I kissed a nerd and I liked it
So I can't decide what to think about this video:
At first premise it does seem to be full of lolz and good possibility - it's a parody of Katy Perry's I Kissed a Girl but about nerds (and/or geeks, natch), has a very good match-up of parody lyrics, and in some senses, is a celebration of nerd culture. But it's also full of nerd stereotypes (full of them - make this a drinking game), and still seems to be in service of the stereotype that "nerd" = "white dude" (with various stereotypes attached of course.) People in the comments were like "the girls were too nerdy" and I'm sitting here thinking "they weren't nerdy enough."
And seriously? B/c I like this nerd guy, I'll "learn how to factor?!!" I learned how to factor in something like 5th grade! This is not exactly an uncommon or difficult skill okay!
On the other hand, if I take this as from the perspective of one girl, who is not very geeky/nerdy or interested in those things generally, liking a geeky/nerdy guy and that being unusual for her, then it's just that one story, and I can take it as it is. But, while you could argue that from (well most of) the lyrics (which were written by Dr. Demento, not actually the girls in the video), you can't really argue that from the video of it, which is a few different girls, with multiple men with varying degrees of nerd stereotypes. (And then at the end, with the two girls in bed together - is this meant to imply that they're nerds too? I'm not sure. Or is it just introducing much needed gay content to a video that was otherwise seriously lacking?) I guess it just ends up bugging me because it's a bit male-nerd gaze-y, and the overall premise is quite plain from the youtube tags: "hot girls like nerdy guys." Yeah. *sigh*
In any case, I have a much more geeky parody of that song I'd like to write/sing. It will be called "I wrote a script in Perl and I liked it" and would feature me being nerdy about programming, with no gender or nerd stereotypes, because they are simply not necessary. Too bad parodies of this particular song are a bit old meme at this point.
Click to viewAt first premise it does seem to be full of lolz and good possibility - it's a parody of Katy Perry's I Kissed a Girl but about nerds (and/or geeks, natch), has a very good match-up of parody lyrics, and in some senses, is a celebration of nerd culture. But it's also full of nerd stereotypes (full of them - make this a drinking game), and still seems to be in service of the stereotype that "nerd" = "white dude" (with various stereotypes attached of course.) People in the comments were like "the girls were too nerdy" and I'm sitting here thinking "they weren't nerdy enough."
And seriously? B/c I like this nerd guy, I'll "learn how to factor?!!" I learned how to factor in something like 5th grade! This is not exactly an uncommon or difficult skill okay!
On the other hand, if I take this as from the perspective of one girl, who is not very geeky/nerdy or interested in those things generally, liking a geeky/nerdy guy and that being unusual for her, then it's just that one story, and I can take it as it is. But, while you could argue that from (well most of) the lyrics (which were written by Dr. Demento, not actually the girls in the video), you can't really argue that from the video of it, which is a few different girls, with multiple men with varying degrees of nerd stereotypes. (And then at the end, with the two girls in bed together - is this meant to imply that they're nerds too? I'm not sure. Or is it just introducing much needed gay content to a video that was otherwise seriously lacking?) I guess it just ends up bugging me because it's a bit male-nerd gaze-y, and the overall premise is quite plain from the youtube tags: "hot girls like nerdy guys." Yeah. *sigh*
In any case, I have a much more geeky parody of that song I'd like to write/sing. It will be called "I wrote a script in Perl and I liked it" and would feature me being nerdy about programming, with no gender or nerd stereotypes, because they are simply not necessary. Too bad parodies of this particular song are a bit old meme at this point.