Cyberpsychosis, Essence, and Approaching Transhumanism

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Wed May 09, 2018 12:14 am

Even if we did for some reason equate "abused child" with "nerd" (and our culture has never done this), Harry Potter becomes the Chosen One and alternately famous and infamous within a few chapters of the first book of a seven book series. He retains his glasses throughout the entirety of that series. He's a star athlete for Christ's sake, even ends up captain of the wizard football team. As mentioned, the Kingsman look is in no way nerdy. It's an unassuming upper middle-class Englishman sort of look. Far from pariah, it's the very model of conformist respectability for an older man.

And in response to the main characters of the most popular media phenomenon of the millennial generation, a major motion picture that virtually everyone is at least familiar with through trailers, and a major video game franchise that virtually every gamer is (again) at least familiar with through osmosis, you have characters from half a season of what Google tells me may in fact just be Arrow. So your source on the "nerds are still a thing for real" is that one TV show is mired in a trope from the 80s.

phlapjackage · Post by **phlapjackage** » Wed May 09, 2018 1:45 am

Chamomile wrote:As mentioned, the Kingsman look is in no way nerdy. It's an unassuming upper middle-class Englishman sort of look. Far from pariah, it's the very model of conformist respectability for an older man.

I'm just spitballing here because my memory of the Kingman movies is spotty and this is a random thought, but I'd say that the movies actually sort of deal with the "old and new" tropes for wearing glasses, on purpose or otherwise. There's those scenes in both movies where the characters are in a bar, and start to get picked on by the locals. The locals assume they're nerdy, weak...the old trope. Then the Kingsman proceed to beat the shit out of every one of them, showing the new trope of how wearing glasses doesn't mean anything about anything except maybe as a fashion statement.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Wed May 09, 2018 1:57 am

It's not even the "nerd" trope, though. It's the stodgy old man trope. The Kingsman presents as a slightly stuck-up but impeccably polite and probably somewhat doddering middle-aged professional. It's British code for old-fashioned respectability to the point of near-caricature. There's still a reversal where someone who looks like they work a desk job at an insurance company or something turns out to be a super spy kung fu expert, but he does not even appear to be a pariah largely outcast from society for fringe interests.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Wed May 09, 2018 11:54 am

My first thought was "of course Harry Potter is a nerd, he has glasses and...h right." He's also got bad hair and isn't part of the cool crowd but that's stretching it a bit.

Clark Kent (and for that matter Dilbert) might be legacy characters and are stuck with glasses, but surely they are still relevant. Though I wish they weren't, DC has gotten tiresome and Scott Adams has issues.

Glasses don't have to equate to nerdy (anymore), Bayonetta is trying the sexy librarian look, and sunglasses stop you from seeing action heroes blinking at muzzle flashes. But they still are often used as visual shorthand to mean, if not nerdy, than at least dorky.

In the video clip for You Belong With Me by Taylor Swift, dorky but cute Taylor Swift wears glasses, other Taylor Swift who is supposed to be cooler and sexier (and thus it's ok for her to end up heartbroken for some reason) does not.

In the video clip for Black Magic by Little Mix, pre-witchcraft dorky Little Mix has 2 out of 4 members wearing glasses, which they take off when they become cooler and sexier (and thus it's ok to use their magic for petty malice and disrupting school).

And, Zoey Deschanel in things with Zoey Deschanel in it.

Also, I've got 3 pictures from the Ever After High series, of Daring Charming, Dexter Charming and Humphrey Dumpty. One of which is the stereotypical good-looking and charming (small c) guy, the other two are somewhat awkward nerds. And you can guess which is which:

Now, that's far from every character with glasses, or who is nerdy (or both), but it seems to me that it's still sorta a thing, to some extent.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed May 09, 2018 12:37 pm

I think the backlash was against the claim that there's a social stigma for glasses, since most people don't give a fuck anymore. The main reason people want to get out of glasses is because they can be annoying to wear, i.e. quality of life.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Wed May 09, 2018 1:08 pm

Mask_De_H wrote: It's specifically the big honking 50s military, black rimmed Buddy Holly glasses that coded "pariah nerd" in the 80s. By the mid 2000s, hipster culture turned those into a desirable fashion item because being a nerd was marketable cool.

What you feel is true to you, but it's not true culturally. It hasn't been true culturally for over a decade, at least.

Yeah, this was definitely a trope a while ago, and while it still may persist, I'm sure it's less so than it used to. Both sides are cherry picking examples, because this trope isn't applied 100%.

Really, the only way you're going to know would be to get a fully exhaustive list of characters, with some empirical nerd rating (good luck), and look for a correlation between that and glasses. If such a feat were possible, I imagine if you were to split the list into works within the last 20 years, and those within the last 20-40 years, the correlation would be stronger in older works.

We can argue about how much of a trope it is, but it obviously is a trope.

