so nerds and scifi franchises

[Agent Bert Macklin]

Coupled with, I bet, a lot of "literature = boring shit I didn't care about my teacher made me read in high school" and "humanities and arts majors are just useless university hobbyist parasites technical majors are the only ones worth a damn" mindset, and you have a recipe for fatties obsessed with superficial detail while not bothering to engage in any deep reading and often being actively hostile to it. Sounds like what the OP is talking about to me.

My favorite is that state funds are wasted on such graduates.

[Djinnkitty83]

The simplistic desire to have a clear 'winner' might also factor into it.

Numbers and rote memorization are simple. Whether you're trying to 'quantify' your own personal favourite franchise, or put two or more in a RAR and try to claim who comes out on top, it's easier to just add things up and declare whoever has the higher number to be the 'winner'.

Actual analysis into themes, intent and the like make things a lot more complicated. All of a sudden it's no longer about who has the bigger cock numbers, it's suddenly all about motivation and consequences and before you know it you realize there is no such thing as a 'winner' because even a poorly thought out fictional universe is more complex than A vs B.

TL;DR - It's easier to be intellectually lazy.

[Jung]

I don't think this kind of thing is restricted to just vs. debating type nerds. Look at TV Tropes, where their idea of analyzing fiction is to break it down into a bunch of tropes and then make giant lists.

I mean, random example of the top of my head. Achilles Desjardins post-Spartacus in Rifters and Davidson in The Word For World Is Forest could both be described as "Complete Monster" but, y'know, that's like the most superficial level of analysis imagineable. "Ooh, they're both really bad guys." Actual analysis might start with something like "Davidson is pretty much a human-shaped gargoyle the author created to embody everything terrible about our culture, while Desjardins is a vehicle for a morality tale about how it might be a bad idea to try to literally re-engineer human nature based on some random funky ideology."

But it's faster and easier just to slam all the octagonal, pentagonal, hexagonal etc. pegs into the round hole of the "trope", while doing that still allows you to give the impression of having read a lot and, superficially, of being knoweldgeable.

[Pieman]

In analysis, numbers are good for feeling objective but secretly being really argumentative. Which is tricky, since being argumentative is the enemy of objectivity.

Almost no sci-fi uses consistent numbers or effects because it's all being done by artists who don't give a fuck most of the time. So I can always pick 'high-end' or 'low-end' numbers for whatever I'm doing, and just pound the table and demand that everybody else do it the same way. If I want to play 'high-end,' the one crazy bandit whose gun blows up walls gets more attention than the normal soldiers' guns doing about as much harm as a 9mm bullet would. 'Low-end,' the other way round.

So you get to dig in on "high end!" for things you like and "low end!" for things you don't. And you get to feel really self-righteous about how you're right and everyone else is below your level. Even if they're doing the same damn thing you're doing only in mirror-image, because they're low-ending stuff you like and high-ending stuff you don't like.\

Bleh.

[Jung]

More generally I think there may be something to the idea that part of the attraction of just knowing zillions of factoids and calcing the pews pews etc. vs. actual analyzing stuff is the former allows you to analyze stuff in a way that feels similar to something that would happen in a math, chemistry, physics etc. lab, and hence appeals to nerds who worship science and are ambivalent or dismissive of the humanities and arts.

It's hard to prove an analysis like you would an observation of the natural world, there's a level of subjectivity to it because it's often about stuff that is culturally mediated and therefore not universal etc.. Whereas you can go THIS TROPE APPEARS 9999 TIMES IN THIS WORK or THE EFFECTS OF THE LAZORS ARE DESCRIBED LIKE THIS and you can actually look at the text and verify that. So the latter feels more like science to fatty nerds, whereas I suspect when they hear literary analysis a lot of them think something along the lines of "this is just a bunch of bullshit some artsy type pulled out of his ass to feel clever, held together by imposing stuff that doesn't exist on reality with wishful thinking and pattern recognition, I never saw these meanings so clearly they don't actually exist, it's a lot like religion really."

