who's a writer and editor and co founder and co host of the popular media criticism podcast two citations needed and so without further ado there let's uh let's just jump right right into it so we're the panel h out and so we're gonna be learning out about the political problems of nerding out so we're and one thing that when we were putting together these little behind the scenes behind the music video for a moment you know we're really kind of like tossing around the idea of like what's historically important right now it really did seem like there's something about the the nerd in this current political moment that seemed really important and cut against a lot of important long standing things about the american consciousness that's really anti intellectual and yet the nerd who sort of nerd right now like why is that important so yeah that's everything there we go i think well first let me say thanks for having me here i'm really excited to talk about nerds and like dunk on nerds and say really horrible things about nerds at a conference called theorizing the web which is like the nerdiest thing i could possibly imagine being a part of so thank you all it's great it's perfect  know in preparation for this panel i was thinking about sort of doing a like a will actually and you know push up my glasses you know the nerd the word nerd didn't really come into vogue me is that that sort of emerged out of the s and then into the s like the pop culture nerd the the nerd that while you know they're socially awkward and not hip and  're funny clothes and talked with it with a silly voice that they are less of the kind of isolated outsider with no friends and rather play their specific nerdy roles in community and in collaboration with other nerds and so rather than yeah being this kind of simply socially awkward outcast there's kind of a communal has has has won by and large and i'm sure you know the other panelists have actually spoken about this and written about this far more eloquently than i that i ever could but but i think what we're seeing now and kind of where i enter this as someone that does political analysis and media criticism a lot is to see how this idea of the nerd which has not only been ascendant but i think has kind of taken control especially when you look at silicon valley and and how important the machines in our hands are to us and our everyday lives and who is now wildung power not only in the form of wealth but the form of political influence know where explainer sites are popping up and big datasets and big data mining cambridge analytic like all these things are very nerdy things that wield tremendous control over how we operate and the way that our politics operate and it kind of gives a glimpse of who winds up being in control and that the nerds who i think in in in the best sense as kind of this this this other eyes community has gained power and rather than rather than fucking up the system has just served the system and has made themselves all powerful without actually doing anything to to to help out others who may have been marginalized along the way basic terms i think i've been thinking about the nerd as someone who privileges facts over people and when i say facts i mean like beliefs that that are sort of manufactured to appear as fact and so i think in the case of the adolescent nerd that leads to the sort of like benign or seemingly benign social isolation isms that are in basically like every teen rom com not being popular not having friends getting picked last for like pickup baseball or whatever do people do pickup baseball or is that i don't know but something that i know vicki has worked a lot on in her writing and that i'm interested in talking about on this are the ways in which those seemingly benign forms of social isolation have accumulated and led to an elision of feeling alone and being oppressed i think i've also been thinking about nerd um and this is something that we talked about sort of in preparation for the panel in relation to fandom and i think for me fandom has been a sort of helpful analog or corollary for thinking about the nerd i think in its ideal for fandom sort of like marks a like deviant sexual alignment with an ideology or person or object and i mean deviant in the sense that if you're a fan if you're someone's fan you're sort of  you're irrationally giving them access to your privacy even though they're a stranger so if i say like i'm a rihanna fan i'm saying i like her music but i'm also saying that her lyrics speak like for me or to me like if she's like sex with rihanna is amazing i'm like sex with rihanna is amazing and so i think like fandom is sort of a is it's well thanks everybody again and thank you too i think like i really like that definition about privilege infects over people and so i think like what i'm why i got interested other than the fact that like i'm in nerdy subcultures  when i got interested in it was the role of the nerd particularly actually i started paying a lot of attention just before gamergate anyone who was like a gamer in nerd communities like saw the alt right coming for years and like we were like sounding alarms and like no one paid attention and in fact gamergate was totally victorious and the people who were i don't know if you remember gamergate but there was like this sort of organized online harassment of queers people of color and women movement you know student activism the the peace movement all the stuff that really shook the foundations as that collapses the nerd appears like especially in reaganite america as like the actual victim of oppression that like white people can relate to you know like white people in the suburbs can like watch revenge of the nerds and be like yeah like i also like like computers like