“The Big Bang Theory” Normalized Nerd Culture

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-the-big-bang-theory-normalized-nerd-culture

57 106 7 years ago

falcolas• 7 years ago

It normalized an easy-to-digest parody of nerd culture, perhaps. Nothing honked me off more than people watching BBT and thinking they understood "people like me".

doctorRetro• 7 years ago

Agreed, but even then, I'd argue that particular parody of nerd culture has already long since been normalized. Maybe all BBT did was broaden it a little bit, but a parody it remained.

Godel_unicode2• 7 years ago

It's always amusing to me that people who pride themselves on emotional intelligence and inclusiveness will ask things like: "is your (nerd) friend we're going to dinner with more Sheldon or Leonard?".

If you press them on this, you then get some flavor of "ok but you know what I mean..."

Retra• 7 years ago

"Why are you so socially awkward" -- person who mistakenly thinks this is a 'graceful' conversation starter.

vokep2• 7 years ago

Its a bit irritating, but empathizing with someone that might ask that...I'm not sure what the problem is? I would know exactly what they meant.

Tehchops• 7 years ago

This. The first season at least dabbled in a more honest take. Season >=2 went with whatever was palatable and popular enough to get more viewers.

Fishman343• 7 years ago

Yes, there's a big difference between riding the zeitgeist and actually influencing it.

There is something oddly nice about an older person saying "Oh, just like Sheldon!" (or sometimes Moss from the IT Crowd) if I mention dungeons and dragons or online games.

It might be a very simplified and / or exploitative version of nerd culture but at least there's an instant point of reference for us both.

devindotcom• 7 years ago

Surely the same could be said of nearly any network sitcom involving a subculture or demographic. That's kind of the idea of broad entertainment.

The problem comes when the parody comes at the expense of the culture - that's exploitation. But by the time BBT was airing and popular, nerds were, and remain, to a certain extent a privileged class, not an oppressed one. They have high-paying jobs, ordinary successful lives, and look back at the old stereotypes of pocket protectors and social awkwardness with a sort of bemusement. Nerds are not a vulnerable class and haven't been in a long time. Nor is "nerd culture" particularly cohesive.

That may not be the case when the group being parodied is genuinely being oppressed or discriminated against and is often not in a position to push back against that. Exploitation in that case can be real and harmful.

0815test3• 7 years ago

Surely the same could be said of nearly any network sitcom involving a subculture or demographic. That's kind of the idea of broad entertainment.

No, it isn't quite the same thing. ESR actually points out the specific problem with BBT in this excerpt from the blogpost I linked:

Bleagh. This is supposed to be a show about geniuses? It’s not. It’s a show about a dimwit’s idea of what bright people are like. The slowest person in my peer group could out-think and out-create any of these sad-sack imitations of “smart” on any day of the week. These actors are not bright, and don’t know how to fake it on screen.

(emphasis added). The comparison to blackface that someone else made, however inherently contentious (for eminently understandable reasons) is indeed on point.

com2kid• 7 years ago

Nerds are not a vulnerable class and haven't been in a long time.

The ones who get a CS degree and get a good high paying job, sure.

The ones still in middle school? Not so much. The ones who aren't programmers? Not so much. The nerds growing up in communities where free thinking and geeky passions are looked down upon, sometimes violently? Not so much.

And those kids will reach adulthood dealing with some rather nasty issues. Everything from not having learned great socialization skills, to a poor self image, to a lot of stuff in-between.

Stereotypes are bad, having a show that treats people as 1 dimensional disposable arch-types that exist only to be laughed at, is bad, no matter who the subject matter is.

AnaniasAnanas• 7 years ago

They have high-paying jobs

Maybe if you are lucky enough to be living in silicon valley. Not in most places though, especially if you live outside of America.

ordinary successful lives

If you try to stretch the meaning of successful enough and exclude things such as romantic/sexual life.

Nerds are not a vulnerable class and haven't been in a long time

Kids being bullied and remaining friendless in school due to being nerdy is not a rare occurrence.

112012123• 7 years ago

I disagree. Silicon Valley gets fantastic reviews from people actually in Silicon Valley.

