how nerdy are dedicated fans?

[rone]

tongodeon created a poll that asks which TV/movie franchise is the nerdiest, using the "caliber of nerd associated with its dedicated fan base" as the metric.  I am not convinced that this is a helpful exercise.  First off, followers of a particular fandom will attempt to play down their own nerdiness in order to somehow legitimize what they're doing (look at the low Buffy score as proof).  Also, it is difficult to separate the nerds one knows that love a particular creation from one's own opinion of the creation, but more crucially, from one's opinion of such nerds.  For example, i react with intense aversion to the Rocky Horror Picture Show because, holy fuck, that is one goddamned stupid movie, and the subculture that arose around its festering dungheap is inexplicable, massively annoying, and ugly.  I think the Brunching Shuttlecocks' geek hierarchy is missing the RHPS fans below the erotic fanfic furries.  But i digress...

What makes a fandom nerdier than the other?  Well, what's nerdy behavior?  Obsessing about details in the canon, buying merchandise, attending conventions (in costume, for bonus nerd points), writing fan fiction... am i missing anything?  Is a fandom that lacks action figures, for example, less nerdy than one that has them?  (Can i stop asking questions in this paragraph and write an actual statement?)

ikkyu2 speaks truth in the comments: separate the fandom from the nerd and how much nerd do you have left?  It's a very open question.  And his point about needing to be quite a nerd to even attempt to gauge the question hits the nail right on the head.  OW LORD HELP ME THERE'S A BEAM IN MY EYE.

I can't even keep it simple by making something that's more mainstream less nerdy; the Simpsons and Harry Potter are two of the most mainstream items in the poll, but HP is, by almost any measure, much nerdier than the Simpsons.  What's nerdier, being a Vlad Taltos fan or a Wheel of Time fan?  OK, yeah, the Wheel of Time, duh.

Anyway, i revisited my "all 9s and a 10 for RHPS" vote and gave the Simpsons an 8.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Comments

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that one measure of the nerdiness might be the number of people who would recognise a couple of well-known phrases from a given show, and how people react to people who use them. For example, nobody bats an eyelid when another person says "Doh!". On the other hand, most people would recognise certain words or phrases from the various forms of Star Trek ("Beam me up" "He's dead, Jim" and so forth), but they are more likely to provoke raised eyebrows or other reactions (over here). And then there are shows for which snatches of dialogue will simply lead to head-scratching by G. Public...

As I said in tongodeon's LJ, the poll also throws up some interesting geographical differences. For example, Blackadder was pretty mainstream over here (the 2nd, 3rd and 4th series had huge viewing figures, comparable in percentage terms to US figures for shows like Cheers or Friends), so variations on "I have a cunning plan" were instantly recognised by the general population (10 years ago at any rate; I'm not sure if that still holds true). It wasn't quite as widespread as, "Doh!" but that owes more to the limited circumstances in which it could be used.

And yeah, I know there are beams in my eye: whydya think I wear these glasses?