Ruin Explorer
Legend
I kind of question whether, certainly prior to this season, Stranger Things did anything but confirm nerd stereotypes, re: the main player group for D&D. The main kids are super-nerdy. They're kids who would have made me at the same age, a nerd, look like a super-cool kid in shades and a letter jacket by comparison.Big Bang Theory largely just confirms/exploits the nerd stereotypes and does little or nothing to make the viewer feel that they themselves would actually enjoy playing.
Now sure, there's a distinction in that BBT (which is horrible) is essentially "nerdsploitation", but the idea that Stranger Things (prior to this season, which I haven't seen all of yet so am avoiding commenting on) made D&D "look cool" seem to me to be pretty wild. Certainly S1-3 it did not do that. It absolutely normalized D&D a bit (much like articles in Forbes and so on, my dad has sent me dozens of articles from mainstream publications about how "D&D is cool now" - but those got back as far as 2010, note - well before this ST or CR became big), and said sane, good-hearted, good-spirited kids play D&D (which I'm sure helped with some families who thought it might be a "dark" thing or something). But cool kids? Nah. YMMV of course.