i probably deserve to be aggrieved and oppressed and so they very actively like they about at one point um is a fandom and over a devotion to star wars literally the most popular most successful movie of all time that like when it came out and like liking that like makes you an outcast like it's a pretty suspect program so like what's what's actually going on for the nerd culturally is that they are appropriating this thing that is the most mass the most popular and they're saying this is my identity and because i identify with this interest like my oppression is equivalent to other political oppressions and it's a way of basically invisible izing those those well we'll get into that more of them so yeah so that absolutely rock solid foundation that we really can't separate like vicky said like reaganite america from the nerd as it's like necessary core like the other side of the coin you're so but what maybe some people eight colonial apparatus right like how the hell do those two things and they actually inform each other because it really does actually seem like they do like there's something about this aggrieved status by taking like something that is accessible to everyone and saying that is the working right now to to undergird both fascism and of militant liberalism right he's like like what you're saying about the wonk is is also really tangent really close to this and like all of the  things yeah i guess like you sort of put your finger out like nerd nerd um is the first columbus thing you know they're sort of like arriving and they're saying like we discovered this this is our culture you know this like you know i mean maybe in some points in the  s some of that culture was a little subculture all but now like the marvel is the movies like comic books and like video games are bigger than movies like nerd culture is the mainstream it's the most mainstream but it's this move of acting like because there are social situations in which it's non normative to be super committed to those things sort of then like that like is that is an equivalent subject position to so like that's colonial in to the degree that it's like it's like you know you you sort of settler colonialism is about like sort of arriving somewhere putting the people the indigenous people down by force with genocide and then saying like the ho it's so horrible that these like indigenous people have disappeared it's so sad what's happened oh like we are so we owe everything to them and their community their culture and also appropriating their their culture at the same time being like yeah like we invented hummus you know you didn't know that that's exactly you know i think that there's this there's this great thing that kind of you we've we've  all been talking about which is which is that the nerd culture not really being fringe in its inception and it's just the obsession with it that kind of makes makes it more  exclusionary and so you know i mean through seventy five percent of led zeppelin songs are about lord of the rings like this this is the this is not a nerdy thing in general it's just how you how you actually interact with that what it means to you how it kind of symbolizes yourself and your interests and your identity i think becomes that kind of linchpin of of what what changes a fan to a nerd or what's the difference between a geek and a nerd which i think there's been a lot of discussion about that you know let's say a geek is someone that is kind of more aligned with that with that obsessive fandom they're really into the authenticity of a thing surrounding that thing knowing all the facts  and the and the minutiae and the trivia but a nerd kind of practices the thing that they love so you know a like a you can have a music geek who like you know is obsessed with whatever radio d but then a music nerd is someone who like probably plays a lot of instruments like actually does that thing and i think you can kind of parse those those terms but the the nerd has kind of appropriator and then practitioner of of these things is i think really really important to understand and and and kind of then how the how the internet like how the web and the rise of the web and th ubiquity of it has then flattened i think a lot of the a lot of those signifiers in certain ways so that knowing how many bullets are on chuy's vandal ear like you could you could google it right now so it kind of it removes like the superiority of that intellect of that of that i did the research on this i've seen that so many times that i know i know that you don't know that that's how much i care about this thing and so the internet kind of flattens all that makes everyone be able to just look up the minutia and so there needs to be other ways for nerds to kind of coalesce around maybe the same things maybe other things and basically divide and conquer that way so that so that they wind up being you know just as aggrieved just as victimized even though everyone has the same information now but their obsession about something can be the difference maker yeah i think  a good corollary to like the fascist nerd or the nerd that believes himself to be oppressed is like the liberal nerd and something that i became really interested in last year or the ways in which nerd logic was sort of like co opting popular critique after trump's inauguration they were sort of like two running catalogs in media one was like a catalog of all of the people that had been harmed by the material violence like enacted and trump's name and the other catalog was like a catalog of these of trumps fuck ups basically like words he had misspelled or that his administration had misspelled  facts that were incorrect and that latter kind of catalog really existed without any kind of reference to the former