What Happened to the Neckbeards?
Did they tip their last fedora?
When I first started making comics, I debuted this character, Damien the neckbeard with this comic:
As time went on Damien evolved, and began sporting his uniform, which included (obviously) a fedora, cargo shorts, and an olive green T-shirt that always said something neckbeardy:
If you were around in the mid-2010s, there were two archetypes you likely saw all over social media: the Tumblr-frequenting, blue-haired “SJW” and the slovenly, leather-trenchcoat and fedora-wearing neckbeard. They represented two polar extremes of Annoying Internet Person.
The SJW was perpetually offended (or “triggered”) and seemed to rack up dubious marginalized identities like some kind of Oppressed Pokemon.
The neckbeard existed primarily to yearn for female attention, taking the role of cringe Reddit white knight who called women “m’lady” (while perhaps condescending to them about their lack of comic book and video game knowledge) and pined for the simpler, romantic days of the 1300s. Upon experiencing rejection, he would become a hateful, brooding weirdo, such as in the famous meme “I studied the blade.”
The neckbeard was right wing in the same way that the SJW was left wing. Neither one of them had strong opinions on economic policy (outside of weird things like “Women shouldn’t work” or “Work is ableist.”) Neither one of them supported any particular political candidate or had any motivation to vote anyway. Neither one of even cared about big cultural issues of the time like the legalization of gay marriage—neckbeards didn’t care, because they weren’t gay, and the Tumblr folks didn’t care, because “white gays are too privileged” and Imperial Emperor Obama was involved. It feels disingenuous to apply a political stance to either of these groups.
However, one could argue the Tumblr SJW lived on—some moderated a bit, some remained insane on Twitter, and a great many were probably made-up troll accounts anyway.
Neckbeards, on the other hand, seem to have gone the way of the dinosaurs. When was the last time you saw anyone wearing a fedora, who wasn’t a fifty-seven-year-old divorced guitar teacher? When was the last time you saw anyone wearing a leather trench coat? Other than Hailey Baldwin and basically all fashion girlies in 2019?
I have several theories for this: one is that they have merely adopted a new look, now aware that the fedora/trenchcoat/cargo shorts thing is unattractive.
I have another theory though, which is that a decent amount of them actually found girlfriends. Hear me out.
I am a millennial woman. Many of the millennial men I know are married too. I have met many millennial men who are gawky to chubby to very overweight, have scruffy beards, love Star Wars, comic books, and funko pops, and (according to my best guess) probably didn’t lose their virginities until after college. They are all married. In fact, in high school and college I hung out with some very geeky kids, none of whom I could imagine finding girlfriends or boyfriends. They are now all in their thirties and married to each other.
How many “neckbeards” are just late bloomers with geeky interests, who are maybe neurodivergent and have a poor understanding of who is in their league? I would venture many. Not that it excuses the misogyny, but I have to admit I kind of understand the anger that comes with feeling like you exist outside of the social sphere with no idea how to enter it. When I was in middle school, I was awkward with a poor understanding of social cues, and the only attention I got from boys was in the form of being asked out as a joke. Did I fantasize about my rejectors getting older, losing their looks, and dying alone? Of course I did! The only difference is that I eventually learned how to interact with other people. And I conclude: I bet this happened to many neckbeards too.
In fact, if you check out r/geekweddings, you’ll see that many of these geeks figured out how to talk to girls, married appropriately geeky girls, and stopped being obnoxious. The ones that are left no longer look like neckbeards. Or at least I don’t think they do. They often have anime profile pictures, so who’s to say. And I like to think there’s hope for them too.
(I am not implying the couples below includes a former neckbeard- just that they are geeky and got married.)
Anyway, I like to think that most neckbeards found the happy ending. No, they did not wind up with a revolving door of virginal supermodels, but that’s no more likely to happen to them than a geeky, awkward woman is to secure a lifelong marriage to Jacob Elordi. The neckbeards remained geeky and true to themselves, but figured out how to socialize. Then they found geeky wives and are now dressing their kids up as Baby Yoda for Halloween.
Good for them.
"Get a job" remains undefeated in making the geekiest people normal enough to date. You have to pass as normal convincingly enough that your boss doesn't fire you on general principle, and this inevitably makes you normal enough to date.
Part of the neckbeard stereotype is that the person is a NEET living in his parents' basement, and those people are actually really rare!
I agree about how SJWs and Neckbeards shouldn't be called political, at least in the traditional sense. But their conception of politics (i.e. culture/social wars) has largely taken over what we mean when we talk about politics. That's why those "women are turning liberal, men are turning conservative" polls and articles irritate me, because they don't really delve into what those labels mean anymore. Nowadays, especially in the online world, liberal vs. conservative mostly means to which gender's self-esteem you're willing to cater to, often on topics implicitly (or sometimes, outright explicitly) relating to dating, sexual hierarchical anxieties, and so forth. So it's "newflash: women tend to like an ideology that flatters female ego while men tend to like an ideology that flatters male ego." Hardly illuminating.