Dear old nerds, what were the old days like?

[Something Amyss]

There's one last thing I should mention that might be of significant importance when you consider my story of how we were treated. My high school? Columbine. Yes, THE Columbine High School that became the site of the nation's worst school shooting in '99, four years after I graduated. Sure enough, the shooters were two outcast kids whose goal on that day was to kill as many jocks as possible. Nothing in the world excuses their disgusting actions, but I'm pretty sure that the catalyst of their hatred was that they suffered the same mistreatment from the jocks and the school administration as my high school friends and I did. So while the talking heads on TV were blaming Marilyn Manson, The Matrix, and video games, I sat back and seethed about how fingers were being pointed everywhere except for the upper-middle-class bullies, their parents who did nothing to stop them, and the complicit upper-middle-class school administration who worked tirelessly to further persecute the persecuted.

Oh, Columbine.

Several of my friends (and my brother) were still in High School when that happened. And they got a ton of crap at school, including from administrators. And the funny thing is, they got that sort of crap for being the outcasts who everyone wanted to give shit. You know, rather than address the bullies, or something.

I wrote an LTE on the subject that we were creating the same scenario here (which oddly enough, got the attention of my one-day boss, because it got me a lot of negative attention for "threatening") which may have actually made things worse, because people missed the message of "if you keep doing this, something will break."

Nothing really did break, but the number of people bringing guns into the school went up drastically. And no lesson was learned except to lock down the school.

I empathised with the environment because I was the child of pacifists and got a lot of crap simply because I didn't fight back. Then I just stopped one day, fought back, and immediately was in trouble for winning the fight. Suddenly, there was talks about suspension, whereas before it was "our hands are tied" when I'd go home with black eyes and bloody lips. Suddenly, I was an evil, despicable thug for having the nerve, the temerity to raise a hand in self defense. I was so scared my parents were going to be piiiiiiiissed, but apparently, they were even more fed up with the crap than I was.

Suffice to say, I get why kids might crack in that environment.

Though in my case, this didn't so much have to do with being a nerd. I mean, I was roleplaying, but I was roleplaying with football and lacrosse players. Well, and the pyromaniac, and my ex, and a bunch of other people, but still.

 

[Something Amyss]

I remember wanting Ghost in the Shell subbed and having to buy the special edition which included two tapes; one dubbed, the other subbed. There was also one time where I got one episode of Gunsmith Cats, and both the dubbed and the subbed version were on the same tape back-to-back. I didn't even know this at first untill watching the entire episode and realizing it went right back to the start of the episode, except now everyone was speaking Japanese.

I didn't even know GITS had a subbed release at the time. I lived in a small town, though, and even when sites like Amazon came along it'd be a while before I trusted internet shopping, so it took me a whil to start finding this stuff.

I still have the VHS somewhere, I bet.

I think I had a VHS or two that had the sub on after the dub, but I don't remember what it was.

 

[gorfias]

The mainstream public had no idea what the difference was between Star Trek and Star Wars. "Star Wars? That's the thing with Darth Vader, yeah? Live long and prosper!" Nobody had heard of Battlestar Galactica.

I just discussed this with a fellow geek at Boston Comicon yesterday.

Unreal how hard it was to make Star Trek in the day. Spock was considered too strange and likely to poison the show's limited anticipated success. Too "kid" stuff. But Star Wars was the first, mind blowing shot across the bow of the "establishment." Battlestar Glaactica was a direct response to the type of the money potentional they realized was involved in this industry. Before then, the most for which we could hope was stuff, decent enough, like "Logan's Run."

I have to write, back in the day, I had thousands of comics and when living in a military barracks, most other enlistees were not embarrassed to gather in my room and read them.

I owned a Commodore 64 and we'd gather and play games like Ultima 3 on it, each person contributing their ideas.

We used to play "Champions" which is Dungeons and Dragons but with Superheroes.

Being a nerd then (late 70s, early 80s) wasn't so much a shame for me, but we really did not rule the culture to the extent to which we do today.

 

[Apl_J]

Things were simple and straightforward.

Note, that doesn't necessarily mean better.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I remember wanting Ghost in the Shell subbed and having to buy the special edition which included two tapes; one dubbed, the other subbed. There was also one time where I got one episode of Gunsmith Cats, and both the dubbed and the subbed version were on the same tape back-to-back. I didn't even know this at first untill watching the entire episode and realizing it went right back to the start of the episode, except now everyone was speaking Japanese.

