Skip to main content

Too late, TBS! We’re all King of the Nerds now

King of the Nerds
Image used with permission by copyright holder

The producers of TBS’s new reality competition King of the Nerds worked really hard to find themselves actual nerds. Out of the 11 contestants, 5 of them are scientists of some variety (including astrophysicists, a neuroscientist, and a theoretical physicist). The remaining 6 blog about gaming, host podcasts about gaming, or simply game too much to hold down a full-time job. The glasses count, if you’re curious, is 7 with to 4 without.

No surprise here: The show is populated by nerd caricatures. Like all reality shows, they went out and found people who fit their mold, then told those people to amp up their personalities to 11.

Why go to such extremes? Because if the show reflected the real state of “nerds” in 2013, we would all be contestants.

Once upon a time, in this very galaxy…

To understand how far nerd culture has come in merging into the mainstream, you really have to go back nearly 20 years to a time it was still distinct from normalcy: the mid-90s. Had King of the Nerds been produced then, your contestant lineup would look something like this:

Two or three of your contestants “code,” which they’re forced to explain means they design software applications for computers. Today, nearly 1 million people are listed as software engineers in the US. To put that in perspective, there are only about 550,000 lawyers.

Another two or three are comic book aficionados. Because in that era, there hadn’t been a financially viable comic book movie since 1989’s Batman and its sequels, you can assume that they mean actual comic books, which experienced sales of roughly 100 million copies in 1997. Comics now only sell between 70 and 80 million copies per year, while their related movies made up 3 of the top 10 highest earning movies of 2012.

One of the guests, Steve, wows the other contestants with his new PalmPilot, or as he described it, “a computer in my pocket.” He can even write e-mail to a friend and it will send when he syncs the PDA back at his computer! He seems to have the inside track on being crowned King.

The remaining contestants are your typical mix of mathematicians, semi-professional Magic: The Gathering players, and amateur fantasy authors who are hoping the exposure from the show will get them a book deal from one of the multitude of book publishers. Of course, the most popular book of 2012 was once self-published Twilight fan fiction, Fifty Shades of Grey.

king-of-the-nerds
Image used with permission by copyright holder

The producers tried to entice at least one astrophysicist to join the show, but since NASA is launching roughly 10 Space Shuttles per year, none could be spared.

They did land one major coup by signing an actual developer from Nintendo, who brought with him a prototype N64. The video game system serves as the gathering place for our nerds, much like the hot tub does for MTV’s The Real World. The majority of them still frequent the arcade in their local mall, as they do not own a video game system. Now, 56 percent of households have a game console.

How times have changed

We all knew someone like the contestants described above, but somewhere along the line, we became them. Comic-book movies dominate theaters and fan-fic tops best-seller lists. Coding is widely practiced. Almost every person uses a computer on a daily basis, and half of us carry one in our pocket.

The fact that mainstream culture has adopted nerds and their activities as their own is no revelation. The point is not that nerds are cool, as any commentary of The Big Bang Theory seems to end with, but rather that King of the Nerds makes it painfully obvious that we’re all nerds, at least in the traditional sense of the word that anyone of a certain generation grew up with.

So TBS dove deep to find people that could be universally described as nerdy. And what they found were parodies of days gone by. These people don’t seem to be actors playing roles, in the strictest sense of the word. It’s just that their roles no longer exist. They seem as out of place as Gerard Butler’s Spartan warlord or Leonardo DiCaprio’s plantation owner.

In 1996, Time covered the tech boom with a cover story entitled “The Golden Geeks” that featured Netscape’s Marc Andreessen. As we now know, a lot of people would follow those geeks’ footsteps and become fabulously wealthy and powerful. But the adoption of geek culture was much more than just a cash grab. It turned out to be a more efficient and pleasant way to live.

King of the Nerds might as well be on the History Channel instead of TBS. At least it would make sense there.

Scott Sterling
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Scott Sterling is a former middle school English teacher, current freelance writer, and stay-at-home dad. He was coding HTML…
The 10 most popular movies on Netflix right now
A woman stands in front of microphones with a man clapping behind her.

Netflix is one of the most popular streaming services in the world, with nearly 250 million subscribers. And just what do those people tend to watch? In particular, what is the most popular movie on Netflix? Each week, the streaming service releases a list of its 10 most-watched movies over a recent seven-day period to keep subscribers in the loop regarding its most popular titles.

Lindsay Lohan's Irish Wish has won over the hearts of Netflix subscribers as it moved into the top spot, with Damsel falling to No. 2. One of the notable debuts this week is Shirley, a biopic about the groundbreaking politician Shirley Chisholm, played here by Oscar winner Regina King. Below, we've listed the top 10 movies in the U.S. from March 18 to March 24, along with general information about each film, such as genre, rating, cast, and synopsis.

Read more
10 best R-rated movies streaming right now
A woman and her child stands next to a dead body in Anatomy of a Fall.

R-rated movies are typically expected by audiences to push the boundaries of what can be depicted on the big screen. Whether it's gory horror movies or steamy erotic thrillers, these movies were designed specifically to get an "R" rating and be shown primarily to adults.

From modern masterpieces like Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer to classics like Alien, some of the best R-rated movies ever made are available to stream on different platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Max. With bold narratives and unfiltered realism, these are great picks for an enjoyable movie night among adult friends.

Read more
Stop! Watch these Netflix movies before March 2024 ends
Robert Pattinson in The Batman.

One of the blessings of streaming services like Netflix is that, in addition to their libraries of original titles, they also have titles that come and go on a regular basis. While the introduction of new titles is always nice, the downside is that titles usually leave the service when new ones join.

As March turns into April, we're going to lose some genuinely great movies on Netflix. While you still have time, though, you should check these three very different movies out.
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore - Original Theatrical Trailer

Read more