Two-Eyed Nerds

The commonplace essay Four-Eyes No More brings up an interesting point: the persona of nerds is changing. To prove the point author Chris Hofer compares television shows from the 1990s to television shows of today. While popular culture does sometimes reflect everyday life and people, these shows are not to be taken as fact. The author uses Steve Urkel of Family Matters as an example for how nerds used to be. This may have been how some nerds used to act in everyday life, but I have never known someone quite as obnoxious as Steve Urkel. The author then brings up shows such as The Big Bang Theory and NUMB3RS as sources of comparison for how the nerd has changed over the years. The author claims that NUMB3RS contains an attractive nerd with an attractive wife and says that this should be enough to prove that nerds are different today than they were 10, 20, and even 30 years ago. The author seems to fail at differentiating between television and reality. How does putting a "normal" nerd on television affect how nerds act in reality? While I agree that the persona of nerds has changed, I do not think the nerds themselves have changed. Maybe the line between nerd and normality is becoming blurred with more people not being a full nerd like Steve Urkel, but being a "normal" person with the flashes of nerdiness that the author claims everyone has.

Zero Score and Three Years Ago

With Mass Effect 2 out for sale now, the debate that surrounded the original Mass Effect in 2007 seems like a distant memory. The controversy over the content of the game was brought to question by the media and then parents all over America. Because the media made a big deal of the games "full digital nudity" as Fox News put it, "experts" began to debate the effect of video games on children. Fox News wasn't the only one debating this topic, CNN was also. No matter what news channel you watched Mass Effect and video games were being debated. The media brought up an argument that had not been discussed a whole lot before that point. This alerted parents to the "dangers" of video game playing and caused the video game industry to reassess its rating system. This debate is one that should have never been brought up. If a parent is going to by his kid a video game, it is the parents responsibility to find out whether the game is appropriate, not the media or government.