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Comment by javajosh | Hacker News Reader

Upvoted, but I don't get it. What, exactly, were you doing?

Me and a bunch of 7-8 year olds traced the physical contours of an SNES console and then furiously drew our imagined version of what would make games more fun.

Oh I see. So you associated the physicality of the console with it's operation and made new designs based on that. Curiously, that never dawned on me in even though I was really into mechs, which clearly is in the same milieu (that is, superficial design implying physically un-realizable degrees-of-freedom). I think I was entranced by the idea that you could write to both sides of a disk by snipping the floppy just so, and even defeat copy protection in a similar manner. It was all black magic to me, and I enjoyed being the magician at my school. But it would be a lie to claim I understood what I was doing: the primacy of causality would only really sink in during college.

> So you associated the physicality of the console with it's operation and made new designs based on that.

Yes exactly this. I can also say it’s weird that the things I most focused on in those ideas have somewhat become a reality! I was obsessed with multi-screen possibilities, and the idea of games that could be portable and played on a TV. I think my younger vision of multi-screen looked less like the DS style game and more like choose your own angle in adult media. But it’s weird how much physical world shaped how I think about technology so early on.

If it helps: I was strongly discouraged and guided away from actually being a nerd throughout my upbringing. I found my way to nerdy interests and footnotes I’d visit later on my own from creative pursuits that were less discouraged.

The violent anti-nerd sentiment of the 1980s had real life implications for anyone who was into computers or other nerd behavior well into the 90s. I actively avoided any public association with nerd things, only using them secretly and not talking about it with friends. The stereotype radically changed into a cool thing in the late 90s with the hacker becoming the new architype.

Moving forward it's important to remember that mainstream films effectively doomed almost two decades of smart people to either closet nerd behavior or condemnation and ostracization.

For what it’s worth, I experienced far more violence from my peers because I’m neurodivergent than because I’m interested in tech stuff. Even as I grew up through the 80s/90s, there was already a macho bro presence in the nerd world.

Not dismissing your experience at all, but I want to make sure mine is represented accurately.

Most of the harmful attitudes I experienced towards nerds were very socially insular, in my family and among friends.

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