(Picture from an episode titled Bart the Nerd)

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed May 09, 2018 2:40 pm

Yes but as you’ll note that you quoted Mask saying it hasn’t been culturally true for a decade and you just used a 25 year old cartoon episode as rebuttal. Im sure there’s still some people who have some social stigma for glasses or nerdiness (like maglag) but it has waned a lot.

Edit. Thanks for making me feel old today with that episode reference.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed May 09, 2018 2:49 pm

That episode was referencing movies that were 10 years old when it came out. There are people alive today who have children old enough to be watching the Simpsons who don't get those jokes because they are references to things that happened before they were born.

-Username17

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Wed May 09, 2018 3:44 pm

As I mentioned a while back, people do remain aware that the 80s nerd stereotype used to exist. You can refer to it and people will know what you're talking about. People don't actually have any animus for the nerd stereotype anymore, though, because it has ceased to be relevant. You can go around dressed as an 80s nerd and to the extent that people react at all, it'll be because you're dressed like a throwback to another era. If you showed up in a trenchcoat and fedora (like, the actual full 1940s look and not just tacking the fedora onto otherwise normal modern clothes like some people do), they'd have basically the same reaction, because whether you're dressed as the lamest or coolest guy from decades ago is overshadowed by the fact that you're dressed like a guy from decades ago. You also need more than just the glasses to make that look work, because those exact same glasses are just as iconic of the much more recent hipster sub-culture and are very similar to glasses worn by totally unrelated sub-cultures.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Wed May 09, 2018 4:19 pm

erik wrote:Yes but as you’ll note that you quoted Mask saying it hasn’t been culturally true for a decade and you just used a 25 year old cartoon episode as rebuttal. Im sure there’s still some people who have some social stigma for glasses or nerdiness (like maglag) but it has waned a lot.

Edit. Thanks for making me feel old today with that episode reference.

What I said in between the quote and that picture was that I feel that correlation would have been a lot stronger 20-40 years ago than 0-20 years ago. So... 25 years ago falls right in that first category.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Wed May 09, 2018 6:37 pm

RobbyPants wrote:
erik wrote:Yes but as you’ll note that you quoted Mask saying it hasn’t been culturally true for a decade and you just used a 25 year old cartoon episode as rebuttal. Im sure there’s still some people who have some social stigma for glasses or nerdiness (like maglag) but it has waned a lot.

Edit. Thanks for making me feel old today with that episode reference.
What I said in between the quote and that picture was that I feel that correlation would have been a lot stronger 20-40 years ago than 0-20 years ago. So... 25 years ago falls right in that first category.

Yes, and I'm saying that the contemporary correlation is weak enough for the stigma to be near dead among wider culture, while being held by those who identify with/against the stigmatized culture old enough (or ensconced enough in older culture) to hold the previous generation's cultural schema. Like erik says, at this point the look is a cultural artifact, like poodle skirts and Chicago gangsters.

That episode of the Simpsons Robby used is about as old as I am. There are more shitty episodes of the Simpsons than prime Simpsons episodes. There are people who have never seen or will never see that episode of the Simpsons outside of an FXX marathon.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Wed May 09, 2018 7:10 pm

Mask_De_H wrote: Yes, and I'm saying that the contemporary correlation is weak enough for the stigma to be near dead among wider culture, while being held by those who identify with/against the stigmatized culture old enough (or ensconced enough in older culture) to hold the previous generation's cultural schema. Like erik says, at this point the look is a cultural artifact, like poodle skirts and Chicago gangsters.

Okay. I think I largely agree with that.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Thu May 10, 2018 3:42 am

You claim that the glasses stigma is "near dead among wider culture".

Then I'll ask again, where are all the main characters wearing glasses all the time that don't fall in the dork/nerd stigma?

Because if the character with X characteristic still doesn't get to be the main character, then guess what, the stigma against X is still out there, it just changed to something you try to hide. The people making those shows are still going "X isn't worthy of being the show star".

Like even black characters get to be the main character in plenty of shows for quite some time now, and aren't forced into speaking only in street slang while stuffing themselves with watermelon and fried chicken.

Meanwhile Simpsons is still going strong last time I checked, and the closest thing to a main glasses character is still Ned Flanders, the super dork next door. Yeah got revealed he's a body builder and toned down in his religion fanatism, but even then most of the time he shows up he's still the silly dork that gets used and abused by the Simpsons.

I would really like to believe the glasses stigma is dead, but the media around isn't exactly helping. So if you know any recent shows with glass main characters, I'm all ears.

There is Bayonetta, but that's kinda still an exception. And guess what, her first game tanked despite good reviews, and freaking family-friendly Nintendo had to pick her up, then her second game tanked too. God bless Nintendo for financing a third game, but the public isn't exactly buying action girl with glasses.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu May 10, 2018 4:05 am

maglag wrote:So if you know any recent shows with glass main characters, I'm all ears.

edit:

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Thu May 10, 2018 4:17 am

And that show is...?