and they these were like posts that were on like vice huffington post like all of these like liberal media outlets and some of them were in jest they were meant to be funny others were sort of shameful but they all kind of called or the president to act  to like adhere to adhere to the logic of decorum which is sort of like it's like a it's like a gotcha gotcha logic that i think nerds rely upon and i think i mean it there  also like as these like catalogs were proliferating a proliferation of statements like accuracy matters facts matter words matter which are in my mind sort of like the grossest appropriation of the language of like black lives matter to ensure the efficiency of a state that like ensures that black lives worsen but yeah so that's maybe like and i know that you've thought about this in your work too like how long cell articles and sites and i find them actually very important i think you you actually kind of do need to do that but oftentimes fact checks work to reinforce the  information and that people actually don't go to fact checks and then have like a new lease on the truth that is not actually what winds up happening it winds up reinforcing all of these all of these bad things people then revert kind of like more into their silos and be like you know it's you know if the if the facts don't kind of comport with your worldview you just either ignore them or you change the facts and so no i think that that that that winds up being really critical in terms of this the kind of wonka fication of politics now and and i think like i think i think maybe one of the reasons that one of the reasons that nazi nerds have basically so managed to jam up the liberal mind and make liberals panic is because liberals are used to disdaining the flyover states they anti intellectual you know country fried racist you know with a confederate flag underwear you know and you know and two teeth or whatever the fucking class it's nonsense they believe is happening where all the republican voters are so rich anyway and and i guess like so so the way that like the alt right like gets like you know you get people at the new york times to call them so dapper is because the alt right doesn't they insist actually that they have the facts they marshal all of the pseudoscience and all of this conviction and they spend they spent all their time like they grew out of chan and out of these internet forums really built in trolling people and the best way to troll someone is to make them get into an argument with you that you have no stakes in because if you don't care about the argument you can say anything and the person who cares about what what it means will just get more and more frustrated so they are incredible rhetorician z of a certain kind which is that they can argue infinitely and find facts and do all these sort of strategies to elongate an argument so that you can't win and liberals if someone's making an argument then like there must be some like well everyone agrees that facts are important so we should hear them out because like if if they're wrong then the facts will prove them wrong and it's like no the whole thing is marshaling wrong facts in a way that sounds like you you're you're right i guess so yeah so i think that that's like that interaction between reactionary politics and a kind of n y fact based truth is really has become really apparent and both sides are totally inadequate to the moment obviously one thing that that this definitely reminds me of that ties a lot of this together is a whitney phillips a wonderful book this is why we ca nice things a history of trolling where you know spoiler alert for this book that you should get anyway is that you're like trolling is not antithetical to popular culture or mainstream media it's actually at its logical conclusion  logical extreme conclusion right which is that you you just like you push things forward so hard and you that you you you break them and you make them sort of like a trap arse of the original source content specifically because you cynically sort of don't actually care about the topic you care about people noticing it and generating discussion around it all that you know like but the the msnbc editor calls it you know engagemen whatever whereas the troll just calls it you know like something really terrible i'm not gonna use the words a thought that they'll use it for right but it's terrible yeah so is i think that that's another way that the that like these things scale extremely quickly right there you go from just like arguing about about pop culture directly up to justifying war with iran or something right is that is that it just like turns into what well i can marshal not only facts but  engage in powerful meaning that that that feels right and then those those facts just sort of take on a life of their own specific because they fit so nicely into this emergent political common sense yeah i mean there's a reason why the new york times op ed page is just hiring professional trolls and and you know saying what you know that's the reason kevin williamson got hired at the atlantic it's like you know oh he's a really compelling writer i mean i disagree because he's racist and wants to you know kill all women but he's beautiful prose and so yeah i think that kind of this this professional trolling especially of in many ways liberal sensibilities let alone leftist but you know this sort of it's really just gonna wind up being a fight over facts and that's this that's th ruse where you know and i think you see that on on vox and on five hundred and thirty eight a lot that it's really just if you can get out the best facts then all the problems go away because it's really just a matter of plugging in the right equation and therefore equity materializes