The Guild Season 1

As far as the Internet nerd icons go it is pretty much a given that Wil Wheaten is the de facto political leader, but Felicia Day is the de facto sex symbol. I mean, she is pretty much beautiful, went to college at 16 and majored in math, and she play WoW way too much. What more could a nerd as for. I bet she would make a totally awesome DM too.

That mentioned love of WoW she has is very serious. It isn't any kind of girly thing, "Yeah, I play WoW because my boyfriend does." She is an intense player who decided that she needed to make a sitcom out of her experiences being overly connected to her guild while being totally disconnected from the world. Enter The Guild.

As a web sitcom the whole season is over within an hour, but is one of the best hours on the Internet. Day's character is a WoW junkie who feels that her life is being consumed by the game to the point that not even her therapist can help her. The thing is, she is the most normal well-adjusted member of her friends with whom she goes on raids.

The show makes the most of the various stereotypes that populate the game in the real world with its limited cast: from the sheltered nerd to the lonely and unemployed middle aged man to the machisemo/a driven to those just looking to escape into a seemingly more rewarding world. I am sure that you could ask any gamer if they know anyone like any of the characters and they would give you more names than you might care to know. Yet, none of these characters feel overly archetyped. Maybe it is because of our limited interaction with them, but everyone seems to have a back story that while comical is also strangely real.

The writing is also surprisingly good. Even in real life these people think like the avatars they use in the game. Everything to do for someone is a quest that grants you some reward. Every task will give them experience. Every person they encounter is just another PvP battle waiting to happen. I would call the use of in-game jargon cheesy if it wasn't for it being so true to life.

There is going to be a Season 2 soon, and this is a good thing.

As of right now I would really love to get the DVD for all the extras as well as to support the production of this awesome show.

American Nerd: The Story of My People

This book was getting just enough media attention for me to crack it, but from what I found inside I wonder if anybody was actually reading it.

Don't get me wrong. It is fairly well written, moderately informative, and mostly entertaining. But, it fails in putting the biographical and the historical together in a cohesive way. Instead it tends to let the two act as if they have no reason to be in the same book. Ben Nugent talks about fictional characters and those from his own life to give one of the clearest pictures of what nerds are, but by separating them he never gets to any kind of universal statement on Nerdom.

This is only accented further by his talks about feudal roleplayers. While describing the social order and complexities of this particular group he tries to connect them to his past of boffing and D&D. This, while trying to show off the way nerds are always trying to create systems of order, seems to distract even more from his thesis.

While none of this is truly offensive, the book provides nothing in the way nerd culture has actually effected the world around it. In this way, Nugent only provides more description to probably one of the most self-described groups in our culture. There are no new thoughts on nerds, just one man's observations.