“About ten years ago an acquaintance of mine introduced me to the term “adultolescence.” As he was recently divorced, had no children, and was not wanting for anything monetarily, he basked in reliving adolescent tendencies of embracing pop culture, faddish consumerism, and other trivialities as a middle-aged man. In short, he was clinging to the priorities of a teenager instead of adopting the wisdom and social responsibility of adulthood.
To be fair, few of us are above abstaining from entertainment and insignificant diversions; what is troubling is the merit these petty pastimes garner in our personal lives and in our larger society, and particularly among adults who should know better and do better.”
I’ve seen Adultolescence upclose and personal folks, and it is inane and vapid as it sounds. The relentless pursuit of pop culture relics, pictures, and autographs is now a life choice for some people. Trying to buy your way to happiness is almost as unsuccessful as trying to find your happiness and self worth in others, both are indelibly Pyrrhic pursuits away from the realities and sad truths that come with grappling with life as an adult. Both end in tears, as the real tragedy lies in the folly of an uncritical, unexamined, consumerist driven life or the bitter hollowness that springs from pursuing people that satisfy your immediate desires at the cost of an authentic relationship. The unhappy reality is that despite the temporary validation, it does nothing to mitigate the real problem of being existentially alone in the world, but now without the support and care of an genuine soulmate and fellow traveller on life’s weary path.
I digress, the focus of the article is on the first example – the consumptive orgy that is ‘nerd culture’.
Adultolescence is a scary phenomena, retreating away from adult social realities and revelling in base conspicuous consumption. Pop culture is okay as a interest in one’s life, less so when it becomes your life.
“Conan O’Brien’s old late night show featured a segment with a puppet called Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Triumph would attend events, speak to people, and insult them. In 2002, Triumph spoke to adults camped out in line to purchase movie tickets to the upcoming Star Wars film. He clearly mocked the adults who were spending hours on the sidewalk – many dressed up as their favorite characters and possessing their favorite Star Wars toys – for acting like children. Now, as Comic-Con has morphed into a pop culture juggernaut, cosplay, gaming, toy-collecting, and entertainment fanaticism are accepted forms of adult behavior. Moreover, the internet and its chat rooms, message boards, forums, and social media have enabled the fixation on any subset of pop culture. It has normalized the obsession over any trivial television show, film, musician, performer, athlete, or star anyone could imagine. And this fanatical fandom is not just part of nerd culture; it is part of all culture.
What also comes with nerd culture and all of these other media-driven obsessions and fascinations is rampant consumerism. There is a prioritization of vacuous content over crucial societal issues, but there is also an environmental catastrophe of over-production and consumption of frivolous, useless items and endless technological gadgetry, the life-cycles of which contribute to resource depletion, pollution, environmental deterioration, and tremendous waste at a time when we now clearly recognize the disastrous effects of our throw-away society. It used to be that just Hollywood was so insular and myopic. The entertainment industry had no perspective and few moral values, but now nerd culture (among others) has spread that myopia about entertainment, and that vapidity, consumerism, materialism, and narcissism to everyone.
I’ve recently spent some time teaching elementary-aged children. The books they read, the social studies and science lessons they learn, still try to teach the morals we all learned as children – lessons like: it’s not what you have it’s who you are, be a good person, be kind to others, strive to help others before yourself, do no harm, do not waste, do not pollute, treat all others as you treat yourself, everyone is of equal value, etc. When I was school-aged, lessons like those are why most kids aspired to be firemen, teachers, nurses and doctors. Most of us valued service and professions that, at least in theory, were for the benefit of the common good.
Now too many of our adults are enraptured with themselves and their immediate superficial gratifications. We don’t live up to any of those deeper societal and global values. We’ve lost all perspective. The nerd culture enables this stunted personal and social development. The prioritization of entertainment media, social media, and celebrity is the major component of nerd culture and is far too prevalent throughout society, to the detriment of our social structure, our communities, and our environment. It is perhaps why so many children now aspire to be “youtubers,” why a misogynist former “reality” show personality is now President of the United States, why it may not be surprising that a man such as Chris Hardwick – whose adult life revolves around inane priorities – may not possess a healthy perspective on females or relationships, and why this essay will likely capture a larger audience than anything else I normally write about science, health, social issues, or the environment.
Retreating from reality is bad. Retreating from reality by engaging in the consumptive processes that make life shitty in the first place, is far worse.
bleatmop
The Intransigent One
Mystro
The Arbourist
3 comments
July 7, 2018 at 9:05 am
john zande
90 is the new 30 ;)
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July 14, 2018 at 11:06 pm
Niniva
tl,dr: “Bite my shiny metal ass.”
