Battlestar Galactica
So, Every once in a while, something comes along in the nerd world that is universally appealing. Usually for me, this is always an awesome moment, because for that moment, however brief, people who wouldn’t normally enjoy something because of the nerd stigma involved, can really get into and enjoy it (new Star trek, I’m looking at you).
The other side to that coin however, is what I like to call the Halo effect, and is something I’m starting to see with BSG. The Halo effect happened back right around the release of Halo 2, The Halo series was never the pinnacle of first person shooters, but it was a very solid effort at giving console audiences an almost PC like FPS, somewhere along the line, the media and the mainstream crowd got a hold of the game, and started declaring it the best FPS in existence. Those of use who had spent a lot of time playing games that were better than Halo 2, before Halo 2 came out, were a little confused, but the media does what it wants. Then came the Halo kids, this lowest common denominator of humanity managed to display all the proficiency of the standard hardcore Counterstrike player, with about 1/4 of the intelligence and manners, and we all hated the kids who played counterstrike to begin with.
I want to take a moment here, before the cries of “you’re pissed because your hobby became popular” come in. My issues with Halo, and as i’ll detail later, things like BSG, is that the people who are being considered as part of the whole nerd/geek/gaming community, refuse to be a part of the community, to the outside, they’re “gamers” and representative of entire community, but within the community, they’re racist bigots who still think of the actual community as the scum of the earth.
This is where BSG comes in, I have a few friends who watched the show, and were huge fans, and through them I end up seeing people who are specific BSG fans, and I see the same level of non respect to the rest of Sci-Fi, like somehow, they want to be called nerds, but don’t want to be associated with the rest of community, like it’s some type of badge they’re collecting, to differentiate themselves from their roommate, who no doubt plays Halo and talks about how he’s a gamer.
The point of this isn’t to rip on all people who play Halo and watch BSG, just those who do so without respect to the culture that bred the things you enjoy so much, even if respect just means not taking part in it all together, it’s still better than the mass disrespect that happens.