2muchcoffeeman• 7 years ago

It normalized an easy-to-digest parody of nerd culture, perhaps.

Isn’t this true of almost all subcultures that get co-opted? This sort of thing reminds me of IFLScience. No one ever loved science. Certain parts of it just became popular.

javery• 7 years ago

Nerdploitation

closetohome• 7 years ago

I find this show actively uncomfortable to watch. It doesn't normalize anything, it just mocks it using caricatures and awful stereotypes within the framework of an extremely traditional and lazily written sitcom.

Jtsummers• 7 years ago

It's a series filled with Steve Urkel-level parodies of nerds. I chuckled at Urkel as a teenaged nerd in the 90s. Especially when they (sometimes) humanized him more it was ok, instead of just having him the butt of every joke. But a series where the main characters are all the butts of the joke and supposed to represent me (according to other people) isn't really that funny.

slantyyz3• 7 years ago

> But a series where the main characters are all the butts of the joke

While I get that there's a pecking order even among nerds, I'm frequently put off by how badly the main characters treat Stuart, the comic shop owner.

mcphage2• 7 years ago

It's a series filled with Steve Urkel-level parodies of nerds.

Not really. Steve Urkel was a nerd, but in the show that just meant “annoying personality”. The characters in Big Bang Theory might have annoying personalities at times, but at least had interests and attitudes that demonstrated they were actually nerds, not just annoying.

nostalgk2• 7 years ago

There was one episode where Sheldon spends a considerable amount of time ranting about Windows 8 with no relevance to the plot at hand, laugh tracks abound. I haven't watched since.

It genuinely made me uncomfortable; not because I like Windows 8, mind you. It was just so uncanny and out of place.

chris_wot3• 7 years ago

That was the whole point of that diatribe. It was out of place, which was why it was funny. I do know (and have been) people who have done this on this topic.

fhbdukfrh2• 7 years ago

You just summarized the entire (very successful) career of the shows creator, Chuck Lorre.

0815test3• 7 years ago

Relevant post from the ESR blog http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7451 Or, Why The Big Bang Theory Normalized the wrong sort of Nerd Culture.

verteu• 7 years ago

No more than blackface "normalized" African-American culture.

krapp2• 7 years ago

I mean... disgusting as it was, it kind of did.

wafflesraccoon• 7 years ago

Blackface normalised the racist stereotype of African Americans, not necessarily actual African American culture.

mbesto• 7 years ago

Disagree. If anything I think it reinforced nerd stereotypes even worse - all it did was shine a light on a culture that was basically in the shadows. Nerd culture has been perpetuated by a variety of factors:

1. Twitch / livestreaming / YT - e.g. sub counts = "look at how many people actually do like gaming"

2. Affinity groups to video games - e.g. NBA players love Fortnite (among other professional sports...see HyperX commercials with Embiid, Hayward, etc.)

3. Marvel movies - comic book reading is the ultimate nerd fascination. Marvel movies are consistently the most watched movies in the last decade.

4. Commercial success of tech startups - Zuck/Gates are the ultimate nerds who are now the envy of every banker on wall st.

just_myles• 7 years ago

+ 1 for Marvel movies. You can't even go to the cons anymore they're so expensive.

cm2012• 7 years ago

I think number 4 is the biggest here, but I agree with your whole list.

friendlybus• 7 years ago

Gates/Jobs are the biggest factors for sure.

Grazester• 7 years ago

Jobs never struck me as a nerd. More like the cool preppy kid that would drive a BMW to school if they could have afforded one.

z3c0• 7 years ago

I disagree as well - I think the author is confusing "normalization" with "popularization". Big Bang Theory is for people to laugh at nerdiness, not with it.

Along with the cases that you've listed, I think a clear case of normalization would be Stranger Things and DnD.

slantyyz3• 7 years ago

How about #5 The rise of analytics in sports?

RandomInteger4• 7 years ago

Can you elaborate? Hasn't that always been a thing?

krapp2• 7 years ago

Yeah... the Big Bang Theory wouldn't have been greenlit, much less have become a hit, if the stereotypes it presented weren't already known and considered "funny" by mainstream culture.

