Hello everyone, and welcome to day 7 of my 31/31! Today’s blog marks a week into the series, and I would just like to take a moment and thank everyone for all of the support so far. It’s definitely appreciated by this blogger. Today’s blog is inspired by an article that I read on the internet. The article was talking about sexism towards women in the show “The Big Bang Theory”. The article was an interesting read, but what was the most fascinating was the comment war that occurred at the bottom of the article. Almost every comment would start with someone stating whether they did or did not like the show, then proceed to talk about their perceived “level of nerdiness” and then finish with what kind of “nerdy hobbies” they do or have. Every single response to these comments all had people analyzing the hobbies, and then critiquing whether or not they matched up to the persons perceived level of nerdiness. How does this tie into gaming exactly? Well, a few days ago, I was hanging out with a few friends of mine at one of their houses. We are all huge gamers, but we all play different genres of games. We are also all quite different people. If somebody took a look at the 3 of us, they wouldn’t guess that we were good friends, but that’s one thing that brings us together. We all dislike when people are given labels, and we often talk about the rift between casual and hardcore gamers.
The casual and hardcore labels are something that many gamers are familiar with. With each passing generation that occurs, people have become more and more quick to use the term when determining a game’s audience. Why is that though? We as gamers were given labels once, so why are we going amongst our own, and dividing us up into groups? With the rise of nerd culture in the media, people are becoming quicker than ever to label someone a “fake nerd.” This is especially prevalent with females, where people would claim with no background knowledge whatsoever that they are just claiming to like games for the attention of it, or to try to act cool. This disgusts me to no end. In my opinion, a gamer can be all types of people, not just someone who plays on the most high-tech console available. I’ve known people who call me a “casual gamer” just because the only consoles I own at home is a Wii.
What constitutes a nerd? Who gets to make that decision? Why does this even matter? These are all questions I ask myself occasionally. All I know is that as a gaming community, we should be accepting of one another, and not try to outnerd each other so often. This is not a competition. Thanks for reading everyone! I’m sorry it’s such a short blog today, I had a massive migrane, and I just could not focus at all. So go ahead and downvote me if needed, I understand. Please feel free to leave a comment though about your thoughts, and I’ll be sure to answer as soon as I can! (And as soon as this headache goes away…)![]()
The casual and hardcore labels are something that many gamers are familiar with. With each passing generation that occurs, people have become more and more quick to use the term when determining a game’s audience. Why is that though? We as gamers were given labels once, so why are we going amongst our own, and dividing us up into groups? With the rise of nerd culture in the media, people are becoming quicker than ever to label someone a “fake nerd.” This is especially prevalent with females, where people would claim with no background knowledge whatsoever that they are just claiming to like games for the attention of it, or to try to act cool. This disgusts me to no end. In my opinion, a gamer can be all types of people, not just someone who plays on the most high-tech console available. I’ve known people who call me a “casual gamer” just because the only consoles I own at home is a Wii.
What constitutes a nerd? Who gets to make that decision? Why does this even matter? These are all questions I ask myself occasionally. All I know is that as a gaming community, we should be accepting of one another, and not try to outnerd each other so often. This is not a competition. Thanks for reading everyone! I’m sorry it’s such a short blog today, I had a massive migrane, and I just could not focus at all. So go ahead and downvote me if needed, I understand. Please feel free to leave a comment though about your thoughts, and I’ll be sure to answer as soon as I can! (And as soon as this headache goes away…)