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This was a shitty show, they actors were little more than mean caricatures of nerds and geeks. They were doing the equivalent of wearing 'geek blackface'. If the show was focusing its humor on black people instead of nerds, the studio would be firebombed the day the first episode aired. It was a shitty show, and it belongs in the same category as 'Song of the South' - if not actually truly offensive, pretty tasteless none the less.

But, it is hugely popular in America, because for the past 20 years, we have been going through a profound cultural and economic shift. The nerd has gone from the mocked and outcast spaz of the 80's comedies (Revenge of the Nerds, various John Hughes movies) to ruling every aspect of modern life. (The founders of Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, etc.) The common blue collar worker has been utterly crushed by nerds and geeks, his work is being threatened by automation and disruptive startups, and he is slowly being gentrified out of house and home as the middle class is crushed by the new class of tech workers made up of these strange spastic twerps that he picked on in high school. This is no less than a dimly veiled mocking of geek culture, and emasculation of their threat to middle class America.

"Oh look, they aren't going to create a new start-up that shuts down the plant and puts me out of work, they are just a bunch of stupid gits that are scared of girls"

As a geek/nerd, if the BBT humor is the trade off for everything you listed I think we're are coming out ahead here. Those in power are always subject to ridicule.

That's exactly right - and contrast it to "The IT Crowd", which seems to be beloved by geeks/nerds, because it seems to laugh WITH us (and at management)

Funny, because Trenneman is almost exactly like Howard, Moss is like Raj with a hint of Sheldon, and Jen is like Penny. But that's okay, because it is making fun of completely overblown caricatures of management, topped by the completely psychotic Reynholm.

> This was a shitty show, they actors were little more than mean caricatures of nerds and geeks

You are just bitter unsuccessful geek loser.

The show was an excellent portrayal of nerds and geeks. You have no taste in TV comedy

When you accept the characters have no resemblance to reality it's easier to sit back and enjoy the acting and writing. I worked in various aerospace R&D areas, the latest with 70% PhDs, including some occasional FEL and space station work. Literally nobody was interested in anything close to comic books, old (or new) video games, sci-fi TV series, Comic_Cons, trains or whatever other trivia that formed the teen-aged grist for their humor mill. One reason you never saw Howard's mother was that she was a comic caricature from the Milton Berle era. The show started to jump the shark early on with an unnecessary drop in the absurdism brought on by the girlfriend(s). Some clever writing and good acting gave it enough momentum to keep going.

As an actual geek, they "caricatures" of geeks presented ring extremely true with geeks as of when the show started. Perhaps geek culture has changed.

There were so many moments in the show where I and my friends would laugh at with self recognition. Geeky arguments, arrogance combined with shyness, and so on.

It's also possible culture has changed. Folks are a lot less easy going than 12 years ago. They find offense in everything. Not just geeks either.

And it's possible the growth of the women into full characters divided the screen time below that of the main audience. I don't know the demographics of BBT but if it was 90% geeky males, they might have drifted off as their favorites lost screen time. I like Leonard the most. I don't think he gets as much screen time as he used to.

This was a shitty show, they actors were little more than mean caricatures of nerds and geeks. They were doing the equivalent of wearing 'geek blackface'. If the show was focusing its humor on black people instead of nerds, the studio would be firebombed the day the first episode aired. It was a shitty show, and it belongs in the same category as 'Song of the South' - if not actually truly offensive, pretty tasteless none the less.

But, it is hugely popular in America, because for the past 20 years, we have been going through a profound cultural and economic shift. The nerd has gone from the mocked and outcast spaz of the 80's comedies (Revenge of the Nerds, various John Hughes movies) to ruling every aspect of modern life. (The founders of Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, etc.) The common blue collar worker has been utterly crushed by nerds and geeks, his work is being threatened by automation and disruptive startups, and he is slowly being gentrified out of house and home as the middle class is crushed by the new class of tech workers made up of these strange spastic twerps that he picked on in high school. This is no less than a dimly veiled mocking of geek culture, and emasculation of their threat to middle class America.

"Oh look, they aren't going to create a new start-up that shuts down the plant and puts me out of work, they are just a bunch of stupid gits that are scared of girls"

Well, by definition, caricatures exaggerate -sometimes extremely- characteristics of the subject being caricatured in order to highlight those characteristics for comedic effect. Calling it fake is as useless as complaining about any other sitcom that exists. Hell, that would go for most anything on TV. It's all fake and contrived, even the so-called "reality" shows.

that show was a grossly inaccurate caricature.

I am as geeky as they get. And the caricatures resonate with me, and I fused to find the shoe funny, though I haven't watched it in a couple of years.

  Maybe you shouldn't paint everyone with the same brush.

There's a leaked pilot for BBT floating out there. The setup was somehow way better relationship wise and not as much a caricature as the final product.

The actual series had up until season 4 or so a few things going for classic nerddoms: you could spot cool stuff in their cupboards (an idea taken from the IT Guys), the running gag often was nerdy (sheldon not getting over the girl beating him at halo) and such. Also, they had regular visits from different nerddoms (Summer Glau, Geaorge Black, that star trek kid and so on). This took more and more a backseat to relationship-soap opera stuff which made me quit.

Silicon Valley might not be very precise with its technical details, but it feels way more nerd-relateable than BBT to me.

I used to like it, partly because it didn't take itself seriously - the characters were caricatures, but I could see aspects of myself and geek friends in the caricatures and laugh at them. Somewhere around season 5 all the characters started getting girlfriends and having semi-normal relationships and it wasn't funny anymore.