[Infinity Biscuit]

As appealing as it must be to attribute everything bad to those things SD.net is seen to hold dear, I really doubt this has anything to do with engineer worship. I know a lot of people who are terrified of algebra or who make a living drawing things who are just as prone to focus on surface details and trivia in fiction.

Deriving numbers from fiction obviously has appeal to people who deal in numbers, but I don't think that makes it any more likely that one avoids examining deeper meaning and subtleties in fiction. It just adds another useless hobby like quote collecting or shipping to the approach.

[Pieman]

When you get someone who spends all their time fooling with spherical masses of iron and trope-compilation, and dismisses any other way of looking at a work, I think it's just obsessive cataloguing, not engineer-worship. You can be like that without giving a damn about math or much of anything else. It's not like the archetypal TVtroper has great math or science skills. Encyclopedic knowledge of anime, yes. Limited reference pool for anything published before about 1970 to 1980, yes. Math skills, not really.

Likewise, the really enthusiastic quantifier-guys on SDN don't necessarily have math, science, or engineering degrees. About the most advanced thing you can count on them to calculate is specific heat capacity and kinetic energy, and those are high school level knowledge.

Hm. How do you diagnose someone who can talk about the numbers and spherical masses of iron, but can also switch back to talk about characterization and whatnot? Is it still some kind of brain dysfunction that they do this then?

[Jung]

I don't know if these kinds of people are necessarily scientists, engineers etc. or particularly knowledgeable about those things themselves so much as they like the idea of it. Kinda like I bet there are a bunch of milwankers who have never served a day in any actual armed forces and are not actually all that knowledgeable about the subject.

Though I see the point that I may be overgeneralizing from one class of fat nerd to fat nerds in general.

Hm. How do you diagnose someone who can talk about the numbers and spherical masses of iron, but can also switch back to talk about characterization and whatnot?

A non-fatty person who happens to enjoy technical/vs. debating?

[Djinnkitty83]

Hm. How do you diagnose someone who can talk about the numbers and spherical masses of iron, but can also switch back to talk about characterization and whatnot?

My fiance. She doesn't even like rows of numbers that much, but she's a perfectionist who will grind through the necessary equations to make sure anything she supports is actually right. She's kind of awesome like that.

[Veef]

A non-fatty person who happens to enjoy technical/vs. debating?

what's enjoyable about fictional dick measuring

[Pieman]

Ah, yes. That elusive word "fatty." If you have to ask what it means, you don't know what it means...

I get the sense that it means one of two things. One, it means a poorly thought out insult. Or, two, and it does get used this way here much of the time- it means a sort of... fatness of the soul, a hardening of the arteries of the mind, so that their scope becomes limited, their flexibility disappears, and they become useless for any serious or intelligent purpose.

[Zod]

Ah, yes. That elusive word "fatty." If you have to ask what it means, you don't know what it means...

I get the sense that it means one of two things. One, it means a poorly thought out insult. Or, two, and it does get used this way here much of the time- it means a sort of... fatness of the soul, a hardening of the arteries of the mind, so that their scope becomes limited, their flexibility disappears, and they become useless for any serious or intelligent purpose.

or you could interpret it to mean fat = lazy

[Pieman]

But then how is it fatty to spend a zillion hours doing something? A lazy person would get bored and not bother to finish these gigantic analyses, would they not?

[Veef]

the default answer to that kind of question on the internet is to claim those people have aspergers

[Phantasee]

Your second definition is closest to the meaning of fatty nerd.

[Jung]

Would you say a semi-decent definition of fatty nerd is it means living up to negative stereotypes of what geeks are like?

[Bakustra]

Would you say a semi-decent definition of fatty nerd is it means living up to negative stereotypes of what geeks are like?

basicalyy it's that plus mental sloppiness and being antichill in my mental dictionary

[Count Chocula]

Wayne Poe.

[Djinnkitty83]

It's the sort of mindset epitomized by the comic-book-guy on the Simpsons. Though not everyone who holds that sort of mindset looks like him, he was deliberately created to embody the stereotype, and thus is the best thing to point to when you're trying to explain the concept of 'fattynerd'.