What normalized nerd culture was the World Wide Web. Everything you mention either started or was catalyzed by the web.

And before the web, even owning a computer at all, much less knowing how to use it, made you a nerd to begin with.

YeGoblynQueenne• 7 years ago

And Game of Thrones.

thrower123• 7 years ago

The weirdest thing about sitcoms, to my mind, is how they are always focused in on this group of 4-8 close friends who live in close proximity and spend all their time together. It just doesn't match up with anything I've seen - real people drift around, interact with a bunch of different people, do their own thing. Maybe there are people that live like that, but I just haven't seen it.

kleiba• 7 years ago

BBT is based on displaying stereotypes and then ridiculing them. As someone who studied CS and now works in IT, I've met quite a few people who actually have to deal with the very issues that this show makes fun of, and let me tell you: being a social outsider is not as much fun in the real world.

I have a hard time imagining how in this day and age the same ridiculing of stereotypes would fly without a giant backlash if the show were about:

  - Women
  - Homosexuals
  - Non-white people
  - ...

But apparently, "nerds" are a safe enough as a group that coming up with a skewed portrayal of them that lends itself to making fun of is okay.

Yeah, you go ahead and laugh about those tech freaks... why should the school bullies get all the fun...

gamache• 7 years ago

A friend of mine calls BBT "nerd blackface", and I think it's a pretty snappy description.

MarkSweep• 7 years ago

Along similar lines, I've heard it called a nerd minstrel show.

neutronicus• 7 years ago

You should be careful about repeating this - a lot of people find the comparison very, very offensive.

bluejellybean• 7 years ago

I frequently get asked why I don't like the show from non-nerd friends and this is _exactly_ why, your friends description is perfect. The entire thing is just offensive and reinforces both negative nerd and sexual stereotypes for the profit of others. It is very much nerd blackface.

ACow_Adonis3• 7 years ago

I'm not homosexual, but have you seen the portrayls of such on the likes of 'next top model', 'queer eye...', and honestly just about any mainstream media now that I think about it.

They're petty much all caricatures of 'offensively eccentric negative-female- characteristics high-pitched limp-wristed men with obsessions for fashion and celebrity culture'.

Its exactly the same thing and pretty standard...if i was less cynical, id think it should of created more of an uproar...

I'm sure I could come up with examples for the other groups...

TheHegemon• 7 years ago

I mean this are slightly more excusable because they're supposed to the host's actual personality.

Whereas in a sitcom it's what the writer's determine the character is supposed to act like.

fetus8• 7 years ago

I don't know if your description of the men on Queer Eye is apt. It's a reality show, which admittedly doesn't mean the hosts aren't acting, but the show is hosted by a cast of all homosexual men. Being in the age we're in, it's easy to go find more content that shows the hosts aren't acting for Queer Eye, and perhaps they're being their genuine selves.

Jonathon Van Ness, has a podcast, and has done some Youtube content over the years, and doesn't seem to portray a different "character" than he does on QE.

Mainstream media, especially in the last 10 years, has really changed the way homosexuals, and other LGBTQ+ are presented and seen. I would argue that it's a lot less problematic, and more genuine than it's ever been. HBO's 'Looking' did a decent job of portraying the spectrum of gay men that exist today. (Not a particularly great show otherwise). Amazon's 'Transparent' does an incredible job of highlighting the fact that sexuality exists on a spectrum, and those people can be hyper-fem, hyper-masc, and anywhere in between.

As a gay nerd, I personally think it's important we see all kinds of LGBTQ+ identifying people, and shows like Queer Eye have done that.

msla• 7 years ago

Are there any trans main characters in a broadcast TV series? Not Netflix original, not Hulu, not satellite or cable, but ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox free-to-air broadcast TV. I can't think of any off the top of my head, and I think that comes down to the demographic targeted by broadcast TV: People fifty or older.

https://www.marketingcharts.com/television/tv-audiences-and-...

