Corporations took the intense, subversive, revolutionary force that was science fiction, and they turned it to trash culture.
Damien Walter writes on technology, culture and scifi for The Guardian, BBC, Wired, Oxford University Press, IO9, Tor.com and elsewhere. He’s a graduate of the Clarion scifi writers workshop, and teaches Advanced Scifi & Fantasy : writing the 21st century myth
Today’s post is because I was thinking about the idea of the “scifi fan”.
And how much I hate it.
One thing that may not be apparent to people who don’t work in marketing, because it is carefully hidden away, is how the “geek” identity has been deliberately constructed by corporate marketing.
That invisibility is helped by the fact that people underestimate just how longterm and deliberate corporate marketing strategies are.
Example – Nestle wanted to sell coffee in Asia. It spent FIFTY YEARS and literally millions of dollars on creating a market. Nestle’s marketers made agreements with dozens of tv producers to have shows which featured young people drinking coffee, hanging out in coffee shops etc.
So when you see a show like The Big Bang Theory, that is packed with images of “Geek Culture” that’s not an accident. The entire show is carefully constructed to play a part in the long-term marketing strategy of entertainment corps.
The Nerd Industrial Complex (NIC)
These corporations are vertically integrated. That means they own and profit from every part of a successful franchise, and all those franchise feed each others success.
Television shows are very good at forming social norms. So if you have a successful show like Big Bang, and it’s also shaping the demographic for your movies, video games etc, that’s a win.
In the 80s these entertainment corps started building very detailed profiles of the groups they could market to. The profiles have names that are pretty widely used in marketing now. There are two profiles for 20 / 30 something men.
One is the the Donkey / Mule / Jackass. If you remember the Jackass tv show, that was specifically made by MTV based on research into this profile.
The other is the Nerd / Geek / Dork. Obviously, there’s no no end of tv shows etc targeting this demographic now. But that did not used to be the case.
“you have to remodel these identities around consumption habits”
Why did marketers build these demographic profiles? The Donkey / Nerd? Because young men 20/30 are actually very hard to market to. But if you can shape young male behaviour to these profiles, they become very easy to market to.
These profiles are degraded caricatures of real identities. The athlete and the intellectual. But young men engaged in either athletics or study are busy. They hardly purchase anything. So you have to remodel these identities AROUND CONSUMPTION HABITS.
And that’s what the nerd is. A young male intellectual, whose identity has been reshaped away from study, towards consuming entertainment franchises.
Note how all the traits of the Nerd are about consumption.
Obsessive watching of entertainment franchises.
Collecting of merch.
Etc.
This isn’t the “natural behavior” of the Nerd. It’s behavior conditioned by marketing.
Negative Self Image Sells
The nastiest thing about these marketing profiles is that to be maximally effective, they’re built around negative self image The athlete is reformed as the jackass, doing moronic stunts instead real sports The intellectual is reformed as the obsessive thinker on trivial topics.
I suspect this is why parts of “nerd culture” react so violently to criticism of entertainment franchises. You have to know on some level your love of Star Wars is the product of coercive, long term marketing strategies, so the crit feels personal.
Which finally arrives back at the topic of today’s post. Science is a genuine love of many young intellectuals.
That was coopted by corporate markers as a main product to sell to the Nerd demographic they were shaping.
So the Nerd then morphed into the “scifi fan”. A cruel caricature of the worst, unhealthiest traits of young intellectual people.
Advanced SciFi & Fantasy
Writing the 21st century myth
Damien Walter, writer on sci-fi and geek culture for The Guardian, BBC, WIRED and graduate of the Clarion writers workshop, leads a journey into scifi and fantasy storytelling.
The cognitive science of scifi with John Vervaeke
This podcast is republished from earlier in the year.
Follow the full course in Scifi and Fantasy : https://damiengwalter.com
Write better sci-fi stories with this simple idea
When high-falutin people talk about sci-fi you’ll often hear them use words like novum and the like. Critic and academic Darko Suvin came up with novum to describe the…thing…at the heart of every sci-fi story that makes it sci-fi. Androids hiding as humans! A world populated by talking apes! A portal that leads to everyContinue reading “Write better sci-fi stories with this simple idea”
Science fiction sold out. Let’s take it back.
Corporations love to take cool things and turn them to trash to make money. In the early 80s black artists took DJ music loops, rapped radical political lyrics over them, and invented hip-hop. Corporations took hip-hop and degraded it into “gangsta rap”, perpetuating stereotypes of black male violence to sell hip-hop to the masses. CorporationsContinue reading “Science fiction sold out. Let’s take it back.”
Genre fiction is the worst thing that ever happened to science fiction
When did the science fiction community start using “genre” as a proper noun? “It’s a common thing in Genre.” As though “Genre” is a city you can visit. Or a distinct community unified by being “Genre”. It’s one of those linguistic ticks that arise on the internet. But for science fiction it’s also symbolic ofContinue reading “Genre fiction is the worst thing that ever happened to science fiction”
How does M John Harrison enter a story?
M John Harrison is one of the all time greats, a “science fiction writer’s science fiction writer”, a creator of weird tales in the horror tradition, and a powerful weaver of fantasy. The Viriconium stories defined political fantasy in the 80’s, as the Light trilogy redefined literary SF in the 00s. As editor of NewContinue reading “How does M John Harrison enter a story?”
Neuromancer…still the best science fiction novel ever written
When life takes an unexpected left turn I do four things – tidy my room, go running, take 72 hours away from anything stressful…and read a good book. This time around I landed on Neuromancer by William Gibson. I first read this book when I was 14, I suspect I read it at least sevenContinue reading “Neuromancer…still the best science fiction novel ever written”
How Philip K Dick’s 1960’s masterpiece nailed politics in the 2020’s
Is Europe welcoming desperate refugees, or being invaded by economic migrants? Is Donald Trump a serious President, or a clownish attention seeker? The Man In The High Castle reveals the most basic truths about our era of competing narratives. * In 1947 the forces of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan swept to victory over Europe andContinue reading “How Philip K Dick’s 1960’s masterpiece nailed politics in the 2020’s”
The remarkable Neal Stephenson interview
Neal Stephenson – legendary author of speculative fiction – on Elon Musk and geek culture, the NSA revelations of Edward Snowden, how negative cultural narratives are killing big science – and the upbringing that made him the writer he is. IN LATE 2013 I had the opportunity to interview the author Neal Stephenson. Some Remarks,Continue reading “The remarkable Neal Stephenson interview”
7 literary Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels you must read
Sci-fi & Fantasy are best known as genre fiction. But truth be told, they have their roots in works of literature. For fans, and especially creators, of today’s modern mythology, it’s a good idea to get familiar with the literary novels that made SF&F what it is. The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse isContinue reading “7 literary Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels you must read”
Originally published on Twitter
One thought on “How corporate marketing created the Geek identity”