Everyone shut up and look at this carving of a whale from the 1200-600 CE Chumash culture

I could write a lot about what made the olden days online feel better than today–setting aside the fact that at least some of that feeling is just nostalgia I mean.

But really it was just better because it was exclusive. Nothing gets better when more people can participate. One of the most horrifying things a game developer (or whatever) can say is something like, “with this new version, we’re making things easier and more accessible than ever.”

Nothing can be a niche anymore. Star Trek was never a huge property. I know a lot of people are aware of Star Trek, and maybe they saw The Wrath of Khan or some episodes of TNG or the movie with the whales–but the core fanbase has always been relatively small and fanatical. The franchise was primarily a slower moving thing, more about diplomacy and understanding than action and melodrama.

But nothing can be a niche anymore. If a property has name recognition it must appeal to everyone, everywhere. So now Star Trek is full retard: nothing but explosions, screaming, death and melodrama. Oh, and they’re churning out soulless, uninspired sequels/prequels/spinoffs as fast as they can, to fully maximize the value they can get out of the trademark. How many new movies/shows/webisodes/etc have they announced in the last year? four? five?

Shit I guess I did wind up writing a lot anyways.

I’m convinced the change was web 2.0 and the deployment of algorithms, most likely sentiment analysis.

All of the sudden you went from having no visibility to immediately having insight into any trend whatsoever. All the social media platforms were able to track any trend, no matter how niche, and open up a way to market and commodify them.

I think “nerd culture” in general, too, was always the most easily commodified. Even before the onslaught of Funko-Pops, specialty shops usually had comics, tabletop gaming, figures and maybe manga/anime to cover their bases. In fact, as far back as I can remember, there’s always been a big focus on merch. But the difference now is that you’re really just buying references to an IP (figures, funko-pops, T-shirts), rather than creative products like art books, etc. Unless you go to a book store like Barnes and Noble, where they’ve cornered the market. Any way you look at it, nerd culture has been completely atomized by retail.

What does this have to do with the internet, though? I’d argue that social media perpetuates atomization of nerd culture in retail, not only by tracking trends, but also by diluting what makes IPs interesting. An MCU meme image is gonna get a lot more traction than someone’s critical analysis of some TNG episode. You’re simply not going to find those in-depth engagements online anymore simply due to the nature of the beast we’ve created out of our own love for convenience.

There’s also something to say about nerd merch and the speculative nature of collecting useless stuff in the hopes it’ll be valuable that’s egregious in the space which further exacerbates things, even if they’re shitty. That level of commodification doesn’t help with diluting things, either.

i think star trek should write an in universe reason why some series don’t have swearing and some do. make it a universal translator glitch or something.

the captain of each ship can turn the swears on or off when they want to

Kirk would have kept the swears on but any ship carrying Dr. Leonard McCoy is required by Starfleet regulations to turn them off

How dare you keep this in the tags @narwhalsarefalling

Or maybe it’s just that old Star Trek was trying to depict a futuristic society that had largely advanced past people angrily swearing at each other, so they were clueless about how to do it when they tried.

And new Star Trek is about squarely 2010s people who just so happen to have laser guns and starships, but haven’t advanced as a culture at all.

I still think that my favorite urban legend/folklore fact is that there are certain areas in New Orleans where you cannot get a taxi late at night not because it isn’t safe, but because taxi companies have had recurring problems of picking up ghosts in those areas who are not aware that they are dead and disappearing from the cab before reaching the destination and therefore stiffing the driver on the fare causing a loss for the company.

An occupational hazard of cab driving I had not previously considered

I love that the nola problem here is not “ghosts in my taxi cab,” but “ghosts are FUCKING BROKE DEAD BASTARDS & I GOT BILLS”

Horror is when ghosts get into cabs and scare drivers Magical realism is when cab companies have to develop policies to prevent ghastly fare-theft

In a book about the tsunami in Japan in 2011, the writer talked about how there was a huge increase in reports of ghostly activity. Apparently in Japan treating ghosts rudely is basically considered the stupidest thing you could possibly do. For months after the tsunami, taxi drivers would pick up a passenger only to have them give an address in one of the devastated areas. The cab driver often looked up halfway to the destination to find their fare had disappeared. Not wanting to be impolite to the person (even if they were dead) they’d drive to the address, open the door to let them out, then drive away.

Yeah this all checks out

If there’s anything I’ve learned from Japanese horror, it’s that Japanese ghosts will not hesitate to kill you if you fuck up their social script. I have no experience with New Orleans horror, but I presume their ghosts are much more chill.

