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.
So liberalism* is “catering to” women’s “self esteem”? Huh. Sounds an awful lot like you’re saying “liberals are pussies” only dressed up a little differently. What a stupid take.
"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!
Some truth to that. It was a major worry for me throughout my 20s and 30s. Eventually I hoarded enough it doesn't worry me that much, but I don't expect to be promoted to management or anything. ;)
I think they basically didn't really exist, they were a composite of various nerd traits that could be easily mocked. Real sword guys spend all their time complaining about how movies and video games are historically inaccurate, so they're not really the ones prizing knowledge of that stuff. The most incel misogynist content comes from 4chan from guys who leave their house so little that they've started to grow into their couch and thus aren't even really around women to be rejected by them. I've never seen anyone say "m'lady" unironically. It seems like a comfortable lie so nerds could claim they were at least not as bad as that "guy" and women could pretend misogynists are all just low-status even though that's blatantly not true in real life.
I've met those people. They only existed in 1990s-2000s because that's when you could be a specific kind of undersocialized online.
The mlady thing comes from, basically, guys like this got the impression that you can romance women by running up to them and doing some combination of giving them gifts, promising them things in exchange for a date, and acting like a zany D&D bard slash Joss Whedon character. The 2000s pickup artist stuff about picking up women by being rude and negging them is a reaction to that.
Even the swords, fedora and trenchcoat stuff is real. (Technically those people were called "mall ninjas" though.)
I always wondered where they went too. More recently anytime I meet one they're a successful well paid gay furry.
At some point maybe in the late 2000’s, both RW men and LW women came to agree on one thing: self-declared “nice guys” and chivalry were the worst.
Caught in a withering cultural crossfire, the neckbeard forces broke and ran. Some abandoned their katanas and hats as they ran, but some hid them away to await a better time, like the samurai after the Tokugawa restoration.
Interesting. I wouldn't usually go to a place like this, but this may be as close to answer from a neckbeard as you're going to get. (I usually shave off the actual neckbeard...I have a job).
But I was into all that nerd stuff in the 90s as a teenager, figured it made romance impossible (plus there was the risk of harassment accusations, which I now realize wouldn't actually be true for another 20 years), and...never really bothered to find out until much later, by which time I was in my 30s and now that I actually had a good income I could never figure out if they actually liked me or not. ;)
I did find a few moderately nerdy women on OKCupid back in the early 2010s, but was in a position where I wasn't going to be able to buy a house in the area I was, so I bailed pretty early to avoid wasting their time...I'm well aware of the falling-fertility problem women have in their 30s.
I definitely remember nerd culture bifurcating sometime in the mid-2010s into left and right (probably around Gamergate as has been previously said), and I wasn't really cool with either side, so I stopped following Star Wars and the like. I don't know what I follow now; I kind-of follow the rationalists but I can't take them too seriously, I treat it as an enjoyable right-of-center nerd group and leave it at that. Paperclip maximizer? Whatever, man.
I suspect your thesis is probably correct. A lot of them are now SJWs, either eagerly echoing feminist talking points to make their wife (and maybe her boyfriend) happy (this is what I've seen in my nerd herd from then, who I've largely lost touch with) or just shaved off enough 'geek' to find a woman they liked and you don't see them online that much anymore.
The new generation (GenZ/millennial?) are probably either SJWs as above, eager to prove their progressive virtue, or alt-right, screaming on Twitter about how they all want tradwives even though they refuse to improve themselves or consider what would be in it for the tradwife.
Around 2012 the internet atheist neckbeards got into a culture war with the femanazi sjws and the neckbeards lost, hard. The event is called gamer gate, I’d recommend you look into a non feminist perspective of it to learn more but a quick summary is:
Some scam artist women used the sjw community to bully their way into the video game industry and stole a bunch of money, using the label of sexism as a weapon to silence anyone who spoke out against them, it was effective a tactic that these women and others like them applied it to nearly every sector of culture and became ingrained over the next few years in everything from news to cartoons, forcing their political beliefs onto others in a way that forced the neckbeards to die off and evolve into the modern day new right.
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.
So liberalism* is “catering to” women’s “self esteem”? Huh. Sounds an awful lot like you’re saying “liberals are pussies” only dressed up a little differently. What a stupid take.
*whatever the hell this means
"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 don't know if that's really true in the corporate world anymore.