I didn't even know GITS had a subbed release at the time. I lived in a small town, though, and even when sites like Amazon came along it'd be a while before I trusted internet shopping, so it took me a whil to start finding this stuff.

There was this cool store in the city near to where I lived called Future Zone, which primarily sold games, but also a whole host of other awesome geeky shit, like anime. They'd always get a nice selection of new anime every month or so. But they're gone now though.

I hardly ever go to the city anymore since all the best shops went out of business. This one shop had a freaking mammoth skeleton right in the middle of the store spanning two floors. Buying anime, Ico, and Onimusha 2 while in the presence of that is one of those precious memories you'll never forget. =,)

 

[accipitre]

There were a lot fewer social justice warriors, and nobody complained about how you couldn't play a female in game, or how trans people weren't being represented.

 

[GamemasterAnthony]

I was kind of a second hand nerd. I got into a lot of the nerdy stuff because my brother was into that while he was in high school. I got into chess, D&D, computers...and it pretty much grew on me as a result.

I eventually got into my own D&D group in high school when I met someone in chess club. As it happens, this guy had SERIOUS nerd cred. His father, as it turned out, was friends with one Dave Arneson. Yes...THAT Dave Arneson! One of the CO-CREATORS of D&D! He had even done playtesting on the game as well.

I eventually came into my own level of geekdom when I wrote my first fanfic...which eventually became a full series that became one of the most popular on the net.

But going back to the older days...I have to say, I feel those were simpler times. I think the preweb era made it so there wasn't such a critical eye on the nerd class back then. Oh sure, there were the usual crazies who felt D&D was demonic...but there wasn't such a "under the microscope" feel like today.

Of course today...well, with Klingon being taught in universities, Jedi being an official religion in Australia, and MoMA in NYC having an entire wing devoted to video games...I'd say it has finally come to pass that is the geek that shall inherit the Earth.

Wait...shall? WE ALREADY HAVE! *grins evilly*

 

[Hero of Lime]

Well, I certainly am not the oldest nerd being only 21, but I do remember the time where being a gamer was an unpopular nerdy thing. Back in grade school my two friends and I were the only people who played games in my class, so naturally we got some flack from the more athletic guys for wasting our time. We weren't severely bullied, it was more of a case of people telling us to get lives, stop playing those dumb games etc. I remember when I made a Facebook account years later, I looked up some old classmates and the one who gave us the most grief was now playing games himself.

When I got to high school, I think that was when games became more mainstream. Stuff like Call of Duty, Pokemon, and other popular games were liked by most of the guys and some of the girls. The most popular guys, twin brothers, were huge Nintendo fans, and I befriended them because we both loved games.

Being in college now, finding out someone is a gamer, nerdy person is as easy as taking a few steps.

 

[gim73]

Buying anime on VHS for 30 bucks a pop, which usually included maybe two or three episodes. Nearly all dubbed obviously. The only times you could get a sub was when it was somekind of super special edition, or it was a title not easily marketable in America, like Urusei Yatsura, or Kimagure Orange Road. Pickings were slim. With the advent of DVDs it was like a giant secret vault burst open.

Also, buying gaming magazines and checking if they had free demos. I remember finding one that had the demo for Shadow of the Colossus and going completely apeshit. As I road home I protected that magazine like it was the crown jewel.

I never got bullied for liking games though, and by the time I got into anime I was already out of high school.

I remember it being a lot easier to get SUBS than DUBS. Sure, if you get anime from a company like AnimEigo, it is subbed. Let's not forget physical fansubs and bootlegs. DVDs started coming into their own in the early 2000's, but by then the fanbase was getting larger and that had a whole lot of effect on how much we got. Not to say that all DVDs were an improvement. Some groups kept right on putting 3 or 4 episodes on a DVD like they would a VHS tape.

 

[Something Amyss]

I hardly ever go to the city anymore since all the best shops went out of business. This one shop had a freaking mammoth skeleton right in the middle of the store spanning two floors. Buying anime, Ico, and Onimusha 2 while in the presence of that is one of those precious memories you'll never forget. =,)

Okay, I just want to point out how jealous I am. I basically bought my comics and cards and the like from a shop in an attic.

 

[Phasmal]

How old is an old nerd, though?

I mean, I got bullied for liking games (and got asked if I was 'lost' in game shops)- but that wasn't that long ago. I'm only 24.

No idea how old you have to be to be an 'old nerd'.