as opposed to actually seeking justice and see and actually using actually david you wrote wonderfully about this do this and you lay this out in a wonderful kind of you know interactive you know forty maps that explain why black lives matter and you do that and you publish it unbox and you can go all the way explaining how powerful movements arise and then the end of it is which is why we need to like elect mainstream democrats and get incremental change and there's no reckoning with how justice actually happens  because there's no interest in the in the but by the people who were who are leaning on this kind of evidence based fact based view of the world that you know like they don't want things taken away from them for justice which would be a good first step and so therefore that's never really what they're arguing for they're arguing for this is how we got here and this is how we stay here yeah i remember when when trump issued the immigration ban and liberals were like like gotcha like none of the none of the countries that are listed on the ban have citizens that have killed like us citizens but obviously like the like extension of that is that these sorts of bands like could be good if only the state wheel that them accurately  yeah and i think like like to that answer to your point about social movement i think the alt right has been really successfully historicized in a vacuum and by fascists in socialist clothing like nagel as like coming from coming from a reaction to tumblr politics you know were to identity politics and that there's been this moment where everyone's been too nice and liberal and we care too much about trans people and that's what and like we care about their bathroom and like that's why there are nazis again and like that's what happened in the s to like obviously and you know they talk about they talk about black lives matter like it started as hashtag but it was a hashtag but it really started as a movement with a quick trip on fire and like there's been these like we're in a period of incredibly heightened social movement the highest the most heightened social movement most revolutionary period potentially in in the in the west certainly for forty years and the the nerd is a very is is being marshaled right now because the nerd is an ascendant cultural form but  in europe the fascists are more traditional sort of street nazis that that that we're used to seeing depictions of but they're there too and modi's modi's movement in india isn't particular nerdy  is very alpha male you know so there's this fascist moment happening everywhere and it's structural and it has to do with a collapse of the nation state and this crisis in capital and the nerd is just the way that that's appearing in the u s right now and i think the reason that that's happening is precisely because as you're saying the nerd has become the central liberal form of truth and so now it's being weaponized for the far right and liberals utterly pathetically useless and in the face of it yeah it's like it's like the the the you know nerd is like the new the new like tony montana right it's a new scar it's like first you get the money right and then you get the women then you get the power and so or the other way around but either way either way at the top of this of this pyramid is now the nerd you know they're the they're the billionaires they're the they're citing yemen and creating you know the the worst cholera epidemic in history and so and and yet you know pictures of him with lloyd blankfein and and bill gates you know there's there's no contradiction there there that it's that's exactly right it's not oh my god how can they do that don't they know what what he's doing it's like hoarsely fucking nobody's doing like the right that they're all doing that they're all doing that the reason you know saudi planes can be refueled in midair is because like the u s is making that happen and who's making it like you know and so  you know let's not let's not also think about the nerd as this tragically sort of misunderstood and now mislabeled entity you know i mean nerds created enables the kind of frat boy power and it well the the nerd foundation so we have like about five more minutes before we're going to turn to note before before we then turn to to audience questions but so one thing that i just wanted i want to i thought you were good your then you said it's the united states that lets you refuel planes in midair but what i thought you were you're gonna finish that sentence is you need engineers right and you need you need people who actually technically know how to make the like the world lit erally changed the world in the image of their creations right a citation verrilli oh right but but the but the thing it's interesting i think is that you know when you look at  i taught for quite a while and went to graduate school at an engineering college and there you know nerd right and they're you know they're it's like a especially aggrieved status of boys as like very deserving of a heterosexual sex it's everywhere and and and this is sadly relevant right now giving what what happened in toronto right and but but that is actually very directly connected to like the ability to carry out these big fascist projects because you need the ubermensch right you need the power of technology make the will of a few people known lot many people will refuse those orders and so if you can create drones and a lot of tecna and and and networks that that don't resist right you can actually do a lot of fascist things very very quickly and easily and you can and and it requires a nerd that is angry at people at actually marginalized people but then also when they are attacked on their the merits of their work they can say i'm just following