Or the caricatures of geeks presented by the sitcom do not resonate with actual geeks because they are fake.

LynnwoodRooster is so far to the right I've come to the conclusion that such a caricature could not exist in reality (that name!) and he must be one of Putin's sockpuppets

Firing is a legitimate part of legitimate ostracism. Nobody wants you ariund, so they avoid you; when you muscle or swindle your way in anyway, they kick you out. As long as the ostracism itself is legitimate -i.e. based on what you do, not who you are- then so are the firings.

That's just dressing up bigotry to make it sound more appealing. It's like religious fundamentalists saying "it's not a sin to be gay, but it's a sin for a man to have sex with another man". See? They're not ostracising you for who you ARE, they're ostracising you for what you DO. You can be a homosexual all you like, just don't be doing none of that gay sex stuff!

It's a shitty differentiation on the face of it but, more importantly, it opens up the door to all kinds of discrimination which should not fly in any civilized society. By your logic it should be perfectly fine for a business to fire a woman who has an abortion, or a man who prays to the "wrong" god, or anyone who speaks favourably about socialism/anarchism/capitalism or any other topic whatsoever. In times past you would have successfully argued that it's perfectly fine to ostracize and fire any woman who speaks up in favour of women's suffrage.

We can certainly discuss whether or not such firings should be legal and, even though most societies have generally agreed that it shouldn't, you might be able to present a good argument for allowing it. But regardless of whether or not it should be legal there's very little doubt that in many cases it is wrong, and actively detrimental to the growth of an egalitarian society. Firing people for having or espousing unpopular opinions is only slightly less harmful than just outright criminalising the expression of those opinions.

That's all without even considering the phenomenon of demonizing people who espouse anything which even mildly questions the prevailing orthodoxy, assigning views and categories to them which they do not hold, and then ostracising and/or firing them for apparently being (or doing) the caricature which you've created. James Damore wasn't fired because he did anything actually objectionable; he was fired because the SJWs painted him as a horrible sexist Nazi who just wants to oppress women and is "creating a hostile environment" for women at google. All of which was utter bullshit, but since when has any witch hunt needed an actual witch?

Me pointing out that you haven't provided any rational reason for disliking the guy is not an ad hominem.

Uh...

What I don't get is all the idiots...

an innate desire to despise anyone who is doing well

on completely superficial grounds

some weird caricature

a half-hearted attempt at amateur pyschoanalysis

I'd attempted to explain why "all the idiots" think poorly of Musk. You made it about me rather than explaining why his behavior does not deserve to be characterized as that of a narcissistic punk. Unnamed tens of saboteurs are responsible for his company failing to meet unrealistic production targets. A man who pointed out that underwater caves are not swimming pools is a "pedo guy". He's like Trump: He just says shit and expects the rest of us to be blind to how ludicrous that shit is. Narcissism exemplified.

HTH. HAND.

Your framing of the phenomenon might have something to do with your inability to understand it.

I think you have cause and effect reversed; my inability to understand it is much more likely to drive my framing of it than vice versa.

I don't personally know anyone who hates the punk, but I do know a lot of people who think poorly of him because he's a narcissistic man-child who tries to portray the selfish pursuit of his lunatic Richie Rich fantasies as some kind of grand and heroic vision. It's not. It's narcissism exemplified.

You say you don't know anyone who hates him, yet in the exact same sentence you make it clear that you dispse him, on completely superficial grounds. If the word "hate" bothers you then replace it with "dispise", "loathe", or "dislike"; it doesn't change anything about what I said. You dislike him based on some weird caricature you've created, and I still can't figure out why.

If I'm an idiot for possessing the ability to perceive reality accurately, so be it. Title accepted, with pride.

You may or may not be an idiot, but you've done nothing to demonstrate that you "perceive reality accurately", nor have you given any reason for your dislike of him other than a half-hearted attempt at amateur psychoanalysis.

Nope. About 15-30% would never vote for anybody except Trump because they hate and despise the caricature of the left so much they will literally embrace the worse possible demagoguery because he tells them he is attacking those liberal Nazis.

You do know we know about the right's own antics, right?

Now if the remaining sane Conservatives would clean house, it would be nice, but they find themselves afraid to do so.

We thank you for the explanation of progressive taxation. We both know what it is, and that the US still uses it.
The model we spoke of, was progressive taxation that with top brackets of 70% or more.

Today's cap of 37% is a caricature of the model.

You're the gift that keeps on giving: a veritable caricature of the modern European intellectual. Thanks.

The only thing this addresses is the entitlement of millennials. They think that just because they can access something online, that they are free to use it for anything they want.

The photographers are the ones with the misplaced sense of entitlement. They are the ones wielding an artificial, government-granted privilege as though it were some kind of natural right.

What nitwit moderated this as "insightful"?!? Show me what natural rights you have, REALLY have – that are not artificial and imposed on us by society ("government-granted privilege", bullshit. We as society want this or we overthrow the government and throw out those privileges). I can tell you of an artificial natural right you have, not being punched in the face for coming up with stupid statements like these. I might disagree with that natural right, but I bet you are really really happy that you have the protection of that natural right.

Copyright in its' original and basic form is good for us society. Copyright extension to the extreme is bad for us as a society. Go back to the time before copyright and we will see what happens to us. I promise you a lot of stagnation and secrecy.

Also, I dislike this "millennials" charicature. Not everyone born in this age range is entitled, irrational, and deeply intolerant. There are civilized and respectful young people out there, I'm sure of it.

Sure, that is a caricature. But every caricature comes of a model. So there are enough millennials behaving like this for non-millenials to make it a thing.