But in my growing-up nerdiness, it was more...

Well, it felt like your inner-circle of nerds were the best friends ever and the world just thought you were a loser and didn't like you.
Now it seems like the world is celebrating nerds and we're busy hating each other.

 

[McElroy]

Well, I certainly am not the oldest nerd being only 21, but I do remember the time where being a gamer was an unpopular nerdy thing. Back in grade school my two friends and I were the only people who played games in my class, so naturally we got some flack from the more athletic guys for wasting our time. We weren't severely bullied, it was more of a case of people telling us to get lives, stop playing those dumb games etc. I remember when I made a Facebook account years later, I looked up some old classmates and the one who gave us the most grief was now playing games himself.

Where did you live? This is the early to mid 2000s we're talking about, isn't it? All boys (and I expect most of the girls too, but I didn't hang out with them outside of school) played games at least sometimes. Nobody got any flak for that. These geek(ish) kids got way more often teased for sucking at sports (which is only fair, you should've seen them ). Great time to be a gaming kid since parents weren't really keen on following game age ratings yet. Heck, my parents were really strict on that and didn't let me watch K15-rated movies on my own before I really turned fifteen, but didn't really complain about me getting GTA: San Andreas when I was still thirteen. Hah. and now I'm completely screwed up

 

[Pink Gregory]

We all played vidyagaems, far as I was aware, and I was born in 1991 in the english southwest.

But we don't have the whole Jock/Nerd high school 'It's my party and I'll cry if I want to let's go down to the malt shoppe he's the LEADER OF THE PACK american graffiti SENIOR PROM gag me with a spoon gross! goodbye sandra dee what was I talking about again?

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

But we don't have the whole Jock/Nerd high school 'It's my party and I'll cry if I want to let's go down to the malt shoppe he's the LEADER OF THE PACK american graffiti SENIOR PROM gag me with a spoon gross! goodbye sandra dee what was I talking about again?

I think you were about to describe the first 10 minutes of the classic '80s horror movie, Night of the Creeps, but I could be wrong.

 

[Muspelheim]

Oddly enough, there never was a clear divide between acceptable or nerdy interests in my enviroment. Sci-fi, films and games were all accepted interests for everyone. However, I'm comparatively young and from a different country which might explain the difference in experiences.

Of course, there was some bullying, but there were never really a clear "jock prowling nerds" divide. Thinking of it, there never were any clear nerd groups either. Everyone was in the same boat, mostly, with varying degrees of slightly geeky interests in their spare time. Similarly to how there weren't really any jocks, everyone had varying degrees of interests in sports, and that was that. The only mandatorium I can remember is that everyone had to have a favourite football team.

Hell, when WoW came out, at least half of the lads either played it or had tried it out. It's a rather amusing memory, smoking on the courtyard after the gym hour (like Big Bad Boys) and talking about World of Warcraft raids.

I've later found out that there were many places were the traditional ideas on cool and nerdy still were in place. I think it mostly came down to what type of school you went to. In my case, they were often rather mixed enviroments, with different classes and ethnicities together, while more singular schools tended to have a less liberal attitude towards spare time interests. While I'm not particularly nerdy, I do feel that I dodged one hell of a bullet there.

While I never experienced it directly, I'm happy that the winds have begun to turn, and that someone's interests in their spare time isn't a carte blanche to kick his teeth in during recess anymore.

There were a lot fewer social justice warriors, and nobody complained about how you couldn't play a female in game, or how trans people weren't being represented.

I fail to see how silence is such an ideal. Surely, people talking about a medium is a sign that its growing and isn't under siege the way it once was? When the talk becomes grating at times, there is no need to listen, either.

"Noone complained back in my day" usually isn't indicative of anything good.

 

[Pink Gregory]

But we don't have the whole Jock/Nerd high school 'It's my party and I'll cry if I want to let's go down to the malt shoppe he's the LEADER OF THE PACK american graffiti SENIOR PROM gag me with a spoon gross! goodbye sandra dee what was I talking about again?

I think you were about to describe the first 10 minutes of the classic '80s horror movie, Night of the Creeps, but I could be wrong.

I'm watching the video for Leader of the Pack.

Not exactly James Dean, is he?

 

[Hero of Lime]

Well, I certainly am not the oldest nerd being only 21, but I do remember the time where being a gamer was an unpopular nerdy thing. Back in grade school my two friends and I were the only people who played games in my class, so naturally we got some flack from the more athletic guys for wasting our time. We weren't severely bullied, it was more of a case of people telling us to get lives, stop playing those dumb games etc. I remember when I made a Facebook account years later, I looked up some old classmates and the one who gave us the most grief was now playing games himself.

