The Big Bang theory always felt like a stupid person's idea of what smart people are like.
Also, from the couple of episodes I watched, apart from being terribly unfunny, it felt like the whole point was just to mock neruodivergent people.
/c/TenFoward: Your home-away-from-home for all things Star Trek!
Re-route power to the shields, emit a tachyon pulse through the deflector, and post all the nonsense you want. Within reason of course.
~ 1. No bigotry. This is a Star Trek community. Remember that diversity and coexistence are Star Trek values. Any post/comments that are racist, anti-LGBT, or generally "othering" of a group will result in removal/ban.
~ 2. Keep it civil. Disagreements will happen both on lore and preferences. That's okay! Just don't let it make you forget that the person you are talking to is also a person.
~ 3. Use spoiler tags. This applies to any episodes that have dropped within 3 months prior of your posting. After that it's free game.
~ 4. Keep it Trek related. This one is kind of a gimme but keep as on topic as possible.
~ 5. Keep posts to a limit. We all love Star Trek stuff but 3-4 posts in an hour is plenty enough.
~ 6. Try to not repost. Mistakes happen, we get it! But try to not repost anything from within the past 1-2 months.
~ 7. No General AI Art. Posts of simple AI art do not 'inspire jamaharon'
~ **8. Political commentary is allowed, but please keep discussions civil. Read here for our community's expectations.
Fun will now commence.
Sister Communities:
Want your community to be added to the sidebar? Just ask one of our mods!
Honorary Badbitch:
@jawa21@startrek.website for realizing that the line used to be "want to be added to the sidebar?" and capitalized on it. Congratulations and welcome to the sidebar. Stamets is both ashamed and proud.
Creator Resources:
Looking for a Star Trek screencap? (TrekCore)
Looking for the right Star Trek typeface/font for your meme? (Thank you @kellyaster for putting this together!)
The Big Bang theory always felt like a stupid person's idea of what smart people are like.
Also, from the couple of episodes I watched, apart from being terribly unfunny, it felt like the whole point was just to mock neruodivergent people.
They were all so mean. To me it felt like they were trying to normalize mean-ness, racism and sexism, under the guise of "nerds are misunderstood"
To be fair that's what most comedy shows seem to do.
The IT Crowd managed to pull off nerd humor well though.
There was nothing smart about BBT, that's for sure. It's just annoying and stupid.
Some of the earlier seasons did have some clever jokes. One every 4 episodes or so. Less frequent than what you find in children's shows meant for adults. But, "nothing", is something a sith would say
I hated that show. My mother would constantly make comparisons between Sheldon and I.
That shit hurts, mom..
I still remember the comic that had a character calling it "nerd minstrel" lmao
My wife actually love BBT and got me watching it. I still hate laugh track sitcoms, and as a Super Nerd a lot of things irritated me, but overall it's not nearly as bad as I was expecting from all the meme hate.
Still, the meme is not wrong, Data had a fine positronic brain, sure, but He can kill a motherfucker when necessary.
Papa Soong didn't raise no bitch.
You want someone to look tough? Have them knock down Worf. Want someone to look unstoppable? Have them subdue Data.
How well does Data fair against blue barrels?
I found big bang theory a lot more palatable if you consider it as an unreliable narrator story, with penny as the narrator. It's not what actually happened, but what Penny remembers about it. All the geeky/nerdy stuff gets filtered. Only the surface, superficial stuff gets remembered, and even that is distorted. That is why it plays on stereotypes so much.
My wife likes BBT, I've learnt to tolerate it at best.
I did grad school in planetary science while BBT was airing. I hated it. I could go hang out with my friends and have much funnier nerdy convos. "I'll buy you a beer if you can prove to me that the electron exists." -- one of my favourite remembered starts to many hours of drinking one day.
My dad watched BBT and was pretty convinced it was a documentary of my life, or close enough. I told the above story to my dad, and it did nothing to dissuade him.
I cannot take laugh tracks anymore. They just annoy the fuck out of me. If you ever get a chance and you like the show, the European version of M*A*S*H without the laugh track was a revelation. The people responsible for the laugh track didn't understand when the show was actually trying to be funny half the time.
