Alt and Nerd Culture
Making this post to gauge how many people are on the same wavelength as me in this regard because I'm toying with the idea of making a community. It's also just a conversation to be had, I think.
Is anyone else kinda disappointed in the mainstream fandoms of nerdy things and alternative / punk / metal music these days? Honestly the nerd scene always harboured incel types but it's been quite depressing to see that the alternative scene (at least online, where people are more honest and less polite) has swung conservative. The alternative spaces on mainstream social media are largely people who think there's been no good music since Metallica, or a game of punk or Joe Rogan fan, goth or Harry Potter fan. And sadly even here on Lemmy, it seems to be on the instance that half of Lemmy is defederated from for right wing shit. And honestly the old guard of artists has been pretty disappointing too. Either apathetic with nothing to say after decades of preaching punching nazis, or making the news for signing bombs or misunderstanding Bruce Springsteen or calling for Charlize Theron to be arrested.
As far as nerd shit goes, the discussion for comic book media and games are an absolute dumpster fire, now more than ever. One that has escalated ever since Gamergate or the Captain Marvel movie. I'm not going to pretend that Supergirl didn't have any issues. But I'm also not going to pretend that it was bad enough to warrant the extreme reaction, or that I didn't predict that reaction the moment it was announced based on the pattern, or that the majority of the 'criticism' I saw wasn't basically just men complaining about not finding Millie Alcock personally attractive.
In short, the alternative scene is getting fucked by honorary boomers that would've been looking the devil in heavy metal records alongside the republicans and christians in the '80s. And the nerd scene is long overdue for a grrrl riot.
Alt people and nerds have always been kinda overlapped in circles that I've been in. And Lemmy is really too small to have a seperate community for every little thing. So I'm thinking of a Blåhaj friendly space for fans of nerdy shit and rebel to post a mix of: music they want others to hear / sci-fi or fantasy or romantacy books they're reading / comic book related media discussion / gaming discussion without the COD enthusiasts. A safe space for: women, LGBTQIA+ people, non-conformists, metalheads that are more likely to say "we're not gonna take it" than "don't tread on me", punks that prefer Joe Strummer to Johnny Rotten. And an unsafe space for: manosphere dick bags, terfs, conservatives, 'phobes, pearl clutchers, bootlickers, church people, nerds that are terrified of cooties.
Does this interest anyone? I've even thought of a cool comic book related name for it. "Danny the Street" is a character from Doom Patrol, a sentient genderqueer street that teleports from place to place, picking up people along the way. The Dannyzens that live on Danny are largely drag queens and trans people and gender non-conformists but also misfit metahumans or anyone that feels like they belong there more than anywhere else. Their enemy is the Bureau of Normalcy, a government agency that seeks to stamp out and eradicate anything that doesn't conform to white christian cisgender neurotypical standards.
Only problem is that I've never made a community or moderated before. And I can't promise I'll be around to punch nazis 100% of the time, easpecially if I find a job. So I'll be both learning as I go along and possibly looking for help if it ever gets busy. It's a niche of a niche though, so it'll probably be quiet. I would love a space like this personally, if there are any others like me.
14 replies
Oh please start it!! I'd love somewhere like that. There's ![email protected] which is really cool but I'm always up for alt and nerd stuff
Oh shit, I don't think I could access that community from Blåhaj last time I was here. And I couldn't even remember the name to search it. This does change things a bit. Maybe I'll lurk and check the vibes there. Could just do something for nerd stuff then .
I say deffo go for it!
Which nerd scene? The nerds of the 70s and 80s were definitely not like that.
Again, the opposite of what I see every day. Find new friends maybe.
Anyway, you want your own safe space but you're lumping every entertainment things inside which is confusing.
The nerds have always been Howards and Sheldons and Rajeshes that squirm or feel threatened by Pennys.
I was specifically talking about the online scene. So if you could point the way to this online space that isn't inhabited by neckbeards, it would be much appreciated.
I thought that was the point of making communities
Fair. Which is why I thought I'd just gauge this dumb idea first.
The nerds of the 70s/80s were engineers who had kids and a family. Don't judge the whole world by that shitty TV show which represents nothing (except making fun of autism but wrongly played by that shitty actor). It's like saying every people going to the gym have a Rambo fetish, it's not true at all.
![email protected], feel free to contribute.
Huh, I gotta say, after spending the last few months on Facebook for gods know what reason, it's refreshing to see a post about Castle Rat that isn't just laugh reacts and metallicaheads going "they're only popular because hot girl". Nice to see that all two people commenting on that thread behaved themselves lmao.
This is kinda why I think some things could be combined. A combined community at least for alternative and metal and punk would be busier than a seperate community for each. Maybe I'm just expecting too much from Lemmy as usual.
Ok boomer. Glad that you treated your wife well. But comic book and gaming spaces have been infamously hard for women to be allowed to exist in without harassment of some sort for decades. Same with pro wrestling (although oddly enough I think that's the most progressive online nerd fandom). Same with metal and even punk, which needed a riot grrrl movement.
