It occurred to me recently that Ready Player One came out in 2011, right around the very start of the “if you’re a 90s kid you remember this” age of the internet and before the big nerd culture boom so this book was written back when the “nerd who knows everything about games and books” was still niche and unexplored. The idea of “wow that nerd is actually cool” was still new. Now though, we’re inundated with nerd culture. YouTube channels are tripping all over themselves to share top ten facts about Ferris Bueller or the Shining. Having a car in a video game that looks like the ghost busters car sounds like something you can do in Fortnight. Memorizing obscure media already had its hay day and now we know that it still doesn’t substitute for a personality.
It’s mind blowing how Ready Player One has kinda predicted the future…
in all honestly, it didn’t really do that much. It kind of took inspiration from a lot of concepts that have been around in sci-fi since the 80s.
Yeah and if I remember correctly, most other nerds I knew did not actually find that movie or book cool.
The idea that nerds were cool wasn’t all that new…. but, the idea of nerds who aggressively try to look cool by rote-memorizing all possible trivia about their nerdy area of interest, having zero creative dialogue with it, and calling others “fake nerds” for not enjoying the same properties in the exact same way?
That was…. a big theme at the time.
Not a universally popular one.