It normalized an easy-to-digest parody of nerd culture, perhaps. Nothing honked me off more than people watching BBT and thinking they understood "people like me".
The problem comes when the parody comes at the expense of the culture - that's exploitation. But by the time BBT was airing and popular, nerds were, and remain, to a certain extent a privileged class, not an oppressed one. They have high-paying jobs, ordinary successful lives, and look back at the old stereotypes of pocket protectors and social awkwardness with a sort of bemusement. Nerds are not a vulnerable class and haven't been in a long time. Nor is "nerd culture" particularly cohesive.
That may not be the case when the group being parodied is genuinely being oppressed or discriminated against and is often not in a position to push back against that. Exploitation in that case can be real and harmful.
The ones who get a CS degree and get a good high paying job, sure.
The ones still in middle school? Not so much. The ones who aren't programmers? Not so much. The nerds growing up in communities where free thinking and geeky passions are looked down upon, sometimes violently? Not so much.
And those kids will reach adulthood dealing with some rather nasty issues. Everything from not having learned great socialization skills, to a poor self image, to a lot of stuff in-between.
Stereotypes are bad, having a show that treats people as 1 dimensional disposable arch-types that exist only to be laughed at, is bad, no matter who the subject matter is.
Maybe if you are lucky enough to be living in silicon valley. Not in most places though, especially if you live outside of America.
> ordinary successful lives
If you try to stretch the meaning of successful enough and exclude things such as romantic/sexual life.
> Nerds are not a vulnerable class and haven't been in a long time
Kids being bullied and remaining friendless in school due to being nerdy is not a rare occurrence.
Is this still the case in 2019?
I was friendless (not bullied) for much of middle and highschool (2006-2010ish) not because I was nerdy, but because I was socially awkward and didn't make any attempt to fix it until later in highschool. It feels like a lot of people are mad at the show making fun of socially awkward people, which is completely separate from being nerdy.
No, it isn't quite the same thing. ESR actually points out the specific problem with BBT in this excerpt from the blogpost I linked:
> Bleagh. This is supposed to be a show about geniuses? It’s not. It’s a show about a dimwit’s idea of what bright people are like. The slowest person in my peer group could out-think and out-create any of these sad-sack imitations of “smart” on any day of the week. These actors are not bright, and don’t know how to fake it on screen.
(emphasis added). The comparison to blackface that someone else made, however inherently contentious (for eminently understandable reasons) is indeed on point.
If you press them on this, you then get some flavor of "ok but you know what I mean..."
There is something oddly nice about an older person saying "Oh, just like Sheldon!" (or sometimes Moss from the IT Crowd) if I mention dungeons and dragons or online games.
It might be a very simplified and / or exploitative version of nerd culture but at least there's an instant point of reference for us both.
Isn’t this true of almost all subcultures that get co-opted? This sort of thing reminds me of IFLScience. No one ever loved science. Certain parts of it just became popular.