orders right so so those are the moments with like they you could actually if they are actually agreed they would have solidarity with other people but they don't it's specifically because their agency is always curtailed to to that aggrieved status right yeah i think when you're a part of an imagined community without sympathetic or material ties to other people it's very easy to feel like your personal hurt is an injustice and so in the case of the stuff in in toronto the condition of wanting sex and not having it i've seen now circulate as like a problem of access and the resolution is suppose is like assume to be one of redistribution when and when you think of what is actually being redistributed like it's it's fat it is totally fascist and scary yeah you can't answer it with sex work right no you can't like you you can't you can't stop being in cell with sex work although that seems like it would like in like you are actually volunteering i'm afraid like you can find a sex what you know and so that crackdown going on right now on sex workers on backpage and all that is totally connected to the to the aggrieved confusing like it seems contradictory but it's the same impulse i think right and so then the reaction winds up killing a lot of people  in immigrant community in toronto where you know which is i think majority asian and iranian even so i mean you yeah you kind of see that see that manifesting in in very thank you all very much for your discussion tonight one of the things that you kind of started to talk about at the beginning of a kind of lost a little bit of a threat of i felt was the gendered and racialized power dynamics within nerdom and the ways in which that plays out you you do spend a lot of time talking about the ways in which the appropriation of oppressed dynamics by you know the dominant power structure to take on the the aggrieved status has a certain power valence but we can't allow ourselves to really forget about the flip side of that which is those of us who do not align perfectly with the power dynamic structure who do find ourselves within actually within like communities in which our interests are being appropriated our interests are our culture's are being made nerdily cool being made chic in that way so i was wondering if you all could spend a little time discussing that a bit yeah i'd be happy thank you for that question i think that's really important and i think yeah i mean i'm i'm familiar with this because like i am an incredibly nerdy community's like i really like i spend a lot of my time on video game websites and playing online games i play like i play dota which if any of you know about is like one of the most toxic online communities like be a trans girl like in this game is like hey it's horrifying honestly so yeah so it's it is very like it's it's a real so i think there's two cool there's two answers to that question and one of them is that it's also true that some straight white boys have horrible experiences of bullying because they're nerdy and it may be because they're fat or they're seen as effeminate but there there is real violence that comes out of this it's not a pure image and then also within those gamergate you know gamergate was this was it was a horrible lost because there was actually in two thousand and fourteen this incredible flourish non white queer gaming and game criticism community it was awesome it was really exciting people are rising the top of it like it was there was there was a lot happening there was a lot of creativity and it and it was it was smashed it was organized it was there was an organized smashing of that of that cultural production and now all the insights from that have been appropriate as you say so so it's not just the relation of the nerds to the non nerd but it's also they prat nerds practiced on themselves before they became the alt right before they started doing mass shootings they were getting rid of and you know all the interesting those people and and that continues obviously i mean i mean there are a lot uh if you go on like left leaning like gaming sites like everyone is trans i don't know what it is like i don't know why we like it but like there's like so much like gender i think cuz you can experiment with gender i first learned the first time i like before i even really knew what was going on i found myself like customizing female avatars for hours and like saying i was a woman in chat rooms like about video games before i knew what the hell i was doing so there's a lot of like in those spaces there is a lot of like room for creativity and excitement the culture itself isn't indict you can't indict the culture itself nerves precisely find something that's interesting and they claim mastery over it they claim expertise over it and they push everyone else out and that's the sort of that's the reactionary nerdy move but they're i mean most of my favorite writers and thinkers  some of my best friends are like definitely nerds you know no no no i am too and eighteen do you see an evolution from baby boomers to generation z do you feel like older people are more locked into a self conception of nerdiness that they have or is their fluidity and in other words how do you think the relationship of the nerds they're dirty is to their nerdiness changes between generations so there was actually a panel twenty four hours ago exactly right here on this stage that talked about how generations are bullshit and how they're all just this this marketing construct which i think is is only partially true  but like i think the baby boomers are actually a generation i think where we are now is maybe less so but i think rather than boomers having a conception of nerdiness which would be like i don't like gary cooper and ball of fire