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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Levistus's_Leviathan" data-source="post: 9535475" data-attributes="member: 7023887">I’m Gen Z. I think I can present a perspective unique to my generation. Granted, I grew up Mormon and most of my social group was Mormon, but I don’t know how much that would affect my experience in this matter.I got into D&D in 2016, when I was a freshman in high school. At first I hid my interest because while I had always been a nerd, D&D was still seen as one of the things only the hardcore, extremely socially awkward nerds got into. When I finally felt comfortable expressing my interest in D&D publicly, most of the people in my social group expressed interest, even many of the popular kids that I knew said they were interested in playing. I was never made fun of by anyone at school for playing the game, and I made some new friends through the hobby. No one called it “satanic,” even the kids that had parents who wouldn’t let them read Harry Potter because it had witchcraft (which was very rare and considered absurd).Speaking of Harry Potter, everyone knew about it and basically everyone liked it. Most people hadn’t read the books and only watched the movies, but everyone knew their Hogwarts house and what their patronus were. But everyone here probably knows how big Harry Potter was, so that shouldn’t be surprising.The MCU was the biggest cultural sensation at my high school. Everyone loved it. Everyone kept up on the new movies. The few people who didn’t were met with “you haven’t seen the new Avengers yet! You have to!” People would play the Avengers at parties. I got Avengers Endgame spoiled 5 times the day after it came out. No one I knew read the comics, but everyone saw the movies and you wouldn’t have been judged as being weird for liking the comics.Basically everyone was familiar with Tolkien’s fantasy races. Everyone knew about Hobbits, Elves, and Dwarves. The Hobbit movies were coming out around this time and a lot of people saw at least the first one. If you asked the average teenager if they knew who “Smaug” was, there’s a good chance they’d say “Benedict Cumberbatch?”Doctor Who and Star Trek were definitely still considered “nerd” shows and not many people watched them, but everyone knew who Spock and what the Tardis were. No one in my friend group were allowed to watch Game of Thrones, but we were still aware that it was the biggest TV show at the time.Most people played video games. Different games generally appealed to different groups, but practically everyone played them. Most girls I knew liked Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, most jocks played Madden and shooters like Call of Duty and Halo, everyone grew up with a Nintendo games and liked Mario Kart and Zelda, etc. Every kid in elementary and middle school liked Coolmathgames.I think nerd media overall has “won,” in the sense that they’ve gained enough main stream popularity that they’re no longer considered weird. The most popular TV and movie franchises of the past couple decades are nerd media. People outside of the nerd community know what Tolkien’s Dwarves are like and who Groot is.I grew up in a conservative town in the middle of nowhere with mostly Mormon friends and while I was bullied as a kid, it was never for liking nerd media.I say the nerds won.</blockquote>

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