Not exactly, haj. I apologized for slinging insults that really applied to all game buffs, NOT for being critical of smiling bandit.
TY. I think I’ve heard of the game b4 but have neither played it nor seen it. I guess it’s 2day’s Monopoly? And you actually play F2F? Alright then, I admit it, had no clue what the freaking thing was.
Having said that, I played an asshole and/or cheat in Monopoly, and you bet your sweet peppy even if it was Hulk Hogan he was going to get called on it. Don’t recall that happening much (not the Hulk Hogan part, never met the dude, but the asshole/cheat bit. See I used to play with friends…kind of the point of a board game innit?)
Anyhow, yeah…I was off on the Civics. But darn, I still say face/boot the dude or quit playing with that crew.
Thanks again for m’ducation
Ty
If this is being flamed, flame me more!
This site is worse then crack. I don’t think I’ll have much choice in the matter. Thanks for th greets.
Your calculus teacher had it wrong. A nerd is just a geek who knows something useful. If you know how to code in Unix, you’re a nerd. If you know the serial numbers of all the different Enterprises, you’re a geek.
Needless to say, there’s considerable overlap.
Really? I’m not calling you a liar, but I find it hard to believe than anyone under the age of 70 and over the age of 25 doesn’t know at least something about it. (I have no idea of your age.) It was really huge in the 80s.
Computer games sort of killed it, though.
Or a screenwriter.
Define ‘huge’. Gamers tend to overstate the popularity of their games to make themselves feel better about their niche likings. I know I did. It would be better to say that the popularity peaked at that time.
For once I find myself disagreeing with you. I’ve never seen them used in that way. Geeks know the useful stuff and nerds know the useless stuff; geeks can socialize with non-geeks relatively well while a nerd is only interested in his or her own hobbies and assumes everyone else is as well. It’s always been better in my experience to be a geek than a nerd.
But yes, there is overlap. And Chucky is still a loony.
I’m 51. When I was stateside in college in the mid 70’s never heard of it. Went back to work for over a dozen years in the late 80’s and don’t remember hearing of it – and if I did, I must have thought it was a book. I do remember playing TONS of Monopoly and another one whose name escapes me now that had to with all sorts of trivia and factoids with cards and a board, bunch of different editions came out – loved it. But as far as board games, those two and backgammon are about it, don’t even know how to play cards. No doubt if I ask my son he’ll tell me all about it, but this summer he didn’t come down (time for him to start working).
As fas as consoles, as I said, bought him all sorts, including the latest Sony this X-mas…but other than playing Zelda as a bonding experience when he was a wee bit, never took a liking to them. Or 'puter games for that matter.
So, what have I been deprived of? 
Trivial Pursuit! Duh!
True, and when it was really huge was right about the time I discovered it, so my perception may be skewed. But I constantly saw munchkins wearing DnD t-shirts, stores had a lot of product, and one could always scare up a game. Everyone I knew knew what it was, but maybe that’s because back then I talked about little else.
These days I don’t play DnD, I play Harn, which is considerably less popular. I live in the state with the largest number of ongoing games. Three. Actually, two, as mine came to an end a few weeks ago.
A +2 vorpal blade of troll slaying.
There’s a thread in MPSIMS about what the game is all about.
Well, food aside, WoW is social, far more so than I thought. And many of the conversations are much more functional than gaming groups I’ve been in.
In fact the main reason I still play WoW is due to the social connections I’ve made.
It had quite a bit of notoriety outside of it fanbase, though. For a while, “Is Dungeons and Dragons making our kids into psychopaths?” was popular fodder for the daytime talk shows, and the televangelists got in on it, too, playing up the “It’s Satanic!” angle. I think that most people who were in the US at that time would at least have heard of D&D, even if it were in a very twisted and disparaging light.
Trivial Pursuit.
Here’s a cite that proves me right, and you wrong.
But seriously, nerd has historically been used to refer to anyone who prefers academic pursuits over athletic or social pursuits. Geek, on the other hand, originally referred to a subclass of carny folk. Back when travelling circuses were still in vogue, they always had the “human oddities” attractions: the freak and geek show. A freak was someone who was born weird. A geek was someone who studied up to it. Circus geeks would do stunts like bite the heads off live chickens, get full body tattoos, or pound ten inch nails into their nasal passages. Modern usage has made nerd and geek mostly synonymous, but geek still carries overtones of arcane but wholly useless skills or knowledge.
Darn! Sounds…indecipherable?
Thanks. Might check it out between chasing skirts…still my all-time favorite game.
Miller, check out my # 130
Momentary brain-fart or the onset of Alzheimer’s? :eek:
I see this a lot and I just don’t get it. The historical meaning has nothing to do with how the words are used today. Maybe if you’re old enough that carnies, freaks and geeks were well known, it still has that connotation, but it certainly doesn’t for me.
Out of curiosity, because I intended to start a poll in IMHO on this, I found that one already existed; those people in that thread who think a nerd is better than a geek rely on the historical meaning as well, but the majority who responded (a small sample in total, I grant) prefer geek over nerd.
And the movie means nothing. Geeks need not be in opposition to jocks, but it is the natural order of things for nerds.
Wasn’t that around the time Chick wrote his tract?
I played during that time, so I might have more actively sought out news relating to D&D, but in detached recollection, it was nothing more than easily forgotten filler material. It was also an easy scapegoat, similar to heavy metal, but nowhere near the notoriety. Still, it got a Saturday morning cartoon, and a really bad hatchet-job of a TV movie (note to nerds - don’t complain how the movie got the game mechanics / dynamics wrong if you want to be taken even slightly seriously).
Don’t take this as a knock on it - I was a player, and if I had time I still might play. I enjoyed it. Never got as worked up as smiling or Chucky, though. I’ve just noticed that fandoms - and by that I mean pretty much any fandom - overestimate the popularity their own pastime. I was as guilty as any (I’ve learned), whether it be RPGs, popular SciFi books, comics, anime, pro wrestling, or whatever.
sigh What part of “A +2 vorpal blade of troll slaying” don’t you understand?
Erm… I’m gonna go with “hair-triggered mouse wheel.”
How do you figure?
I’m 31, so well past the time that circus sideshows were in vogue. The word’s always had this connotation, I was just explaining where it was derived from.
Hell, I prefer geek over nerd, because I’m a geek, not a nerd. My idea of a good time is watching Star Wars obsessively, not reading machine code. I wouldn’t really put a value judgement on it, though, except that it’ll be easier for a nerd to make a good living off his hobbies than it will for a geek.
I suspect the jocks would disagree with you on that point, but what I meant by linking to that movie was to provide an example of popular usage of “nerd” to mean, “academically gifted, but socially maladapted.” The nerds in that movie are nerds because they’re smart. They aren’t (as I recall, been a long time since I’ve seen it) always talking about Star Trek, or collecting action figures. They’re studying hard science, computers, robotics, aerodynamics, etc. Because they’re nerds, not geeks.