[Shroom Man 777]

also, turns out when analyzed artistically a lot of the stuff those fat nerds love because of the gigaton pewpew explosions turns out to be thematically crappy or the good bits artistically actually have nothing to do with gigaton pewpews which means its not as interesting to chuds

so you've already got that separation

and then when you've got gigaton-less pewpew-less things that end up being seen as artistically better than gigaton pewpews, well, that's pretty much blasphemy to those fatsos who've wasted a decade of life and buttcrack indentation on nothing but gigaton pewpews and who wins or loses according to gigaton pewpew refute evidence computations or concede nozzlecockdouche fuckpalmer donkeyface qed accepted fuckerrrr

etc.

for fatsos who live on nothing but quantificatifications, artistic shits must seem totally alien and strange or at least different

and we know how some people react to different things

[evilsoup]

I think you guys are too obsessed with that place
this problem of surface-level 'Ooo pretty shiny explosions' repetition of the plot rather than analysis is something that affects plenty of people who have never bothered with any kind of vs debate

In fact, the spherical masses of gigatons stuff is probably a symptom of that kind of fluffy thinking, rather than a cause

I think it does come from shitty education. Go and ask a child why they like x work of fiction, and they won't talk about themes or characterisation; or even really how it makes them feel. They'll say 'I liked this bit' or 'that guy was really cool'

Education in literature and drama, and I guess film studies, gives people a greater vocabulary, and also the mental tools to 'decode' fiction and pick out themes etc. But if this education is lacking (normally due to teaching shakespeare to 12 year olds for fuck's sake) and people are turned off to it, their mental & artistic development becomes stunted - they just don't have the skills to read into a film or a book on a deeper-than-surface level.

In the case of overweight science-worshipping engineer-fellating nerds like SDN, they instinctively cover up this lack of ability with their maths & line-by-line analysis of how many trees a lasgun can explode. Because you don't need social skills to work with numbers & they do what you want & never tease you about your weight

[Shroom Man 777]

some of us wasted nearly a decade over at that useless place so yeah we're kinda obsessed

and yes, that kind of behavior or whatever, it is a compensation for some kind of disability or dysfunctionality or inability

its something different that they can't/won't/don't do so blargh lol liberal arts majors losers engineering major win balls numeros graphs etc. bullshit

[Pieman]

A non-fatty person who happens to enjoy technical/vs. debating?

what's enjoyable about fictional dick measuring

I don't know. What's enjoyable about stamp collecting? What's enjoyable about fantasy football?

If you have a low opinion of stamp collectors and fantasy football players too, fine, that's very consistent of you.

some of us wasted nearly a decade over at that useless place so yeah we're kinda obsessed

and yes, that kind of behavior or whatever, it is a compensation for some kind of disability or dysfunctionality or inability

its something different that they can't/won't/don't do so blargh lol liberal arts majors losers engineering major win balls numeros graphs etc. bullshit

Captain Shroomhab, in search of the Great White Fail...

REVENGE!

[Veef]

I don't really understand fantasy sports or the appeal of it honestly.

And stamp collecting has like art and stuff to look at.

Technical discussion is ok on its own but that has its own dead ends.

Technical discussion for Vs. debating? It just seems like a veiled way to saying "my thing is better than yours"

It's inherently confrontational and just makes people defensive

I guess in a positive way, it can be used to illustrate severe flaws in another fictional body's way of thinking and how it affects its fans

like the ever present Gundam vs. Battletech threads

but to be honest, you don't need a versus debate to analyze something

[starku]

The versus debate shifts any analysis into conflict

So who cares why president trueman dithered during the crisis
All that matters is an FX glitch makes t look like he's 80 feet tall

Themes aren't weapons so don't matter
Even stuff that is nearly worthless without themes, like lots of anime, is sill searched for gigatons and the artistic value of the work ignored in favour of repeating obviously wrong dialog quotes