Some truth to that. It was a major worry for me throughout my 20s and 30s. Eventually I hoarded enough it doesn't worry me that much, but I don't expect to be promoted to management or anything. ;)
I think they basically didn't really exist, they were a composite of various nerd traits that could be easily mocked. Real sword guys spend all their time complaining about how movies and video games are historically inaccurate, so they're not really the ones prizing knowledge of that stuff. The most incel misogynist content comes from 4chan from guys who leave their house so little that they've started to grow into their couch and thus aren't even really around women to be rejected by them. I've never seen anyone say "m'lady" unironically. It seems like a comfortable lie so nerds could claim they were at least not as bad as that "guy" and women could pretend misogynists are all just low-status even though that's blatantly not true in real life.
I've met those people. They only existed in 1990s-2000s because that's when you could be a specific kind of undersocialized online.
The mlady thing comes from, basically, guys like this got the impression that you can romance women by running up to them and doing some combination of giving them gifts, promising them things in exchange for a date, and acting like a zany D&D bard slash Joss Whedon character. The 2000s pickup artist stuff about picking up women by being rude and negging them is a reaction to that.
Even the swords, fedora and trenchcoat stuff is real. (Technically those people were called "mall ninjas" though.)
I always wondered where they went too. More recently anytime I meet one they're a successful well paid gay furry.
At some point maybe in the late 2000’s, both RW men and LW women came to agree on one thing: self-declared “nice guys” and chivalry were the worst.
Caught in a withering cultural crossfire, the neckbeard forces broke and ran. Some abandoned their katanas and hats as they ran, but some hid them away to await a better time, like the samurai after the Tokugawa restoration.
This undersells a little bit how much GamerGate was a critical L for "nerd culture".
I reckon a massive, massive proportion of neckbeards decided "if I can't GET a woman, I'll BECOME one".
The fedora neckbeards still exist on Twitter, they just now know better than to post face and all have Roman statue profile pics. lol
Interesting. I wouldn't usually go to a place like this, but this may be as close to answer from a neckbeard as you're going to get. (I usually shave off the actual neckbeard...I have a job).
But I was into all that nerd stuff in the 90s as a teenager, figured it made romance impossible (plus there was the risk of harassment accusations, which I now realize wouldn't actually be true for another 20 years), and...never really bothered to find out until much later, by which time I was in my 30s and now that I actually had a good income I could never figure out if they actually liked me or not. ;)
I did find a few moderately nerdy women on OKCupid back in the early 2010s, but was in a position where I wasn't going to be able to buy a house in the area I was, so I bailed pretty early to avoid wasting their time...I'm well aware of the falling-fertility problem women have in their 30s.
I definitely remember nerd culture bifurcating sometime in the mid-2010s into left and right (probably around Gamergate as has been previously said), and I wasn't really cool with either side, so I stopped following Star Wars and the like. I don't know what I follow now; I kind-of follow the rationalists but I can't take them too seriously, I treat it as an enjoyable right-of-center nerd group and leave it at that. Paperclip maximizer? Whatever, man.
I suspect your thesis is probably correct. A lot of them are now SJWs, either eagerly echoing feminist talking points to make their wife (and maybe her boyfriend) happy (this is what I've seen in my nerd herd from then, who I've largely lost touch with) or just shaved off enough 'geek' to find a woman they liked and you don't see them online that much anymore.
The new generation (GenZ/millennial?) are probably either SJWs as above, eager to prove their progressive virtue, or alt-right, screaming on Twitter about how they all want tradwives even though they refuse to improve themselves or consider what would be in it for the tradwife.
That last one about the kinky threesomes is, unfortunately, disturbingly accurate. 😆
This was such a fun read, the ending felt like a movie plot twist of unexpected joy and acceptance
God I loved this one, I genuinely laughed out loud. Hilarious stuff, i wish I grew up with memes like the blade
Neckbearders got way too into Japanese culture/anime and think they're Toshiro Mifune and wear top knots now
I first saw that last picture on the Red Scare pod subreddit
Around 2012 the internet atheist neckbeards got into a culture war with the femanazi sjws and the neckbeards lost, hard. The event is called gamer gate, I’d recommend you look into a non feminist perspective of it to learn more but a quick summary is:
Some scam artist women used the sjw community to bully their way into the video game industry and stole a bunch of money, using the label of sexism as a weapon to silence anyone who spoke out against them, it was effective a tactic that these women and others like them applied it to nearly every sector of culture and became ingrained over the next few years in everything from news to cartoons, forcing their political beliefs onto others in a way that forced the neckbeards to die off and evolve into the modern day new right.
This is embarrassing to admit but until a few months ago I thought that neckbeards were rednecks
I subscribed to your Substack and you do me like this I’m speechless
I’d wager what you’re seeing is the minority, and the rest found only fans.