More generally, I was writing about a very angry and deeply misogynistic group of people. These aren't the cuddly nerds we made movies about in the 80's. They're very angry that the cheerleader still wants to go out with the quarterback instead of the men (boys) who are running the universe right now. The women they surround themselves with aren't women who challenge them (and frankly, no woman who could challenge them would be interested in being anywhere near them.)
It's an efficient, simple story, depicting a truly contemptible demographic and taking it to task for some deep-seated issues, even going so far as to hypothesize the root psychological causes for those issues.
It's too bad, then, that this vision of Nerd Culture exists only in Sorkin's mind.
The quote got me to thinking about a recent interview with Felicia Day. If you don't know who that is (and too few people do), Day is something of a self-made goddess in Nerd World, at once existing as an authentic gamer chick, a beautiful young woman, a working Hollywood actress, and the writer and lead actress of the most popular web series on the Internet, "The Guild." She's an omnipresent entity in the culture of all things Geek, has over 1.75 million Twitter followers, and juggles her schedule as an actress with a long list of appearances at conventions all over the world. She's a Rock Star in the geek entertainment world, one of its most potent internal celebrities, a pinnacle of the demographic's adulation.
The content of the interview was largely without much in the way of biting substance (and forgive me as I can't find a link; I'm also paraphrasing heavily), more along the lines of a casual, at times silly conversation where both interviewer and interviewee came down with a case of the giggles, but one particular exchange stuck out in my mind. The interview came a few days after the enormous San Diego Comic Con, at which Day was a staple presence, and she was still recovering from a bit of a flu bug that she caught at the Con. She mentioned offhand that, mostly as a result of the germs in the air, she "doesn't do hugs" anymore as a means of greeting her fans, a decision she seemed a bit conflicted about (she didn't want to seem aloof in terms of interacting with her fans, but stressed that it was more about self-preservation than anything; she also admitted that it was a rule she couldn't help but break half the time anyway).
"Well, also," the interviewer responded, "as a girl, you're probably always having guys try to grab your ass."
"Actually, no," Felicia said. "That's never once happened to me. That's not what my fans are like at all."
Think about that for a moment. These nerds, so bitter and hateful toward women as a result of their lack of ability to get a date, when given a chance for close, almost intimate contact with one of their culture's most desirable female idols, respond by ... well, actually, by politely returning the hug, striking up a nice conversation, and sometimes asking for something to be signed.
I can already see the steam building from the ears of anyone with any feminist sensibilities whatsoever. Those Mother Fuckers.
In all seriousness, the degree of misogyny floating around on the Internet is (and long has been) lamentable. Anonymity is a powerful force, and all too often hateful messages, toward women among many other subsets of the populace, get brushed aside as harmless, ironic counter-punches to the drab pseudo-polite banality of a politically correct real life. YouTube comments, QED. Trouble is, it's not as if the Internet exists as a Nerds-only stomping ground anymore. It hasn't been that for at least twelve years, and in that time its level of general discourse has unquestionably dropped.
But think about it. Is Sorkin truly asking us to believe that the Nerd culture he's so intent on attacking is actually more misogynistic than, say, the culture of professional athletes? Or of rock stars? And remember, those were the guys that got laid in High School; those were the guys that had no problem whatsoever picking up the cheerleaders.
The major flaw in his reasoning is in his perception of the Nerd's raison d'etre: wanting to get the cheerleader, and failing. The reality is that the cheerleaders, by and large, bored us.
No doubt the feeling was mutual, or mirrored; I'm not arguing that we could have gotten the cheerleaders if we wanted to, but rather that that's a moot point, because by and large we didn't want to in the first place. Nerds are defined, more than anything, by the ease with which we get bored. That, and not some interminable fetish for the abnormal, is largely why we pick up the intricate hobbies that so many others see as strange. It's also why the girls we covet tend to be those that have something interesting to say. This fantasy about the least popular guy in the school lusting after the hottest cheerleader on the squad is by and large an effort of projection on the part of Hollywood screenwriters (often exaggerated to a ludicrous degree); these were the girls they wanted, so they must have been the girls that everyone wanted, right?
In short, we rejected the girls that couldn't challenge us, the girls that bored us, before they ever got a chance to reject us. The less socially apt of us tended to build up personas that functioned as a built-in filter. It wasn't always pretty, to the outsider, but it worked, and the lives that we built from this basic principle were not generally ones of bitterness; the perception of that bitterness is an illusion of extrapolation; we must be bitter, because we didn't get the girls you would have been bitter if you hadn't been able to get them yourselves.
If you are unconvinced of this, consider the fact that as a demographic, we pay more attention to Felicia Day than we do to whatever starlet-of-the-week the establishment tells us we should think is hot. It's not that we don't appreciate a pretty girl (and most of the women that receive our attention, including Ms. Day, most certainly fit that bill), but that we'd rather choose the pretty girl with a brain we can relate to than the unbelievably hot one whose head is full of rocks.
Does that mean that we're inoculated from frustration, that we'd never get drunk and refer to a particular woman as a bitch? Well, no. We're not perfect, we get frustrated by the opposite sex as everyone does, and we occasionally say stupid things. So does anyone. The fact that Facemash was the result of one such night, in the hands of one such nerd, does not exemplify the entirety of the culture, and does not even exemplify the existence of the person behind that one night. Those familiar with Mark Zuckerberg, by and large, so not describe that mindset as part of his persona today. It's worth mentioning that, while the concept of Facemash was no doubt insulting to women, its extreme popularity with the student body for the brief period of its existence proves that the misogynistic impulses that led to its creation were not, by any stretch of the imagination, limited to its creators or to their immediate social circle.
Mr. Sorkin, you are a fine storyteller and a gifted writer, The Social Network is top quality entertainment, and your elite status in the Hollywood establishment is well-deserved. But as a social anthropologist, which is the role you've taken on with this attempt at a broad categorization, you suck. Don't pretend you know us, just because you did the research required to write your movie. That may have taught you some of our notes, but I suspect the music itself remains largely unheard.
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