Was there really a stigma against sci fi and fantasy in the early 2010s?

[Inkdaub]

19 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Yeah? Because you were TOTALLY going to be in with the popular crowd playing Dungeons and Dragons in the 1990s? No. 

There was a pretty real stigma. No one ever called me “nerd” meaning “omg, she’s so cool” or even meaning it is a neutral way. It was a pejorative term.

DnD was on another level, though.  It seemed to be made fun of more often than fantasy or sci-fi books.  I never played DnD but I did play WoW for years and I was/am regularly mocked for that but never books or other games or anything.  In fairness WoW players tend to be crazy.    ".,l;;;;;;;" - my cat's input.

I remember being in a writing group in Seattle many years ago.  The first night we met we were just kind of breaking the ice a bit so we went around the table saying what our favorite book was.  I said Lord of the Rings and two others in the group immediately said 'me too' and changed their answer.  They said they didn't think they should pick that at first.  So there was definitely something stigma-ish about it. 

It's gotten better, though.  I am actually semi-bummed that all the nerdy stuff became cool.  The media, anyway.

[HoodedCrow]

Many “ geeks” don’t look like stereotypes and even if they did and started making money and spending money, with computer professionals kicking butt. Ties became less mandatory for males. I would have to have a reason to wear a dress. Is geek/ nerd code for informal and bright?

[Tywin et al.]

7 hours ago, polishgenius said:

I don't think it was LotR and HP that caused the breakdown of the stigma because it's not as if Star Wars didn't exist and have just a big a place in pop culture before then, and hell, LotR itself was already the best-selling book of all time. There was always breakout geekery that didn't roll over the pveral sneering to stuff seen as too nerdy. 

Star Wars and Star Trek were popular movies and shows, but I still recall cosplaying being mocked around the time that HP and LotR became mainstream. The fulcrum point may be when going to Comic-Con went from being something just for "nerds" to being something that had mass appeal. 13,000 people attended it in 1990. 130,000 people attended in 2010, and I believe that's mass capacity for them.

[HoodedCrow]

What makes you say that WoW players are crazy? Asking for me, my DH, my brother and sister in laws, my niece and nephew, ex colleagues? Blizzard was certainly successful. DnD was quite fun, but it requires rule learning, creativity and work from the DM. GRRM plays it with his friends, correct?

[Clueless Northman]

12 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

REALLY OLD PEOPLE, huh? 

I meant, really old people like my mom might still have a degree of stigma against fantasy and SciFi, though not much, thanks to LOTR, Star Wars and the like. Against video games, that's not gonna disappear, even though she keeps asking me to install MahJong and card games on her PC and spends a lot of time playing them, Sudoku, real cards games and the like

[VigoTheCarpathian]

1 hour ago, Clueless Northman said:

I meant, really old people like my mom might still have a degree of stigma against fantasy and SciFi, though not much, thanks to LOTR, Star Wars and the like. Against video games, that's not gonna disappear, even though she keeps asking me to install MahJong and card games on her PC and spends a lot of time playing them, Sudoku, real cards games and the like

Culturally, my parents liked Star Wars and LotR - but looked down their nose in the late 90s, spending money on comic books and MtG cards, and those were also stigmatized at school by peers (also see anime and online gaming).  Early 00s, we had some friends get sucked into Everquest and WoW, lose their jobs/scholarships and game all day, and that became the new “bad geekiness” to the outside (plus the Southpark episode).
 

Now we’re at the stage where my parents assume I like the same things as whatever the characters on “The Big Bang Theory” liked.  I have never seen a full episode of the show, but it looked like a marketing idiots cosplay of nerd jokes from the 80s.  I had to stop wearing a flash tee I’ve sported since 1994 because I was tired of telling people I didn’t watch the show/was not trying to be something called a Sheldon.

 

[IheartIheartTesla]

What the hell is a 'payphone parody"? For that matter, what is a payphone....speaking of things that may be in fashion or not depending on the times.

[Starkess]

In the 2010s? No, I don't think so, not really. Earlier than that? Oh yes, definitely.

I think a lot of it was that fantasy was seen as very childish. So it wasn't liking SF/F, exactly, but liking it past a certain age where it was considered okay. And certainly anything getting into the more hardcore aspects of geekery/nerdery--things like cosplay, role-playing, DnD, fanart, etc.--were certainly seen as Uncool to the max

I mean the Geek Hierarchy was created in 2002 so that should give you a kind of idea. Basically the further you go down the list, the more stigma there was (and still is in some cases...looking at you, furries).

I think the rise of the internet and allowing people to find others with the same shared interests really helped accelerate the breakdown, in addition to as was mentioned above the mainstreaming of video games. I wouldn't lay it at any individual franchise. After all, the SF/F that escaped the SF/F ghetto and made it to the mainstream were usually seen as exceptions and often classified as not SF/F because clearly SF/F couldn't be mainstream (e.g. The Handmaid's Tale).

[ljkeane]

29 minutes ago, Starkess said:

I mean the Geek Hierarchy was created in 2002 so that should give you a kind of idea. Basically the further you go down the list, the more stigma there was (and still is in some cases...looking at you, furries).