Where did you live? This is the early to mid 2000s we're talking about, isn't it? All boys (and I expect most of the girls too, but I didn't hang out with them outside of school) played games at least sometimes. Nobody got any flak for that. These geek(ish) kids got way more often teased for sucking at sports (which is only fair, you should've seen them ). Great time to be a gaming kid since parents weren't really keen on following game age ratings yet. Heck, my parents were really strict on that and didn't let me watch K15-rated movies on my own before I really turned fifteen, but didn't really complain about me getting GTA: San Andreas when I was still thirteen. Hah. and now I'm completely screwed up

I lived in southern California, still do actually.

Maybe more kids played games, but not to the extent that they would want it to be known I guess. I guess my classmates were the exception, it just seemed like my friends and I were the only ones who really liked games. We were definitely the nerds of the class for sure, but no one really bullied us, we were just sort of left to our own nerdy devices. That's why it was so weird to enter high school and see that most of my classmates had some sort of nerdy qualities.

 

[briankoontz]

The 1960s were a lot different from the 1980s. Very few people knew what the rare "nerds" were in the 1960s, so they were practically invisible as they worked on their early computers in cloistered and noisy rooms. They were considered bizarre, a kind of circus show freak, by the rare member of the general public even aware of them.

By the 1980s it was clear that nerds were a major threat to reality itself, and this was the decade of oppression that they experienced. This was the last opportunity to avoid a world dominated by computers, virtual reality, the internet, and the emerging global security and surveillance state. The nerds won the battle and produced the world as we know it today.

The 1980s were both scary and exciting for nerds. Nobody bothered to bully nerds in the 1960s because they didn't fear them, and usually didn't even know of their existence, and if they did they had no idea what they were. By the 1980s nerds were much more well known and much more feared. By the end of the decade the battle against the nerds had been lost and the internet and global computerization became inevitable.

People who have only lived in the internet age don't understand just how different life was before you could look up everything on Google. You had to do a lot of thinking for yourself and HAD to have a social life or at least read books just to have some understanding of the world. Information was far more rare and reality was a lot more mysterious.

 

[Little Woodsman]

Ha ha, you want to talk about *old*?? I remember when to experience movies over again at home you had to buy the novelizations that always came out along with the theatrical release. No DVD's. No VHS tapes. "Just" books.

Oddly though, even though I lived in a town with no book stores, I could usually find a decent selection of fantasy/science fiction novels at the local grocery stores and drug stores. That's where I'd buy comic books too.
(I remember going through the roof when I found Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong at the local grocery store....)

I remember using mail-order catalogs to get harder to find books and collectibles.

There was bullying in High School to be certain, but it wasn't based on geek interests. Most of my direct experiences were based on having long hair, not liking football and the fact that a girl that a member of the football team was trying to pursue liked me better than him....

Then when I was about 20 home video penetration became widespread and everything changed.

Then I found out about what we at that time called 'Japanimation' at a science fiction convention, and being hooked. Buying a single hour-long VHS subtitle of Black Magic: M-66 for sixty dollars....

Scouring the local video rental store for hours to find any/all anime available... coming up with things like Little Nemo, Taro- Legend of the Dragon Boy, Unico in the Isle of Magic and similar items. Ordering anime on VHS through them and the fiasco that led to... New store opening, scouring it for anime, finding a few tapes of Bubblegum Crisis and AD Police Files along with the usual assortment of kiddie-fied films, explaining to the staff what they were and having the staff take my phone number and ask if they could call me with questions from their other customers...

Hearing about 'anime web rings' and being temped to join one (I never did)... they were a bizarre phenomenon that sprang up due to the difficulty of obtaining anime. Basically member would form a link of a chain- each member had a person who mailed the successive tapes to them in order, and someone who they then mailed tapes to, and anime of their own to contribute. They would mail the first of their own tapes to the next person on the chain, who would then mail it to the next person and so on until the tape made a full circle and came back to the owner. The owner would then put the tape back on his/her shelf and send the next tape s/he was contributing to the person who was their link.

I remember when you had to join clubs and go to conventions to find/watch a decent amount of anime...

Times have certainly changed for the better, but I do get a little nostalgic about how thrilling it was when I actually found some decent anime.