like that's not that nerdy like that's just really smart and also good looking but but rather generation x i think has a far more sort of pop culture conception of the nerd and and hopefully that's breaking down in that sort of stereotypical way in the revenge of the nerds way  in the in the wargames way but but i think that now it's it's it's been altered and that's you know i think a lot of what a lot of what we've been talking about how i so i told myself i wasn't destructive vicious ideas but with intellect and and and with you know smarts and so i think that there's just a new way of kind of understanding what a nerd is now  because the the generation x nerds of nerds of old are our you know running the world so there's a there's a different there's a different dynamic at  so i had a general question about the implications of other bodies within the nerd space as you guys have constructed or as you all have constructed it so it seems to me given the conversation that nerds have become this kind of problematic force that props up the kind of frat boy image so my question is are all members of the nerd community implicated in this and the reason i ask this is we can think about alternative manifestations of the nerds say within black black hip hop culture you know i'm gonna go back in the lab and create a sick beat so on and so forth right the use of that kind of nerd imagery within hip hop culture to alternatively present what it is to be a nerd so my question is generally are we tape painting with to broader the brunt of a brush when talking about the label nerd or is there possibilities for nerds that come out of marginalized spaces to use that term in ways that does not align with the construct that you guys have created or you all have created at this point yeah i mean something that i was thinking about in preparation for this panel too was like the proliferation of like blurred as as like as a term and as like an associative identity but i think like the difference and the reason why that i mean i know david had prepared a question to that was like is the term or identity nerd like keeping at this point and for me i care less about the like terminology and something that feels very different to me about the communities that have convened around something like the that they're like real communities and they like i don't know you can go on go online and see people that are like engaging with each other and talking to each other and so i think yeah your question is a great one and we definitely have painted a very broad broad stroke like in this conversation or maybe it's been like myopic but yeah yeah yeah i think i think like yeah the the the there's no such thing as like white culture it doesn't exist so like even nerdness is like stolen from black culture like i think like it's pretty clear that like it's it's this attempt to like this attempt to be to be like the reason that i described so much of a sort of appropriative sort of like position is precisely because i think there is no content to it actually like all it can do is like take something from other cultures that are actually in struggle and that are actually you know oppressed and so i think like there's definitely space for people i think i think like if if if cool i like right on nerds had been better organized in two thousand and fourteen and like we had like fought back like if there had been more tamping down of like gamergate like maybe the alt right would have been way less powerful in two thousand and sixteen i think it's definitely possible for those communities like emerge and organize and like be relevant but i like i think i'm really talking about just the way that like i've been talking about with a very broad brush the way the nerd as it is envisioned as a straight white male has been used here but lots of people myself included fall outside that definition but are nerdy and i think it's it's not it's not about evacuating the territory it's not about you know saying oh like nerds is fascist forever and like you can't be nerdy like that's it but it's a way of just pointing out a way that that that kind of stuff is organizing itself now i think is what's important to me and i'll live from  men get to be the experts and fascist so like life like the way the world operates no i think i think that's great i think i i don't think i have a revelatory reaction to that i think that that is that that's a really good question and i think that that i think that that that set up that that dynamic is is is often true i think just just briefly the kind of gender issues within  i guess yeah like i think like in some ways like for my thinking in my thinking like fandom the thing that sort of positive about fandom is quite them like it's about desiring what maya was saying basically there's this sort of you know you think of like beatlemania and all these like sixteen year old girls like screaming at the top of their lungs like terrifying everyone in america or whatever which is like pretty cool and like i think like so so in a certain way like nerd um is a very masculine response to interest and i think like it is important that like nerd like largely i don't know what well it's the sex that it largely manifest as gender aggrievement in cell you know that it nerds tend to say race isn't an issue and then they tend to be organized misogynists so they tend to kind of want to be post racial i mean unless they're like literal nazis the tenants are to be like like like they pretend that race isn't a problem but that gender they're the actual oppressed ones so gender is the hi thank you for this panel i have a question which is inspired but by a discussion i had in the break around nerdom and d politicizing political questions so thinking about the mark