I like that. The question I have though is there are furries who aren't erotic furries? Okay, if you have an out there sexual fetish for dressing up as an anthropomorphized animal it's weird but at least there's a point to it. If you're just into wearing a fur suit on it's own merits that's really weird. So, yeah, I'd query the ranking there.

[Week]

4 hours ago, ljkeane said:

I like that. The question I have though is there are furries who aren't erotic furries? Okay, if you have an out there sexual fetish for dressing up as an anthropomorphized animal it's weird but at least there's a point to it. If you're just into wearing a fur suit on it's own merits that's really weird. So, yeah, I'd query the ranking there.

Those would be mascots

[Reny of Storms End]

On 6/8/2021 at 12:36 AM, The Marquis de Leech said:

The stigma really ended, I think, with the arrival of Harry Potter, and then Jackson's Rings movies. Such things were too popular to merely dismiss as nerdy.

I wonder if the first movie in each franchise coming out within a month of each other also helped?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

On 6/9/2021 at 8:05 AM, Inkdaub said:

DnD was on another level, though.  It seemed to be made fun of more often than fantasy or sci-fi books.  I never played DnD but I did play WoW for years and I was/am regularly mocked for that but never books or other games or anything.  In fairness WoW players tend to be crazy.    ".,l;;;;;;;" - my cat's input.

I remember being in a writing group in Seattle many years ago.  The first night we met we were just kind of breaking the ice a bit so we went around the table saying what our favorite book was.  I said Lord of the Rings and two others in the group immediately said 'me too' and changed their answer.  They said they didn't think they should pick that at first.  So there was definitely something stigma-ish about it. 

It's gotten better, though.  I am actually semi-bummed that all the nerdy stuff became cool.  The media, anyway.

There was an Evagelical Christian fear of D&D as “devil worship” that inculcated itS stigmatization in the 80s and early 90s.

I remember my extremely evangelical Christian aunt (my Mother’s youngest sister) sitting me down because it worried her that played.  Her son mocked me for playing.

[Starkess]

Yeah Evangelical Christians have a LOT of SF/F hangups. My parents were always SF/F fans and sometimes that clashed with their born-again sensibilities. For example, we definitely didn't celebrate Halloween (devil's holiday, encouraging the occult), but my dad read The Hobbit out loud to me before I could read on my own. They "let" me read Harry Potter (like they could have stopped me, lol) but I remember my mom having a serious discussion with me to remember that this was fiction and that I should never try to do magic myself because that was occult. The impression I get is that secondary-world stuff was mostly okay because it was clearly fiction, but things set in the contemporary world were troubling because they might be encouraging actual witchery.

Anyway that clearly didn't work out for them!! Hardcore atheist and SF/F author here...

[A wilding]

I remember my evangelist Christian sister, knowing I was into SF/F, pushing the first Harry Potter on me a few months after it came out and telling me that it was going to be the hot new thing. Then next time we met she refused to discuss it at all, having discovered or realised or been told that it was occult and to be avoided.

 

[Martell Spy]

A friend of mine in high-school, also an atheist and D&D player, set up for me to have an exorcism performed on me by this very religious girl at school. I think my friend must have told her that I play D&D. I didn't want to do it really, since I didn't want to draw attention to myself and it seemed kind of a mean joke, but he convinced me. We both thought it was insane and ridiculous, but I was a lot better at hiding that than my friend that set this up. The girl backed out though at the last minute. She took me aside and told me she was not going through with it since she thought this wasn't being taken seriously, but that she would pray for me. I'm going to play D&D tomorrow night, so I guess I'm still going to hell.

 

Part of the D&D stigma was perhaps due to it  appearing to the uninitiated like a bunch of people sitting around a table and doing school work. Especially if you don't have the figures and board. 

 

[Inkdaub]

On 6/11/2021 at 4:22 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

There was an Evagelical Christian fear of D&D as “devil worship” that inculcated itS stigmatization in the 80s and early 90s.

I remember my extremely evangelical Christian aunt (my Mother’s youngest sister) sitting me down because it worried her that played.  Her son mocked me for playing.

This is true and I had somehow forgotten the entire religious aspect.  My parents were very religious and this type thing was a constant struggle. 

[Prince of the North]

On 6/11/2021 at 6:22 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

There was an Evagelical Christian fear of D&D as “devil worship” that inculcated itS stigmatization in the 80s and early 90s.

I remember my extremely evangelical Christian aunt (my Mother’s youngest sister) sitting me down because it worried her that played.  Her son mocked me for playing.

Oh yes, my friends and I went through this as well.  We were lucky, though.  When some of my friends' parents expressed concern over our playing D&D (because they'd heard bad things from the church or whatever) we were able to basically sit them down and explain it.  It was all good after that.  And now some of that group of kids who had to basically keep their D&D under wraps plays almost weekly online across three different states with several of their children also playing 

[VigoTheCarpathian]

21 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

This is true and I had somehow forgotten the entire religious aspect.  My parents were very religious and this type thing was a constant struggle. 

Oh, I had forgotten this as well - when my mom went through a religious upswing when I was in 3rd/4th grade, we didn’t get any more of the fun or cool toys for several years.  I managed to find the book that was being passed around at the church.  He-Man, Care Bears, Star Wars, D&D - all products designed to ingrain New Age crystal worship and occult practices into our delicate children.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0914984047/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_B2K65CWE418QJV5DM8KH