Nisarg said:
Let me say for the record that I wasn't "attacking Jason for being a nerd"; I was pointing out that regardless of what nerds feel about him to the public at large that fictional character is a negative stereotype. I was just saying that if the best D&D players can manage to present as a "positive" portrayal of D&D in popular media is Jason Foxtrot, they're in a lot of trouble. My entire point was that Jason is not an accurate representation of what all roleplayers are like, but that the tolerance of certain kinds of extreme elements in the roleplaying community makes them into our poster-boys, and leads to the creation of stereotypes like Jason.
Nisarg
I'm sorry if I came out as being too hostile there, I was trying very hard to shorten the post.
At no point did I think that you thought poorly of Jason for doing his homework.
I did think, however, that your response was illustrative of the point that the stereo-type itself is negative and that that includes good things as well as bad.
As is the case here, a nerd is a nerd is a nerd, and that is always bad, in the logic of calling someone a nerd, and that effectively means that many good things are bad.
Which is why I would argue that although a work like Buffy, which tries to make nerds 'cool,' does a good job by busting apart the stereotype...
...a work like Revenge of the Nerds does more by subverting it. Sure, you can argue that the individual nerds are negative stereotypes, but the nerds overall are the heroes of the piece and enjoyed a good deal of pop cultural success.
Keep in mind, however, that I think both approaches are necessary. I just become leery when I see the first advocated over the second.
The first is certainly the easier and prettier route, I just think that the second does some good on its own and the first without the second just works to reinforce the stereotype because all it does is enable the holders of the stereotype to point to exceptions as exceptions.
I'm all for being socially acceptable, I'm not for people being out to point out the socially acceptable nerds without being challenged by those socially acceptable nerds.
In the longer post I think I made it clearer that I meant a hypothetical adult attacking Jason, as does happen and happens more frequently with non-adults, for doing his homework and not you.
Even, though, I would argue that I can point out better examples than Jason, people who play role-playing games who aren't mean, vindictive, and uninterested in the lives of their fellows. I don't think any of them could not be painted with the broad tar of negative nerdiness simply because by playing the game they are nerds, again in the sad logic of it all, and that makes them already and continually a negative type.
Take, for example, the geeks from freaks and geeks, no worse off, in the larger sense, than any of the rest of their fellows, it is high school after all, very much the happy center of the show, and yet...
On the other hand, Buffy has had some nice role-playing moments, and PVP recently pointed out that Picard LARPS.
All better than Jason.
, or anything of it at all, I just had to check on that little factoid about Italian home-ownership rates being "famously very high."
(Lest anyone accuse me, mine pretty much let me grow up -- they were quite *over* prepared for their goodie-two-shoes kid to get the hard talks...
