So it’s “Star Wars Day” again, May the Fourth (be with you), and I’m not really feeling it anymore.
I think it’s part of a longer arc, a larger trend, one that I’d like to take the time to explore more fully. Either with a video, a podcast, or both. But I want to give it the attention it deserves, because there is some nuance to it, and it speaks to a larger trend, both in term of the non-consumption mentioned earlier, and wondering how to deal with fictional facism in an era of rising real facism.
The first with look at where we draw the line, and the second will look at the changing tone of the Star Wars universe, as it* negotiates it’s identity in the 21st century.
* As much as a corporate media franchise has intentionality or agency.
What do vegan cordcutters who used to play D&D have in common?
Don’t worry, they’ll tell you. (And so will I.)
Because otherwise, how would you know?
Let me introduce you to the idea of conspicuous non-consumption. It can be seen as the antithesis to Veblen’s conspicuous consumption, where people will buy certain brands or products to show off how awesome they are, but what do you do if that brand sucks?
Well, much like the Road Dogg Jess James, you better call somebody. And tell them, obviously, because how else would they know… how awesome you are, for not buying that thing.
It’s the paradox of non-consumption, that the absence of an action doesn’t communicate the intent. It goes hand-in-hand with things like brand boycotts, where the option to not buy, or experience, or engage, for reasons, as opposed to preference, like I’d watch The Flash if I had the money, or time, or wasn’t sick of superhero movies, but I lack the means.
Conspicuous non-consumption is the vocalization of the un-uttered “I’d prefer not to”, that oft-repeated Zizekian aphorism.
But it goes much further than Zizek takes it in our social media driven, Instagram and TikTok influencer kind of age, where every post is an advertisement (some paid, some not) for that particular brand or product.
So, if you want to send a message to Hasbro, or DC, f’rex, you’d have to do more that just not buy those products, you’d have to let people know.
I’ll be building out this idea shortly, but in the interest of publishing, and not letting the interminable and never-arriving perfect drive out the immediate good, I’ll post this up for now and we’ll come back to it in a moment or three.
Right now, there’s a handful of threads floating about that I need to bring together…
Recently (like, within the last week) Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, and publisher of various games including Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons, reportedly used members of the Pinkerton Detective Agency to pay a visit to the YouTuber @oldschoolmtg who had accidentally received packs from the forthcoming “March of the Machines: the Aftermath” set, due to be released on May .
The YouTuber did what any content creator would in this late capitalist framework: they created content. Crack the packs and show them off. Get to work, doing what they do.
Now, since that story was posted, there have been follow-ups saying that the visit by the PDA was more of a “knock on door and have a chat” kind of visit, rather than the one that fills most minds when they hear of Pinkerton raid. Still, the optics need to be considered. Having the rather notorious detective agency available for these sorts of eventualities reflects rather poorly on WotC.
Especially since it didn’t need to be this way. Just one month earlier, the exact same thing happened to a competitor of WotC, GamesWorkshop. In March, GW accidentally shipped a copy of an unreleased model, Commander Dante of the Blood Angels, several weeks before the model was to be revealed at the upcoming Adepticon event in Chicago, along with a number of other models. The error was due to the old model still having it’s SKU in the system while the new one was being stocked, and they accidentally did the swap. The content creator did the same thing in this case, and posted pictures of their painted model to imgur (here).
“The Day of Revelation has come a little earlier than expected…” Indeed.
So rather than send an agency that was so notorious that the US Congress had to enact legislation (that is still on the books) that prevents members from being employed by the US Government, GW was able to provide a treat to a fan and to the community, and gain some overall good will.
And it likely didn’t hurt their sales: as of time of posting, the model was sold out online despite it’s $55 CAD price tag.
With podcast now up and running (and available here at http://www.buzzsprout.com/1935232/episodes we’re going to be returning to creating content here as well, as a mix of new posts, and companion pieces to go with the original content.
With the recent twit-pocalypse, we’ve also created an account on one of the federated servers for Mastodon. You can find me at @dr.implausible@mastodon.online There’s a few other options for non-Twitter microblogging, but this is the one we’re going to go with for now.
Finally, in behind-the-scenes information, I’ve worked out a mobile editing platform, which should allow for more consistent updates. This is the first test post from that system.
“Can I interest you in everything all of the time” – Bo Burnham, Welcome to the Internet
At what point do you realize that you’re no longer part of a culture? That you’ve aged out, that the culture has shifted beyond you, that the things you once thought were cool are seen as cheugy? And, if you being part of this culture is central to your identity, to your self-perception, what do you do? How do you react?