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu May 10, 2018 4:21 am

In 2013, Guinness World Records named Breaking Bad the highest-rated TV series of all time.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Thu May 10, 2018 4:27 am

Chemistry teacher. Nerd. Next please.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu May 10, 2018 4:48 am

If you're going to dismiss anyone who's intelligent and/or educated as a nerd, then nerds are the main characters of every detective procedural, legal drama, and medical drama, and profoundly overrepresented on television.

Walter White is a chem teacher for one half of one episode. After that he's a gangster. He doesn't have nerd stigma, he has intelligence cred. Half the show is about how he's more hardcore than a procession of cartoonishly hardcore narcos.

But the 'next' was posted before you responded, so... I'm really curious what special pleading you'll use to dismiss Matt Murdock.

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu May 10, 2018 6:18 am

maglag wrote:Chemistry teacher. Nerd. Next please.

Bitch please.

phlapjackage · Post by **phlapjackage** » Thu May 10, 2018 6:37 am

Now the goalposts have massively shifted, from whether glasses confer a social stigma and are only discarded to avoid this stigma...

maglag wrote:Glasses have existed for centuries now, and they still have plenty of social stigma attached.

To the point many people will rather use uncomfortable contact lenses or take their chances by burning their eyes and wallet with lasers rather than use glasses.

...to whether glasses simply indicate if someone is a nerd (read: has intelligence)

maglag wrote:Chemistry teacher. Nerd. Next please.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu May 10, 2018 7:45 am

Hibiki is an awkward, 17-year-old high school sophomore who hasn't known romance. But she's about to fall in love for the very first time. With whom? A man who isn't great with words, but compassionate about his students. It's her history teacher, Mr. Ito. "Is it okay if I fall for you?" Hibiki asks. "I'm afraid I can't return those feelings," is Ito's reply. Hibiki's first love crashes before takeoff. But it doesn't matter. "Still I want to cherish my crush anyway." A teacher's heart begins to turn by a student's pure love.

shinimasu · Post by **shinimasu** » Thu May 10, 2018 2:21 pm

maglag wrote:You claim that the glasses stigma is "near dead among wider culture".

Then I'll ask again, where are all the main characters wearing glasses all the time that don't fall in the dork/nerd stigma?

Because if the character with X characteristic still doesn't get to be the main character, then guess what, the stigma against X is still out there, it just changed to something you try to hide. The people making those shows are still going "X isn't worthy of being the show star".

Like even black characters get to be the main character in plenty of shows for quite some time now, and aren't forced into speaking only in street slang while stuffing themselves with watermelon and fried chicken.

Meanwhile Simpsons is still going strong last time I checked, and the closest thing to a main glasses character is still Ned Flanders, the super dork next door. Yeah got revealed he's a body builder and toned down in his religion fanatism, but even then most of the time he shows up he's still the silly dork that gets used and abused by the Simpsons.

I would really like to believe the glasses stigma is dead, but the media around isn't exactly helping. So if you know any recent shows with glass main characters, I'm all ears.

There is Bayonetta, but that's kinda still an exception. And guess what, her first game tanked despite good reviews, and freaking family-friendly Nintendo had to pick her up, then her second game tanked too. God bless Nintendo for financing a third game, but the public isn't exactly buying action girl with glasses.

Are you seriously suggesting that Bayonetta's sales were negatively impacted by her glasses, and literally only her glasses, and that "bondage witch who wears a suit made of her own hair and kills angels" had absolutely fuck all to do with anything?

Look I love the game but it's still a weird fucking game, and the glasses honestly don't even rank.

About the stigma though the bulk of your complaint is that glasses still = nerd but so what? Nerd has, itself, become a neutral term. Hackers are cool now, robotics are cool now, scientists are cool now. Every super hero show has the tech guy, and the tech guy probably wears glasses, but they're still cool and they still do action things sometimes.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Thu May 10, 2018 9:14 pm

I'm guessing that Maglag wear's glasses and this is a whole big thing about how he's unfairly marginalized? Because he thinks that black people don't deserve representation as anything but stereotypes???!!!

maglag wrote: Like even black characters get to be the main character in plenty of shows for quite some time now, and aren't forced into speaking only in street slang while stuffing themselves with watermelon and fried chicken.

@maglag - you insist that wearing glasses invokes a nerd stereotype.

Like, I searched images of 'biker' and there were hits on the first page with 'nerd glasses'.

There's a 'nerd' stereotype, and glasses can be a part of that. But it isn't enough by itself and it hasn't been in decades.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu May 10, 2018 9:55 pm

Note that both of Bayonetta's games found only a niche audience, but only in the second one did she have glasses. So obviously giving Bayonetta glasses had bugger all to do with the success or failure of the game.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Fri May 11, 2018 5:04 am

Chamomile wrote:Note that both of Bayonetta's games found only a niche audience, but only in the second one did she have glasses. So obviously giving Bayonetta glasses had bugger all to do with the success or failure of the game.

Er, no, she had glasses in the first one. Except in the flashbacks to centuries ago, when she wore a veil instead.