@ Dave:

“It’s a gay musical, called Gay.”

I’ve always found the IT Crowd superior to The Big Bang Theory. While what I quoted from the show doesn’t exactly highlight the depth of what the writers got into with the IT Crowd, the show had some brilliant scenes, along with the great array of actors; there’s more to it than just IT jokes. The Big Bang Theory felt almost forced at points, with characters churning out jokes a bit too constantly.

I would recommend watching the IT Crowd. It doesn’t really overdo the nerd aspect like Big Bang Theory can. It also has some rather amusing takes on people who have no idea how computers work.

I’ve never really ever gotten into American sitcoms too much though, leaning towards British sitcoms more.

IT Crowd – That show was hilarious. It didnt focus too much on nerdism imo. The best episode was where they go to a musical theatre production called ‘Gay – A gay musical’. To this day whenever someone in the office uses the word ‘disabled’, there are shouts of “I’m disabled” in faux Irish accents. If you watch only one, watch Season 2, Ep 1 – ‘The Work Outing’

@ Travis McCrea:

Meh, hate is a strong word. I heard good things about community though. I’ve been meaning to give it a try as well.

@ Travis McCrea:

IT crowd seems ok. I don’t think I have ever watched a full episode, but I did see the internet box clip you are referencing and it was pretty hilarious. :) It seems that they did get a lot of things right in that series. I just haven’t gotten around to watching it yet – other than the random clips that cop up on the net all the time.

Also — while doing things that you hate, might I also suggest Community, or at least this episode of community:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/212754

I know that it was suggested in the first blog’s comments (I could probably go back and read them again to see if you replied) but the IT Crowd is pretty awesome. I hate british comedy, and honestly it took me a while to get into it… but they have EFF stickers everywhere and all sorts of stuff. They make fun of their nerdyness from time to time, but they are also frequently making fun of the other peoples inability to understand the most simple IT stuff (in one episode they give their boss a box with a red light on top and tell her that it is the Internet — the whole internet — and they expect that she will realize they were fucking with her… but instead she gives a speech at a board meeting about this box being the Internet, and since everyone in the room were “dumb corporate people” they didn’t realize that it wasn’t either).

I know that you hate when people suggest nerdy shows for you to watch (which I believe was the whole point of post number one) because you always get let down by them… buuuuut seriously give IT Crowd a shot.

@ Dr. Azrael Tod:

Yeah, stuff like pen and paper RPG, and tabletop games are still firmly in the geek sphere, but even that is slowly changing. I think you are right that the internet probably was a bit equalizer here. I think Patton Oswalt wrote a bit on it somewhere – back in the day being a geek actually required effort and commitment. If you were a fan of something and you wanted to learn all about it you had to do the leg work – you had to stand in lines, buy magazines, hang out with other fans, listen to gossip, use mail-catalogs and etc.. These days you can just google-binge for a few hours, and then jump on a message board and circle-jerk with other fans and none of them will ever know you just got into this new thing.

These days geeking out is virtually effortless, and these hobbies and interest areas that were previously kinda hard to get into are now accessible to mainstream audiences if they only choose to embrace them.

How i met your Mother is an example of both…
When Ted geeks out about something, everyone sighes, while Barney has at least equally nerdy sides and is pretty much never laughed about.

Imho it’s not that geek-interests have become mainstream and public but that there was a shift in what geek-interests are. We live in a time where “former” geeks sit in many media-producing areas and have a strong influence on mainstream. So those interests move into mainstream.
What is geeky on the other hand depends a big deal on what isn’t currently considered mainstream.
So if you collect bugs or like to talk about WW1-Ships pretty much nothing might have changed for you. Those people still seem geeky.

I would guess there are other areas where previous mainstream-focused things now became geeky, but i cant think of a single one.
Maybe with internet and widespread information about hundreds others wo geek out about the same things as yourself, you no longer think about something sounding geeky. It’s just a different audience then who you know in real life.