women view it now

http://i1.cdnds.net/11/30/550w_captain_america_avengers_stills_4.jpg

wuboo · 2015-10-23T19:04:55+00:00

As a casual observer, I welcome it.

That said, let the omega incel dudes have their boobie jiggle physics games. They are essentially opting out of the whole dating scene. Let them enjoy their escapism. (It's about as absurd as demanding massive censorship of the billions of dollars romance novel industry)

The other trick, women generally like different types of games. Mostly dominating casual games, and solo RPGs.

Where as competitive "aggression" games, or highly frustrating games are still massively male communities.

[deleted] · 2015-10-23T19:14:11+00:00

[permanently deleted]

WickedTemp · 2015-10-23T18:59:28+00:00

Most of the girls I know that like to say they're "nerdy" only do so on Facebook with one of those black plastic pairs of glasses with the lens popped out. Y'know, the stereotypical nerd glasses.

Then the next day at school they'd make fun of the actual nerdy kid.

As for gamers, it's more of a blurred line and I see this in both guys and girls. They call themselves gamers but only enjoy a specific genre or type of game, or the most played game they have is a pay-to-win mobile app like Clash of Clans. Then there's my sister who actually plays video games. When she went off to college she took almost every Halo and CoD game I had with her...

Title	The female appropriation of nerd culture
Author	MoneyOverSluts
Upvotes	8
Comments	332
Date	October 23, 2015 6:45 PM UTC (8 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/3pxthy/the_female_appropriation_of_nerd_culture/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/the-female-appropriation-of-nerd-culture.278889 https://theredarchive.com/post/278889