According to the analysis of audiences of 5 networks measured using Nielsen’s Digital Content Ratings in September 2018, 59% of live TV viewers ages 13 and older were in the 55+ group, compared to just 5% who were aged 13-24. The median age of a live TV viewer worked out to 56. MarketingCharts’ own research – US Media Audience Demographics – has found that weekly broadcast TV viewers are skewing older over time, and cable TV viewers also have a growing skew towards older adults.

Also, let's look at the other broadcast medium, radio:

https://www.marketingcharts.com/demographics-and-audiences/m...

While the age distribution of network radio listeners skews towards the 45+ demographic, a large share of Americans of all ages listen to network radio. The study also points out that listeners are spread across the US and tend to represent an attractive group in terms of their income and education levels.

Also graying, but more slowly. And, yes, it's a trend:

https://www.westwoodone.com/2015/06/24/this-just-in-new-data...

(Graph on the bottom shows median age of radio listeners increasing.)

My point is this: Shows made for broadcast media are not going to change because the people making those shows know their demographic and aren't going to shed viewers by doing things their audience considers controversial. Viewership numbers are low enough already. Broadcast media is in a death spiral and whatever stereotypes, representation, and lack of representation it currently has is what it's going to have from now until it goes dark.

ppseafield2• 7 years ago

Well, we now have positive queer role models in other shows mixed in with those caricatures, which is leaps and bounds above what we used to have. Go back and watch In Living Color's Men On Film, which is one of the more "positive" portrayals. I find it incredibly cringeworthy today.

Shows like Next Top Model and Queer Eye play up their queerness for ratings, but that's actually progress: queer folks (actually played by other queer folks, not straight people parodying us) are being queer on camera, and people want to watch them for that. Millions of people. It's actually the point of those shows. That's huge!

Commonly people's first reaction to things they don't understand or things that are unusual is fear. I used to resent Will and Grace for being over the top, contrived, and playing on stereotypes. But I think, like Big Bang Theory, however cringeworthy the humor is, they've both put gay folks and nerdiness in prime television slots. People watch them, and they become less "foreign" to millions of televison watchers. They're made relateable (simply because not as many folks would watch it if it wasn't), and in turn nerdiness and queerness are made relateable and understandable. I don't need to watch either, but... I don't have to. It's not for me.

cc81• 7 years ago

You have comedies parodying all those things. While the show did make fun of the nerd things they also gave most of them good qualities and successful lives and they were happy about being nerds.

It seems it is just a sensitive subject for some nerds but look at for example Modern Family. The gay couple and their friends are mocked for tons of gay stereotypes for example.

knolax3• 7 years ago

Don't worry, BBT does stereotyping of women and minorities too.

MagicPropmaker• 7 years ago

Yes. I really don't like the Jewish stereotypes at all. (Interestingly, the guy who plays the "Jewish Guy" Howared isn't Jewish, but the actress who plays his non-Jewish girlfriend "Bernadette" is.)

stormbrew4• 7 years ago

The funny thing about this post is that BBT is full of misogyny, homophobia, and racism. Like, chock full of it. And yet the most frequent complaint about it is about how mean it is to nerds.

knolax3• 7 years ago

Well being mean to nerds was the main gimmick, the other stereotypes were just for support.

spudlyo• 7 years ago

I wonder if past generations felt this too -- this feeling that the as you get older, popular culture seems to twist itself to pander to your tastes and attitudes. I had assumed that I had this feeling because I was in the most sought after advertising demographic. Now that I'm into my 50s though, it seems like it's still happening, and perhaps even faster than before.

As we enter 2019, celebrities are rushing to play Dungeons and Dragons, The Big Bang Theory has better ratings than NFL football, Game of Thrones is the top HBO show, and the most popular movie in America is from a comic book. It's a weird world.

Nowadays I'm a bit saddened that my attitudes have shifted to become more close-minded, like my fathers. Adults playing Dungeons and Dragons are somewhat pathetic, comic books are boring kids stuff, and "fantasy" is for people who have dull lives. I don't subscribe to all of that, but remembering how angry I was at my father for belittling the fantasy escapism that I was so wrapped up in, it's odd to find myself agreeing with some of his sentiments.

fhbdukfrh2• 7 years ago

It normalized the stereotype of nerd culture.