What do you do when you realize you’re no longer a nerd?
We’ll get back to that in a moment. The question was shared with me on TikTok by @midnightlibrarian, who posts some really great M:tG content. Feeling like nerd culture now, focused on video games, cosplay, MCU, and the like may no longer have a place for the elements of nerd culture that he partakes in. That the ground may have shifted beneath their feet. That, even though they still self-identify as a nerd, that identity is called into question, as they don’t identify with the aspect of nerd-dom that is now dominant in the hierarchy. It can be unsettling, this feeling of being unhomed, of the the doubt and instability that this feeling brings with it. How do you deal with it?
There’s no one true way to deal with it, but some work better than others. One of the ways that emphatically doesn’t is one we reach to instinctively. Standing your ground, and defiantly resisting the entrance of newcomers to your corner of the nerd culture happens time and time again. It’s a large component in a lot of the online “toxicity” that happens throughout nerd-dom. And it works so well: just ask the model railroaders and OG wargamers how well leaning in to grognardia worked out. If you can find them.
(Yes, it’s the internet, I’m aware you can still find them.)
I’m hard pressed to think of examples of nerd-dom that have successfully resisted the changing tides. And, as noted, the defense mechanisms that get deployed in these Bourdieu-sian wars over social capital are incredibly toxic. (But more on this later: a working paper of mine on toxic gamer cultures was recently accepted to a conference, and I’ll publish more on that as it gets closer to publication). In the meantime, perhaps a Simpson’s meme sums this position up best:
Of course, if you want to resist without contributing to the (overt) toxicity, you have other options available to you. I call it the “smile and wave” approach. (It works better if you’re humming along to The Headstones tune of the same name while you do it). It’s a recognition that cultural change is constant, and that trying to capture the vagaries of youth culture is like reaching for a sunbeam with a butterfly net: amorphous and ephemeral, and constantly just out of reach. For most of us, this can be fleeting: we may happen to be down with whatever is cool for the moment, but in an instant it’ll pass us by. It’s okay though, it’ll happen to the next generation too:
Going down this road can still be toxic, depending on delivery, as it may arrive with an air of condescension and dismissiveness. It can be bundled with elitism, nostalgia, and smugness, and we’ve recently seen what lies down the road of nostalgia. But delivery is everything, and it can be server up with a slice of wry too.
And this leads us to our third path: just let it go. (No need for a Frozen take here, you can write your own.) This can be the hardest path, to put it down and walk away. It can be difficult to push aside something that you’ve drawn in and made part of your identity. It can involved some self-awareness and self-reflection, and honestly who has time for that in the midst of the dumpster fire that has been the Twenty-twenties so far. Realizing that others’ enjoyment of things within your culture in no way impacts your experience or enjoyment is hard, because it feels like it does, especially in the moment. If you’ve spent your childhood and teens feeling ostracized, and finding solace and friendship within a little corner of nerd culture where you’ve been left undisturbed, it can be traumatic when it opens up to the mainstream and all of a sudden everyone is there with you. (More on this later, in the above mentioned article). It can be hard, really hard, to let it go.
Ultimately, something as vast and amorphous as nerd-dom is no one thing. The shifting tides of interest and attention will lift some boats and sink others. And as nerd culture has become more prevalent in the 21st century – as nerd culture has become pop culture, with the rise of the MCU, videogaming, et al. – those tides are larger and moving swifter than before. And that’s okay.
Being a part of nerd culture does not mean you need to be down with all of nerd culture. One of the (many) ways that a show like The Big Bang Theory misrepresented nerd-dom was the ease and facility that the gang were suddenly into everything nerdy, from week to week. Grad students and post-docs! Please! Hence the Bo Burnham quote in the epigraph: the internet will present you everything you might be interested in with click or two, and the algorithmic engines of Google, Facebook, and TikTok will show you anything tangentially related to it in the service of advertising, but there’s no need to dive into it all. You’ll be overwhelmed; the tides are too strong.
But that doesn’t mean you need to let it go either, to let that identity pass you by. You can maintain your position within nerd-dom, maintain your geek cred, and let it thrive within you. You may look at what “the kids these days” are interested in, and see if you can share what they love about it too. Or you may decide to put it away and move on to find a new element of interest, move to a new stage or new field, with new areas of excitement on the horizon. The paths are open, the choice is yours.