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What Non-Geeks Hate About the Big Bang Theory
v3rgEz writes: It has been said that there is a lot to dislike about the Big Bang Theory, from the typical geek's point of view: It plays in stereotypes of geekdom for cheap laughs, makes non-sensical gags, and has a laugh track in 2015. But what does the rest of America (well, the part of America not making it the number one show on television) think? FCC complaints recently released accuse the show of everything from animal cruelty to subliminal messaging, demanding that the sitcom be ripped from the airwaves lest it ruin America. The full complaints for your reading pleasure.
The most painful thing about this show are the "jokes" which are telegraphed to the audience by the world's most obnoxious laugh track.
I don't watch it because it's a bit like going to work. I work in an engineering R&D firm, and there are quite a few characters here. Certainly Big Bang Theory is a sitcom and exaggerates things to dramatic effect, but there have been real life situations over here that aren't shown on TV because people wouldn't find them credible.
Imagine a place of employment where nobody is bad as Sheldon, maybe only a half Sheldon. But there are 10 of them, and they each have their own peculiar quirks and tastes in their Sheldon-ness.
Actually there's no hacker mentality required to be a geek. Stop gatekeeping what a geek is.
Like, the hacker mentality kinda sucks, actually. It's convinced a lot of people that broken software like Windows is worth keeping around because there are work arounds for the warts in the system.
Whatever happened to just having a deep appreciation and enthusiasm for something?
Or biting heads off chickens? If you're not biting heads off chickens, you're not a real geek.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
This show reminds me of "Friends" in so many ways it's frightening. It's a cookie-cutter production, seemingly. You just have different personality experts working this show.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
There was some genuine geekiness in the beginning but it is all gone now. Now its a show about stupid obnoxious people trying to seem smart... not at all as fun as it was in the beginning when it was about nice people with personality problems.
,,,are Geeks.
They would like to be, but lack the essential 'hacker' mentality required to Be a Geek.
Most of them are unimaginative morons, although highly educated.
A highly educated moron is easy to achieve with modern education; they can calculate something without any understanding whatsoever.
I've always considered the show to be "blackface" for nerds.
I like it, too; it's got it's problems, but it makes me laugh, which is the point. If anything, though, I see it more as the wet dream of nerds - they all get women (some of them quite attractive, some of them nerdy themselves - which is very attractive to a lot of nerds). I work in a very creative environment, with a lot of animators and artists - and a lot of them like the show. They all have toy collections and nerdy sides to them. The show doesn't have intellectual humor - it just makes you think it does; at the end of the day, it's like a lot of other sitcoms where we watch the lives of a bunch of social misfits - like the Simpsons, Married with Children, Seinfeld...
Stupid sexy Flanders.
So here I present you a geek who enjoys watching the show: Me.
Go to youtube and search "big bang theory without laugh track" and see what I mean.
What does that tell you? All it tells you is that we're used to a certain presentation of certain forms of entertainment, and when our expectations are not met it's jarring and disconcerting. Take a non-laugh-tracked "sitcom" (if they still fit that definition) like Peep Show or The Office or [insert non-laugh tracked sitcom you do find funny here] and add a laugh track and it will probably be just as un-funny because it throws the whole thing out of whack.
Take a production of MacBeth and have everyone perform it in flippers. Probably not going to last long.
If something makes someone laugh (for example, BBT with audience laughter), it's funny. If something doesn't make someone laugh (for example, BBT without laugh track) that doesn't mean that the first version wasn't "funny", and that the viewer must be therefore have been suffering some kind of delusion when they laughed the first time round.
You don't find BBT funny either way; fine. That doesn't mean anyone who does is wrong, whether they laugh at the un-laugh-tracked version or not.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Ok, not to break up a (somewhat) popular hate fest, but you HAVE to realize, for any given sitcom on commercial TV, there's inevitably going to be FCC complaints, many of which are going to be ... strange. Consider, in any group of people 300M large, a significant fraction of which watch TV, a significant fraction of *that* having no other damn thing going in their lives, what the heck do you THINK is going to happen? We used to call these people Fred and Ethyl, after Lucy's hapless elderly neighbors. Fred and Ethyl eat dinner off tin fold-up TV trays and watch TV in real time, including commercials. Fred and Ethyl can't tell the difference between rubber brains and the head meat of small animals. They think objects thrown from offstage must be from monkeys in a cage because that's what the dialog alludes to. They think the sounds of a cat squalling are being made by someone torturing a cat just behind that fake window there. Combine this with the current fashion of being offended at the tiniest opportunity, and what do you THINK is going to happen?
This article speaks more about the reporters than the reportees. It's non-news, but it bashes a show that some geeks don't like. So let's go with it. (In Kevin Kline's voice) DisapPOINTed.
And finally, it's not a laugh track -- it's a multicamera studio production in front of a live audience. Geeze.
I thought this was news for nerds. Not news for clueless nerds.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If you don't like the show then don't watch it anymore, but don't go trying to enforce your standards on everyone else.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I'm such a geek that I honestly thought this discussion would be about the real big bang theory.
I haven't watched sitcoms or network television in over twenty years.
Go to a con sometime.... you will encounter every geek stereotype you can imagine. While one might legitimately argue that the characters on BBT are exaggerations of what the the average geek is probably like, if what I encounter whenever I go to a con is any indication at all, I would say they are probably not more than a standard deviation or so away from the norm, and I find that it is not remotely an unbelievable cross-section of nerd-dom. Truth be told, it's unlikely many people would consider a sitcom about more typical nerds to be very funny anyways (and while a lot of people don't think BBT is very funny, one only has to look at the ratings to realize that there exists no small number of people that think otherwise).