Aside from being incredibly unfunny it completely misrepresented nerd culture and that's why it was so popular amongst the largely nerd-free network tv audience.

For a more accurate picture still taken to absurd extremes watch Mike Judge's silicon valley on HBO.

nydel2• 7 years ago

I find this piece on toxic masculinity in The Big Bang Theory much more interesting than the show or this article:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3-hOigoxHs (The Adorkable Misogyny of The Big Bang Theory by Pop Culture Detective)

I'm happy for people who can enjoy The Big Bang Theory but I find it difficult personally.

yarrel• 7 years ago

And "Friends" normalized NYC.

nydel2• 7 years ago

ha! incredibly apt. clapclap.

jayess• 7 years ago

I tried watching this show once and it wasn't about nerds, it was about what non-nerds think nerds are. The laugh track on top of that drove me crazy. It was unwatchable. I genuinely don't understand how it was so popular.

tzs2• 7 years ago

It didn't have a laugh track. They used laughter from the live audience. They did edit that to do things like take out people with really weird laughs, and they often used the laughs from a different take than the one that made it into the final edit because no matter how funny a joke was on the first take, it will not seem very funny on the 10th take.

dpcx• 7 years ago

It's always interesting to me to hear people complain about the "laugh track" in shows like BBT, but then herald Monty Python as if it were some paragon of comedy, considering it also contains a "laugh track." I'm not speaking about your comment in particular; I have heard from many folks that they hated BBT because of the recorded laughter.

devilmoon• 7 years ago

TBBT is a show written by non-nerds trying to describe what nerds are, and failing miserably.

I have tried more than once to watch it and every time I felt actual physical discomfort at how bad the whole thing was; Even though the show is not strictly about nerds but rather a parody of SV culture, I find HBO's Silicon Valley to be so much better at describing nerds than TBBT - at the very least I can actually laugh at the jokes and there are slight hints that the writers actually know what they are talking about.

wj• 7 years ago

Having lived in LA for 15 years I met and became friends with some writers. I can't speak for the BBT writers but a lot, if not most, of the writers I met were pretty nerdy. Sometimes you need to write what makes your audience laugh rather than what makes you laugh. They earn a paycheck just like the rest of us.

I couldn't watch it due to the laugh track.

walrus01• 7 years ago

No, it really didn't. I've seen it described by someone else as "the big bang theory is blackface for nerd culture".

tzs2• 7 years ago

So many people complain about the characters...but when I was a student at Caltech pretty much everything that people complain is unrealistic or wrong about nerds on BBT was there in people I knew. It's just more concentrated in the BBT characters whereas it was spread among a dozen or two people that I knew.

What bugs me as a Caltech alum is that Sheldon had an office at one point that had a geology lab directly above on the next floor, which is ridiculous.

P_I_Staker• 7 years ago

They're heavily caricatured. There seems to be the implication that this is just how engineers / nerds are. Sometimes, sure, plenty of those people exist. However, in my experience, it's not that widespread. It's way more common for engineers / nerds to be way more socially adjusted, and well rounded. Making a show where the characters embody the worst stereotypical traits of their subjects causes distortion to the point of becoming unrealistic. In my experience only around 1 in 5 or fewer would even begin to approach these extremes; however if you watched the show you'd expect the numbers to be stacked in the other direction.

pfarrell• 7 years ago

A great quote I remember reading about BBT (maybe in comments here on HN) was in relation to Arrested Development.

Big Bang Theory is a dumb show about smart people. Arrested Development is a smart show about dumb people.

I've never been able to watch BBT. I could never get past the feeling that I was being laughed at.

lwhsiao• 7 years ago

I believe this is the figure you're remembering:

http://i.imgur.com/IT2K6F8.png

anonymfus• 7 years ago

It is not just Sheldon who is extremely sexist in their group. Here are Pop Culture Detective's video essays highlighting misogynistic and toxic-masculine behaviour of all these "nerd" characters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3-hOigoxHs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L7NRONADJ4

bdz• 7 years ago

The Windows 7 episode was when I stopped watching it. Just horrible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN3qn92R0SE

curtis• 7 years ago

I haven't watched The Big Bang Theory regularly in a long time but I always enjoy it when I catch it in re-runs. A lot of people claim to hate it because it makes fun of "nerd stereotypes". I never found it insulting, though. Exaggerated, sure, but it's a sitcom, it's supposed to be exaggerated. A lot of the fun of the show is the characters "taking the piss out of each other" [1]. Not everyone will like that kind of humor but it's pretty common in sitcoms and a lot of people seem to enjoy it.