zuckerberg hearing especially the first one came across as even though he couldn't answer a lot of technical question here's this nerd experts and there are ignorant politicians do we really want these politicians to regulate if they don't even understand the internet yet when you're a policy nerd select lots of areas like food policy foreign well they're really rich and powerful so they get to say but no i mean i guess like i think my you were you were talking about this early i don't know if you want to get into it but i think you should answer i'm putting you on the spot no but i guess i think like i think like i think i think like the reason that like tech tech stuff like gets away with with that kind of nerd is precisely because it's so well in america they like we don't trust politicians in america very much it's a it's a it is one of the only truly good american tradition is to hate politicians and i think like there's that combined with like a kind of yeah sense they're like these things are like we love our phone or internet and everything but but then so we sort of we have trusted them to manage our social media accounts so like we like we wouldn't trust you know the government the senate to do it so i think we've already done that level of trust and so it's easy to then in the face of  hi so i guess maybe to tie in with a couple prior questions here first you know there's i'm not sure your name fully to my left talked about how there are cases where you know  being finding nerd them at some point it comes out of you know actual pain and personal experiences and that's a refuge to a certain extent and in the em you know effective media to work with and people to talk to and all of that was to a certain extent pushed away by a certain degree of like toxic masculinity where if if you can apply technology towards money or obtaining power then that is you know very much encouraged whereas if you're doing it to be creative or you know effective that is certainly discouraged and that has a crazy dynamic especially with another person who had a question about you know women nerds how at that same point in time women interacting with computers and technology were word strongly discouraged across the board just as technology became a mode of gaining power and potentially you know influence and and and money and things like that so i guess that's more of a comment than a i'll respond to your comment no i think that i think that that's that that's exactly right and and and that there's there's an aspect to not not not completely but an aspect to nerdiness and and also facility with with technology that i think is often the domain of the already privileged i mean to be able to delve that deeply into something to have the time and the resources to not only in the in the earlier days of technology when everything was even more expensive than it is now is relatively that you know to kind of be an obsessive fan of things takes time again takes the the the privilege of having a lot of things in your life or your society or your community already taken care of where where you're not having to fight bigger battles for yourself but but can rather sort of delve into something i think there are also ways where that's contradicted where a way to delve into something is a way to fight that battle but but i think that once you sort of recognize that technology and especially the internet really did enable and facilitate a different kind of community building and collaboration and ending the isolation of what it may have been either honestly felt to be or perceived to be a nerd and an outcast that that then built up its its own toxic community is not always but that again once the once the nerd ascended to the top of the power pyramid through that medium through through technology gaining wealth gaining power and influence what you know what was a vicki talks about this very very wonderfully in in in her essay about about nerds and may i can hand it off and in terms of the the  the climax of the film revenge of the nerds of speaks to this i think very directly how once once the nerds win it's all about humiliating those who humiliated them it's not about a new way of operating in the world it's about getting back at who oppressed you and now you're just the oppressors like that like and being fine with that oh yeah i guess that sums it up well i guess i would just say that like i think like what your question made me think of is the fact that the word computer used to mean a woman who did math  and computers themselves and as a masculine domain is an act of appropriation by men of of women's work probably a good segue from my question can you talk about the way that nerds compete with each other particularly within their own communities for the sort of status of kind of supreme nerd and i would be very interested in thinking about that within the realm of the academy right and and that is doubly true in the academy where instead of instead of finding out how to make the what people inside the academy would think is like the the production like the factory of new and radical ideas it is in fact it just made this like elaborate rude rube goldberg apparatus to like test out how many people can listen to each other about your your one new idea right and and and that is there like this like fantastic system of one of one offs winship which sounds like a very nerdy way of competing right it's just like let's throw data to make sure like i can from like three de points know how much better i am than you right so i think that's a pretty quick answer to a question and i think we're i think we're at time but is there anyone else that wants to jump in real fast no okay then i think that's it sit in since i have the microphone this is very convenient