I was never gatekept

I was a girl who wanted in on comics, video games and tabletop.  In the 90s/00′s, where supposedly women were ‘gatekept’ out of the hobbies.

I was never gatekept.  Not once.  Not IRL, not online.

If anyone tried to talk shit about me being a woman, I’d put them in their place by citing trivia, showing them my work, beating them in the game, etc.  I integrated into the culture instead of complaining about it because I wanted to be part of that culture.

Nerds don’t give a fuck about gatekeeping if you accept the culture and prove you’re earnest about being involved in the hobby.  Nerds in this period were always meritocratic, they wanted to test your nerdiness to prove you belonged there and nothing else.

There are two separate movies being made where Superman is black. Both She-Ra and He-Man now have female protagonists. And Johnny Deep got cancelled for being abused by his wife.

You don’t think maybe the culture’s gone overboard on this political correctness thing?

Don’t let people make fun of you for liking japanese culture.

I am living in japan right now and let me tell ya:

There are people here who can’t speak or understand English who play nothing but Missy elliot and ludacris, even in businesses like housing offices and restaurants.

There are people who have cowboy hats and dead cow skulls in their home because they idolize what they assume American homes are like.

There are people who learn English strictly through music videos and American television shows.

There are entire karaoke bars with english songs often sung by people who have no idea what the lyrics mean.

Japan often takes American shows like the powerpuff girls and make japanese versions of them.

They often mistake common Americans for celebrities. I have been mistaken for Micheal jordan, tiger woods, Shaquille o'neal, Tyler perry, and saddest of all: queen latifa.

The act of sprinkling English into your japanese sentences is considered cute and cool and is popular with teenagers. Bonus points if you happen to use it correctly.

Japanese stores sell shirts with english on them and people buy them not knowing that most of those word combinations are nonsense.

Don’t let someone shame you for singing an anime opening, using japanese in your sentences, wearing clothing with japanese on it, ect. If anything, this is just one more thing that you have in common with them.

Hey remember when sharing cultures was a good thing? Remember when we understood that you don’t have to have a certain skin color to appreciate good food or clothing or celebrations? And that, actually, that brought us together rather than creating a wall of separation between us based on something as stupid as genetics, remember that?!?

This. Is. Abusive.

Men need friends. Men need acquaintances. Men need peers. Men need people to cheer them on and notice their accomplishments and tell them that their hair looks good. Men need inside jokes with their coworkers and friends they can turn to after a hard day. Men need rich social lives and platonic hugs and emotional support from people they aren’t dating.

Men need to be treated like human beings who are capable of honoring their commitments, and not like misbehaving dogs who can’t control themselves unless they are carefully supervised.

As a culture, we’re pretty good about recognizing how important it is for women to have an emotional support network outside of their partner, but we’ve almost gone out of our way to deny that same social support to men. It’s socially acceptable for straight men who maintain close platonic friendships with women to be constantly accused of “cheating”, and yet straight men who form intimate and emotional bonds with other men are still accused of being “gay”. We’ve created a culture where many straight men rely only on their female partner for emotional support, leaving them nowhere to turn if their female partner becomes abusive, controlling or cruel.

A man who isolates his female partner and controls her social media is quickly marked as an abuser. A woman who does the same to her male partner is shrugged off as “just jealous” or even cheered on for “protecting her relationship”. And it’s wrong.

If the thought of your straight male partner having female friends makes you overwhelmed with jealousy, you aren’t ready for a relationship. If you can’t handle the thought of not having access to your boyfriend’s phone, passwords and social media accounts, you are not ready for a boyfriend. If the idea of other women following your boyfriend on social media or complimenting his appearance fills you with rage, you are not ready to date someone seriously. Loving someone means placing trust in them, and wanting to see them happy and supported in all areas of their life.

Love is not control.

Man, I really wish that instead of this weird cultural Blaculaing–where everyone seems determined to take doornail-dead IPs and make them about black people, like that weird-ass Annie reboot where they had to rename Daddy Warbucks, because his very name was just that irrelevant–Hollywood would instead try actually adapting works that were by women and minorities to begin with.

Instead of going “Ha ha, H.P. Lovecraft, now your stories are about black people!”, make a movie out of something Andre Norton wrote. You’d be promoting an author you actually found praiseworthy and making women look good because one of them came up with the cool story you’re telling.