It seems to be common for people who dislike BBT to complain that it ridicules nerds as a class. I don't think that's right at all. Does anyone think that "Scrubs"[2] ridiculed doctors and other healthcare professionals as a general class?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_the_piss

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrubs_(TV_series)

gnicholas• 7 years ago

Pretty sure I first saw this highly-relevant diagram on HN: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/2dwmvx/handy_dandy_v...

elagost• 7 years ago

This show made me realize that there are two distinct groups of people with zero middle ground: Those who enjoy or at least don't see anything wrong with it, and those who feel they are represented (poorly) in the show, and intensely dislike it.

The first group usually tends to compare the second group to the show's characters ("he's such a Sheldon") and doesn't see anything wrong with that, either.

inamberclad• 7 years ago

It always struck me as a show about smart people, for dumb people.

saipii3• 7 years ago

I'm confused by this thread. Are people still social outsiders just for being "nerds"? I feel like people are mixing up being socially awkward and being nerdy.

It's much easier to be a social outsider when you're socially awkward. I don't think I've ever seen a nerd who is socially strong be outed from a group just for being nerdy...

This is coming from someone who was nerdy and socially awkward for much of middle and highschool and didn't really have friends. Once I started working on my social abilities (which is not easy, to be fair), making friends was easy.

coldtea• 7 years ago

Yeah, no. Nerd culture was normalized years before BBT came along... Somewhere in the early-mid 00s.

anonanon3213• 7 years ago

I'm hardly offended by the show despite being a nerd. I think it's because I'm Chinese and there are no characters that I strongly associate with. In fact, I can't recall many asian characters on the show. "Fresh Off the Boat" on the other hand...I can see myself being very uncomfortable watching.

conradfr2• 7 years ago

But ... Fresh off the boat is adapted from an autobiography, especially the first season.

anonanon3213• 7 years ago

I'm not saying it's bad or anything. Just that in the same way some people find watching TBBT uncomfortable (and I don't), this show may do the same thing for me.

viseztrance• 7 years ago

As a geek I honestly hated TBBT. I would love to see a show that portrays smart people having street smarts without going the mary sue trope.

anonanon3213• 7 years ago

"The Big Bang Theory" Normalized North American Nerd Culture

knolax3• 7 years ago

This entire thread sounds like the "gamers are the most oppressed group on earth" meme. Maybe it's a generational thing, but "Nerd Culture" was normalized when people stopped caring about the concept of nerds. I don't think I've met anyone under 30 irl who strongly identifies as a nerd the way people in this thread do.

conradfr2• 7 years ago

I guess this thread is one more proof of why there's less and less funny shows coming from the U.S.

Nerds, scientists, engineers or developers can be make fun of like everybody else.

Sure BBT is not really a good show, especially after the first few seasons, sure it jokes about adults reading comics, but they also got hot wifes, go to the ISS and get Nobel prize.

The most damning thing is that people in this very thread praise Silicon Valley. You do realize that, besides being more realistic and better written, the people on this show are also way more ridiculous and despicable than in BBT? But somehow you're less offended, interesting.

I wonder if support people are offended by IT Crowd ahah.

nullandvoid• 7 years ago

A little off topic but a genuine question. Am I the only one who cannot stand shows with canned laughter?

My other half thinks it's odd but I hate punch lines being ruined / unfunny jokes having a laugh track over them. Which unfortunately makes big bang theory pretty unwatchable for me among others :(

eigenspace• 7 years ago

While I find TBBT kinda annoying, I find people whinging about how horrible it is much much more annoying.

“The Big Bang Theory” Normalized Nerd Culture

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