You see people wasting their lives by slumming it all night to see a movie. I see people engaged in the most vibrant discussion of right, wrong, and the future. They aren’t waiting on a movie; they are creating an occasion, an experience worth remembering. And those people are the ones who write the dreams of our next generation. That discussion molds our values and our perceptions.
Nerd culture ~is~ life for the creators, the ones who tell our stories. To be honest, nerd culture is entirely creators, whether successful, not yet successful, or never to be successful.
Sure, there’s always that ten percent of scumbags in any group, but that’s simply another way nerd culture isn’t different from any other.
And those stories? They frame our collective societal thoughts. Even if you’ve never watched a single episode of Friends, you’ve considered what it means to be “on a break” in a relationship.
The goal is to use that power to intensify reality, take a wrong from the mundane and accepted to it’s farthest extreme. And it’s a powerful tool. Harriet Beecher Stowe wielded storytelling to end slavery, and Gene Roddenberry contributed to the fight for equality by taking early steps to normalize interracial relationships. The creators are the front line of ALL societal improvement.
The storytellers create our world as we see it in our minds. Life imitates art, which in turn imitates life. They took the 50s-style misogyny and pushed it to The Stepford Wives. They took environmental disasters and pushed them to Soylent Green and The Day After. They took schizophrenia and gave us Deadpool. The vegan movement? Owes much of it’s existence to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Because the story teller took the concept of eating meat to the greatest possible extreme.
All the adult values you are speaking on are ideals that the storytellers refined over the centuries, favoring the middle ground over the extreme in either direction. Aristotle knew that, between cowardice and rashness, lies bravery. And that’s still one of the most important themes for the creators. This process isn’t new by any means; the STORY is fundamental to what it means to be human.
PS: Oh, and I’ve seen the same level of consumer foolishness from every other stereotype. Don’t push that off on the nerds. They have enough problems, with their unusually large ADHD, autistic spectrum, and bipolar populations.
Yes. You are shaming many people with mental health issues for finding things that bring them passion and joy. Most of whom find meaningful employment and social engagement in the creative arts AFTER they are actively shunned from engagement in other social realms.
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July 17, 2018 at 5:01 pm
The Arbourist
@Niniva
Perhaps not the best way to initiate a fruitful discussion.
Whether star trek or starwars is better can hardly be described as ‘vibrant discussion’ – tribes hurling insults at each other perhaps, but nothing more.
The people in line are waiting for affirmation of how cool they look with all the garmy shite they spent too much money on. A narcissistic community that feeds on itself and rewards those who go to ever more grandiose lengths in a fools game to get tribal approval.
Go home. Get a mirror. It’s cheaper and less obnoxious.
Heading back to reality the only image you’ll need for our current time (and future) is what Orwell wrote in 1984. – “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”
The desperate inhumanity of the world will not be solved by adults retreating into tribal nerd cultures that feature irrelevant internecine feuds that are consciously disconnected from the bleak reality we all inhabit. It is a recipe for self delusion, not changing society.
Nerd culture is for the desperate and the alienated. The mindless one-upmanship and relentless circle jerks for attention and ‘credibility’ do their job in filling up the void in peoples lives’ but as far as accomplishing anything meaningful to society it is a questionable proposition at best.
What is wrong with society is trying to find meaning in the vapid schlock that we are exposed to and told it is ‘popular culture’. It is just another way to keep the people ignorant and entertained, and crucially speaking, socially impotent.
Nerd-dome for nerds is like sports for jocks – an arena to piss away time that could be spent doing useful meaningful actions in society. Nerd-dome, like sports, are encouraged because they are useful distractions for the peons and also that people can make money off the backs of the feckless that want to play instead of grapple with the examined life.
The people who put their lives on the line and are willing to die, and are killed for their beliefs are at the forefront of societal improvement. Rosa Parks, Malcom-X, and Louis Riel are examples of individuals, supported by an activist community, that actually got shit done in terms of risking their lives (and ultimate giving them in some cases) for societal change.
And bullshite hackneyed phrases betray a lack of intellectual rigour and appreciation of how society actually works.
I will, and shall continue to ‘push that’ on nerd-‘culture’. It is a vapid, manufactured, dissonant paean to conspicuous consumption. Capitalism is at the root of many of the problems we face as a society – when the ‘storytellers’ start challenging the normative assumptions that have humanity merrily rolling toward oblivion – some worth might be gleaned from the artifact known as ‘nerd-culture’.
Are you kidding me? Nerd-culture, if anything, needs a harsher critique if it wants to approach anything resembling relevance in society. There should be shame in the celebration of turning away from the realities and responsibilities that are a part of adult life.
Finding a social group that you’re comfortable in is fine. Attempting to portray it as anything else – the forefront of changing society for instance (especially when it foundationally supports the status-quo) – is dishonest and inaccurate at best.
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