The King of Queens is the most awesomest sitcom ever! (F__k Patton Oswalt)

You should link to Erik's blog.

"just doesn't gel at all with me, for basic reasons of old people always underestimating young people." <- That.

Does he think everyone's just going to stare at each other for the next few decades?

Kinda funny he doesn't realize the classic pattern - "everything changed for the worse right after I became an adult!" It's just the changing of a certain kind of nerdery into a newer form that fits with the tech of the times.

Frankly, I kinda like that ephemeral culture, and the internet's ability to help people mainline it, has helped draw people together with what the severely-bearded would term a lingua franca. I guess that makes me the worst person in the world to Patton, but it's supporting my agenda: getting more people to realize that 99% of human culture is inane chatter.

Dear Jamie S. Rich,

I'm sorry I ruined twitter for a day.

Sincerely,
Fatboy Roberts

The point is that 'gadjillions' were not accessing such back then.

Technology has become mandatory to access pop culture. The jocks have to do it too.

The parallel is that the empowerment of the individual to contribute to the "culture" (inane chatter indeed, thank you Colin) is ubiquitous, thus canceling out the possible existence of an 'underground' culture.

Lowest common denominator rules the day and is entirely disposable.

Arrgh. Beat me to it Hallett.

Sob.

It reminds me of every time I thought a sci fi movie was pretty cool and the guy next to me is turning up his nose that I don't speak the pretend language. I can understand a bit of the "I, Me, Mine" among music geeks pre-Internet. But sci fi books, toys, movies, et al have ALWAYS been a product of corporate mass production. Who owns Star Wars? A billion dollar studio, that's who.

I think Jamie Rich and I are the only two nerds in Nerdberg who think Patton might have a point. It's probably because we're curmudgeonly technophobes who hate young people.

Mine: http://furiousnads.com/posts/patton-oswalt…

Wait, back up. What was that about a muscley[sic] guy in a Boba Fett t-shirt?

Personally, I think practically none of us are nerds. Liking movies and tv shows and books - no matter the content - and talking about them obessively, just doesn't seem particularly nerdy! It seems really normal, and pretty easy.

There are still fringe interests and activities left. Are any of us, say, super into collecting real swords? No matter how easy it would be for me to purchase a sword collector's starter kit (bypassing all the hard work and research that oswalt holds so dear), the fact that my wall would then be covered in freaking swords, instead of dvds and action figures, would be pretty dang fringe and nerdy. I guess I'm being a relativist right now...

I think fatboy & alison have nice points about how the issue at hand is about consuming items. And aside from sword collectors, I save the term for spend more of their time creating stuff based on their interests. But I may in the minority in that I think there's a significant difference between being an analyst/critic of sci fi movies and spending your time writing fanfic based off those movies.

Luckily my passion for the works of John Kendrick Bangs and Jerome K. Jerome has yet to be sullied by the embrace of the masses.

I think Patton has a case in this scenario, and big words have been thrown around in this comment thread, but what I think it´s that you can always tell apart the real nerds and geeks from the wannabes or clue-less in this things. Or who gets into it to get accepted somehow (???). This you must understand.

If you really love Boba-Fett and the whole Bounty deal across galaxies is different from people saying am gonna buy and suck away a culture. And people can tell.

My test of fire is comedy which appeals to all Nerds and Geeks from all across the globe. It works every time. Who cares.

Are weak otakus like lukewarm satori?

@leaky I don't understand a bunch of your sentences.

I can't remember which one of you stated, in a blog post, that obessing about sports stuff is WAY different than obsessing about lord of the rings, but i really disagree with it.

@ROM: don´t worry ROM, it happens much more than you can imagine. :P

You know, I admit that I got into a slight nerd-rage and, in a fit of pique, did spew about this a little. But then I remembered that this was published in Wired, the same magazine that recently bemoaned the Web as "dead" and the internet as irreparably changed mostly for the worse. This is the exact same sort of comment-baiting "that thing you like is dead" piece that they've done before, and will do again. No big deal.

It's no different than the idiots who suddenly proclaim that they hate their favorite band because the band finally did what all bands want to do and got a hit song. The idiots then proclaim 'sell-out' because they're too cool to like something 'regular' people know about. Who cares what other people like/don't like. Are we still 12?

@dive: Well I don´t know, but you have to admit, that most underground/indie/up-coming bands do get boring when getting that mainstream hit, or when try to. Others juggle it well. Others live the Indie RockDom of Gods and continue to bring us amazing music every time.

I agree with Oswalt, but on a different level.

Art is dead. We're just going through the motions now. Everything is derivative, because there's nothing new left to create. Modern hipster culture just recycles, it takes from every decade/fad/movement freely - but it's not original - it's all "leftover" from some other trend. And, to me, this is true on just about every level of artistic creation.

Alison - stop acting like you're young. Patton Oswalt accomplished a lot more than you have by the time he was your age. Why don't you show us your can write something other than shitty criticism?

I don´t agree that "art" or art is dead. On any given level. I´ve seen amazing stuff this past years. To me it´s just that people have an overload of info (images, sounds, cliches), so it surely passes unseen, unheard. And another reason I believe this is that it has become a problem to distinguishing the art side from the business side of it, that is if you place em apart. From either perspective: Artist/emitter - Receiver/public.

I think too that the leftover/recycling (but not the copy and paste) theory it´s getting kinda tiresome. And am gonna stop here cuz am not about to write a treaty on Art and Music.

(...)"a problem to distinguish..."