Nice insult bro, I'm not a boomer though, and not an asshole either.
Enjoy your safe space full of misconceptions, have fun!
Honestly tells me everything I need to know. I heard that a lot from the 4chan-lite anti SJW crowd on Reddit through the years. And is a funny thing to say considering how triggered you are by an "ok boomer" joke.
For as 'left wing' as Lemmy comes across, it's also astonishingly suddenly an 'enlightened centrist' space for liberals when it comes to discussing the manosphere or protecting vulnerable people from bigots.
You clung onto the "safe space" thing in your first comment too, which is why I didn't really take the rest of this conversation too seriously. You're literally who I'm talking about here.
I'm not triggered by anything. I was only pointing a ridiculous insult. I mentioned the safe space because you haven't explained what is it supposed to be. And if you want a small history lesson, I advise you to learn what "the left" was in the past (hint: it was full communism, and a lot of hate for immigrants).
I still don't understand what you want, but I don't think it's important now.
Ok Silent Generation. Ready to round up the commies for president Truman then?
I'll give you a history lesson. The terms "left wing" and "right wing" come from the aftermath of the French Revolution, where pro democracy and pro worker politicians sat on the left hand side of parliament, and pro monarchy fascist bootlickers sat on the right.
Anything else is just flavour.
Is nerd an alt culture now though. Like im old. In grade school I was the uncool kid. It was a small school so there was at times another kid maybe even two like me but im the only one who was there through all the grades. When I went to high school it was larger and there was an actual uncool group. nerds, geeks, whatever. That was amazing. No on in high school outside our group would admit to watching cartoons or even a lot of fantasy and sci fi or read it. Same with comics and even though star wars was popular enough to watch no one would admit to likeing or playing with the toys at that age. DnD was definately a no no for the kids (everyone) who did not want to seem uncool. I was pretty happy to have some friends and in college I found others but like some neighbors of mine in the dorms were on the football team and they liked comics but did not talk about it with teammates. Kept it on the DL as they say. After college I found the cons and that was heaven.
Thing is that in the new millenium this stuff became mainstream. Not right away but harry potter was actually popular with teens and lotr and HP movies really broke through. Then of course there is the xmen ones. Batman, spiderman, the rest of marvel. So hughy lewis was a bit to early as by the 20teens to was truly hip to be square.
So when I used to go to anime clubs or conventions I would see stuff no one ever heard of. I see conventions now and they seem to mostly be corpo run and powered by cosplay. They don't seem to have the subculture in (well maybe out) crowd feel of what I think of as alt. Its just kinda mainstream. Granted Im sorta off on like all things pop culture now (see that is the thing way back when no one would think about comics as pop culture). It could be old man days were better back when or my own personal depression or maybe things just are enshitified but I don't have excitement for these things now. I think the last one I had was wheel of time and. well. I mean if I had not read the books it would have been a neat enough fantasy looking series.
Ok so I think it's maybe a bit too much to combine all of this stuff together. Comic book spaces here probably don't need stepping on. I don't really intend to step on any existing community.
I still think Lemmy could do with one community for rebel music in all its forms. Kind of a sibling to ![email protected], which seems like the best friendly spot for general music.
The problem that I have with seperate communities for metal / punk / alternative music personally, is that things cross over and in punk and metal scenes particularly, there tends be a sort of purity checking, and fighting over definitions, and snubbing the crossover subgenres of subgenres that they didn't grow up with. And general neckbeardism.
So I say fuck that noise, we need a spot for the in betweeners and the general 'alt' people and their shitty music tastes. Maybe it'll just be me and my shitty music taste.
But socio-politically speaking...
Here is how I see punk these days. Particularly the old guard. The 1976 version of Simon Cowell hijacked the emerging rock music scene, and put together a boyband of booger eating crackheads to model fashion and cash in on the next big thing after hippies. This lead to decades of purists arguing about the definition of punk rock and gatekeeping anyone that left the garage. While the truest punk band is actually Blink 182.
The Clash was the exception, not the rule. Joe Strummer is dead and all he managed to do was cast a long shadow. Now we're left with John Lydon and christian Misfits. I kept hearing Green Day be accused of being posers, now they're the only rock band I ever see making the news for the right reasons. The most punk musicians with an actual platform that I've seen in the last decade are Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish.
And here is how I see metal. Ozzy died and Sharon and Jack immediately flew to white house to shake hands with christian nationalist pedophiles, before announcing AI ghost Ozzy. Phil Anselmo was photographed doing a nazi salute, then Pantera headlined tours. David Draiman signed Israeli bombs. And a lot of metalheads seemed to trade rebellion for the manosphere with ease because it's still a dick swinger club that never really had a riot.
So yeah, I kinda do want a guaranteed safe space, from the same kind of people that I was escaping from when I got into loud, angry, rebel music in the first place.
After my tour of mainstream social media these last few months, I think the whole alternative scene is in need of a civil war. People spent so much time gatekeeping subgenres and yelling at the kids on the lawn, that they forgot to gatekeep the jocks and bigots and religious fruitcakes.