But honestly, many of the people I encounter at cons make the characters on BBT seem tame in comparison, I have more than encountered my share of Sheldons, Leonards, Howards, and Raj's.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
My sentiments also. Yes, the geekery is dumbed down for general audiences, but would it be the #1 sitcom if the endless comic book references were Neal Stephenson references instead? It does manage to nail a significant number of nerd-culture specialties, such as the pecking order among different types of scientists and engineers, and the angry little academic wrangles that perfectly illustrate Kingsley Amis' comment, "The reason that academic disputes are so bitter is that the stakes are so small." It gets away with a lot of ethnic humor and innuendos hitherto reserved for cable.
The FCC complaints from religious cranks among the general audiences are exactly the same as complaints about other top shows. Civilization means that such people write letters to government bureaus, rather than chopping peoples' heads off.
I've never seen the show either. When I first read the headline I was thinking it was going to be a story about how non-geeks don't like the big bang theory because it implies the Universe is far older than their religious teachings say it is.
The most irritating thing about Big Bang Theory is my relatives telling me I would love it because I'm smart and into computers.
Go to a con sometime.... you will encounter every geek stereotype you can imagine. While one might legitimately argue that the characters on BBT are exaggerations of what the the average geek is probably like, if what I encounter whenever I go to a con is any indication at all, I would say they are probably not more than a standard deviation or so away from the norm,
People who attend cons are self-selected groups, and trying to determine a "norm" from such a group would be a mistake. It is also a positive feedback loop, where edge-of-the-curve geeks flock because they create an environment where they're comfortable.
It's like going to a smoking lounge in an airport, counting heads, and saying that "smoking is the norm".
This is /., not People magazine. The big bang theory is firstly about the beginning of our universe. This predates the TV sitcom that adopted the name. Submitter should punctuated the title to indicate he/she was referring to the name of the sitcom.
Nowadays, misleading titles translates into rudely wasting people's time. The sloppy title counts as a fault as serious as you can get in terms of punctuation errors.
(||) Nehmo (||)
I live near Burbank where the Big Bang Theory is recorded. The show's not that funny, fine, but it's fun to watch them tape it. I've been in the audience. While I can't speak for everyone there, I'm not a robot and I was given the authority of when to laugh. There's no "Laugh Now Or We'll Find You" signs. People literally laugh out at the slightest thing. I assume it's because only the most ardent fans go through the trouble of attending (the whole process can take 7-10 hours). As for the weird faux laugh-track; audiences are recorded separately from the actor's mics. I wouldn't put it past studio to "rev up" the audience track on the jokes that fall short. The interesting thing is that when a joke fails (not that uncommon; surprised?), you see the writers huddling next to the director, and after a few minutes reshoot the scene with a different joke/line. It's interesting to watch the process, if not exhausting. TL;DR: I've been in the Big Bang Theory audience; real humans, actually laughing with their mouth holes
I've always considered the show to be "blackface" for nerds.
The show has evolved over the years. While it used to be a compare and contrast of geeks versus normal people, it's now a show about relationships.
Leonard and Penny's benchmark "normal, but nerdy" relationship compared to Howard and Bernadette's cuckolding relationship, compared to Amy's needs with Sheldon, and finally to Raj's struggle to find a keep a girlfriend.
It used to be geeks v. world. Now it's geeks v. geeks. It's why Raj talks to women now, and why we rarely see them interact with "normies" except to setup a problem that each couple treats differently -- or that the boys treat differently than the vastly-more-normal girls.
[For what it's worth, I never found it be nerd blackface. We both laughed at and with them...]
I disagree. Yes, the show has evolved to be more about the relationships than in earlier seasons. But that is due to genuine character development rather than just a who-is-sleeping-with-whom like in other sitcoms.
Sheldon's character development is especially believable and interesting. We have a character who is clearly autistic (the actor and production company deny it, but probably because their lawyers tell them to. It is a spot on portrayal of high functioning autism), who has no comprehension of human interaction, and has developed severe misanthropy as a coping mechanism. He then finally meets the first person ever who truly tries to understand him and wants to help him be a better person, rather than simply trying to tolerate his quirks as his family and friends do. Which leads to the dynamic of him genuinely trying to change far beyond his comfort zone for her, while she has trouble being patient with what she perceives as his glacially slow development.
I don't see that. Black face is intensely offensive. Big Bang Theory only insults people without a sense of humor who can't laugh at themselves. Geeks should never become a protected class, that's ridiculous. Speaking as a nerd myself, nerds are indeed funny. To try and equate these two things is offensive in itself.
What I hate about the Big Bang Theory is the temporal asymmetry of a low entropy point just choosing to pop into existence with no understood process for getting that low entropy situation out of an earlier higher entropy situation. Either it did, or it didn't. Either way, it's asymmetric.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I have so called "geek" friends who keep insisting this is the best show ever.
Please, check out The IT Crowd instead. Not only that show is hilarious in ways BBT simply cannot be, but it is also a much more accurate portrayal of the geek life.
I don't see that. Black face is intensely offensive. Big Bang Theory only insults people without a sense of humor who can't laugh at themselves
Blackface is offensive because it insults black people be reinforcing stereotypes that are not really true outside of prejudiced perception. The big bang theory, in contrast, insults geeks by reinforcing stereotypes that are not really true outside of a prejudiced perception. It's therefore completely different and not offensive.
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