Just the same, this is completely on brand for Sheldon's interpretation of the character. He finds one aspect of the character he identifies most with, and completely ignores the ones that he doesn't.
I recently binged the whole thing, mostly because I wanted to know how it ended. I stopped watching it around season 3 when it was on the air.
The show is literally only watchable at 2x speed.
I honestly find even ten seconds of the Big Bang theory to be like nails on a chalkboard.
It feels written by someone who isn’t a nerd trying to write a nerd character and just missing the point utterly and completely.
If you want an example of good non neurotypical nerd characters that are on the spectrum maybe, you don’t need to look any further than Tendi and Rutherford in Lower Decks. They both have heart and feel way more fleshed out than the Big Bang theory.
The Big Bang theory just makes me want to vomit, it either feels like the most insufferable version of nerds or it feels like a high school bullies super reductive perception of nerds. Also the whole “Penny is a normal hot girl hanging out with nerds” is such a stereotypically reductive setup too.
It's a tad dated now but still hilarious "The I.T. Crowd" owns it hard. One of the funniest shows ever made.
There's worlds difference between nerds in Silicon Valley and Big Bang Theory. Makes you even cringe harder at BBT.
Silicon Valley gets nerds and coders spot on. It's such a brilliant show for the first couple of seasons.
I can't watch it, but for completely different reasons than Big Bang Theory. It does its job too well.
It’s nerd blackface.
Any true fan would have posed Worf getting his ass kicked.
Worf's main function was to show how tough a new character was by getting beaten up by them.
Unless it was a Klingon story, in which case he would somehow be stronger with their weapons even though he wasn't raised with Klingons and his combat training would have been mainly federation combat (though I suppose it would make sense for him to surpass them with his access to one of several holodecks on the Enterprise).
Another exception was if it was a child, in which case he was the scary adult laying down the law. But I believe there's an exception to even this exception, though that child did have powers closer to Q's than to humans'. And I can't remember for sure if she did pwn Worf in that episode.
It makes some sense that Worf would be an expert in Klingon combat, because he's such a tryhard that strives to be more Klingon than Klingons since he feels like he has something to prove.
Worf got exposed to Klingon culture and ideals with no context for how they're constantly falling short. He's trying to live up to impossible standards, without knowing that's not really what it's all about. And honestly, he's not doing bad. Except for Alexander. Worf is a horrible father, and given his adoptive parents he really has no excuse.
I love that Worfs horrible parenting has become such a joke because he really was a terrible father. I love Worf, Michael Dorn is fantastic, but the writers had absolutely no idea what to do with Alexander. It all always felt so forced, which I guess was kind of the point.
There's episodes of his holodeck training, dude basically slept worked and trained for years.
This is actually explicitly canon to the point that some of the (admittedly less than canon) books have other klingons calling him basically a tryhard.
Also, Klingon culture had become quite corrupted by that point whilst he was raised outside it with the idea of what a real Klingon is supposed to be. I forgot the exact episode, deep space nine for sure, but he got called the last true Klingon because of this.
This is from memory, I might be off somewhere.
One thing I did not like about data is he sorta made everyone else second best in thier specialty. stronger than worf, smarter than wesley. I almost surprised they did not give him more sensory capabilities than giordi.
He's stronger than worf, but doesn't have his instinct for dangerous situations. He's smarter than Westley (lol) but doesn't have a great capacity for improvisation and adaptability. He's technically better than Geordi at science, but not necessarily engineering, again pointing at his spock-like proclivity for sticking with "in the box" thinking.
Ironically, Geordi has better tech eyes, but data gets more play, if you know what I'm saying 😉
That's one of the reasons I think neurodivergents identify so strongly with him. I might be smarter, or better at some things than someone else, but it definitely doesn't mean I'll be more successful than they are.
I mean... I could tell the TBBT writers never watched Star Trek because I have seen TBBT, so I've been subjected to their writing.
Worf said Data is the only member of the crew strong enough to break his wrist.
He's criticizing their technique.