If you really find Lovecraft so abhorrent, why are you adapting him? You’re just making yourselves look creatively bankrupt (because you have to steal ideas from a racist) and him look cool (because his ideas are worthy of adaptation, no matter how much you say “he was mentally ill racist!”).

It’s like we’re in this dumb game of cultural grabass where Hollywood would rather insult a dead author they find distasteful instead of promote an author they like. They’d rather take away a character from ‘wyppo’ than promote a character black people already have. Back before Miles Morales was created, I bet you had more Wokesters wanting Peter Parker to be black than wanting a Black Panther movie.

If any of my European friends have wondered what I meant when I said American’s don’t have a single unified culture, I’m talking about this:

It’s not as extensive as Europe due to shared history, less time, and a (mostly) shared language, but Americans are really, really spread out and have a wide variety of “American cultures“ that compliment, contrast, and conflict with each other.

This is also why a lot of “But this economic/healthcare system works in Germany/Norway/Wherever the fuck!!” arguments don’t work because the country is too damn big and also DIVERSE AS FUCK

And also why a lot of us advocate for state’s rights and are suspicious of the federal government. Beyond Americans just generally being entrenched in individualism, a lot of us dislike it when federal lawmakers (especially those from larger/more powerful states than ours) tell us what we ‘actually’ need without really understanding the conditions and culture we live in.

It’s also why you’ll see a lot of Americans taking the piss with each other over state differences.

This graphic also completely excludes Alaska and Hawaii, but if you want to get real weird and show a cultural difference start adding in the territories.

Adding Alaska would be adding an area from roughly the southwest tip of the Texas silhouette straight through the middle of Germany.

Not to mention that Alaska might as well be a different planet, environment-wise, from the rest of America. They’ve actually only got one city, Anchorage, in the entirety of Alaska. Everything beyond that is technically a large town or, in most cases, a village or a hamlet. The average Alaskan is far more likely than other Americans to be surrounded by wilderness, transport is often harder than on the mainland because of the geography and weather, Alaska even has an altered day-night cycle in some places because it’s just that close to the Arctic.

Also people tend to underestimate just how much of a culture shock it is to move from one region of the country to another.

Not to mention but within 1000 milometers I can drive from the pacific forested north west to the rocky mountains to the deep deserts of the south west and end up in the plains of the mid west. All totally different ecologies with population centers wildly different from each other.

Consider the face that, within its borders, the US contains every single type of environment that exists on Earth. To my knowledge, no other country can make that claim.

Russia can

That one blows my mind, though it’s true.

Russia is pretty damn big, but we don’t tend to think of it as being ecologically diverse.

> a lot of us dislike it when federal lawmakers (especially those from larger/more powerful states than ours) tell us what we ‘actually’ need without really understanding the conditions and culture we live in.

This needs a highlight. For us, having another state on the other end of the country dictate what we should do is like France telling Belgium what to do.

So, in my art history class today, my professor was talking about something that is so fuckin awesome.

These are warrior shields from the Wahgi people of Papua New Guinea. The warriors paint them with imagery meant to symbolize animals who have traits they wish to embody in battle. These depictions are intended to give the person using it the powers of what they’re depicting.

Now. Look at this Wahgi shield:

Hmm. That looks a bit different from the others.

That looks VERY different. Why, it looks like

The Phantom… American comic book character by Lee Falk. And that’s because it is.

The Wahgi people were isolated from the rest of the “modern” world until 1933. They came into contact with WWII service men who shared some aspects of western culture with the tribesmen. In particular, they showed them the comic books they read while shipped out. The Wahgi loved them. In particular, the Wahgi adored the stories of the Phantom, who wasn’t even particularly popular in its home of America.

He is so popular that the few Wahgi who can read english will read the comics out loud in the village center and hold out the pages for everyone to see, so the whole tripe can enjoy them and marvel at the Phantom’s might in battle.

They identify with the Phantom because he came from a jungle territory, like them, wore a mask to fight, like them, and came from a long line of warriors, which the Wahgi, who worshiped their ancestors, deeply respected. Further, despite not really having superpowers, the Phantom is strong, clever, and incredibly fast. He was so fast that his enemies began to believe that he was impervious to bullets and could not be killed.

Therefore, the Wahgi began painting HIM on their shields to invoke HIS abilities in battle. There are TONS of Phantom-Wahgi shields out there.

So, you might think that you’re huge comic book fan, but the Wahgi have taken their Phantom fandom to the next level and have made the Phantom a fucking talisman to carry into battle for strength.

That is pretty fucking cool.