Nerds seem to generally prefer action animation to comedy

Anonus

Why?

Aliroz

Because comedy is terrible and should die as a genre.

Obā-san

tragedyroz

Sredni Vashtar

You are doing the "nerds" thing and you really need to stop that. It's really getting on my nerves. Additionally, comedy and action are by no means mutually exclusive; plenty of people, nerdy or geeky or neither, like both just fine.

That said, comedy is very subjective and can range from very immediate to very subtle. To someone who feels the need to justify their dumb pleasures intellectually, having something that is less subjective and more "serious" seems easier to defend while still being low-calorie consumption.

Sredni Vashtar

Aliroz said:

Because comedy is terrible and should die as a genre.

Black comedy is best comedy.

Klinotaxis

clearly SOMEone's never been stuck in an all day ZAZ marathon

One-Winged Eagle

You do need to stop that.

That said, folks loved Futurama, The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Superjail, The Critic, Archer...I could go on and on.

Aliroz

kingCrackers said:

You do need to stop that.

That said, folks loved Futurama, The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Superjail, The Critic, Archer...I could go on and on.

Man, I hated all of those shows.

(also, I think it's only Odradek who has a "nerds" problem).

Odradek

I hate MATH nerds

One-Winged Eagle

It's not the "nerds" thing I have a problem with. It's the assumptions about them.

I dislike it when individuals make assumptions about groups of people, even as I do it myself.

Sredni Vashtar

Klinotaxis said:

clearly SOMEone's never been stuck in an all day ZAZ marathon

What does ZAZ stand for?

Princess Alice

All people who make generalizations about other people are jerks. >:(

Imipolex G

wait a second...

Odradek

Odradek said:

I hate MATH nerds

Who need to be killed. For the good of America and the world

Yarrun XIX

I think it's because animated comedies are traditionally more mainstream-accepted, adult or otherwise. 

Comedies make up a notable part of the pie chat for cult classics, but for the mainstream chart, it looks like Pac-Man in mid-chew.

Klinotaxis

Sredni Vashtar said:

Klinotaxis said:

clearly SOMEone's never been stuck in an all day ZAZ marathon

What does ZAZ stand for?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zucker,_Abrahams_and_Zucker

Airplane!, Top Secret, etc

Sredni Vashtar

Oh, yeah, true.

I liked Airplane! a lot, although I think that it would be funnier if I were more familiar with the films that it was sending up and '70s pop culture in general.

Crystal

I'm late to this but it really doesn't help that you give the vaguest possible beginning starters (like this OP), and make it all so general that it basically loses any meaning to me. At least with Odradek I know he's talking about a very specific group of people (I say this only because math nerds are have already been brought up), who carry a very specific mindset, and I can at least try to understand how they negatively influence the area(s) he hangs around. (Though the math nerds thing doesn't bother me, so whatever.) With this I end up with nothing to say, and either separate myself as quickly as possible, or get annoyed. Even writing this post was difficult.

glennmagusharvey

the use of "math nerds" to refer to a group that's clearly not actual math nerds bugs me

though by this point it's almost a running joke

anyway, i prefer drama to action animation or comedy

what about me

nohaynicklibre

ur gay lol

One-Winged Eagle

You are an outlier and you cannot be counted.

You are Spiders Kafka.

Tre

I'm a nerd and my favorite series are both comedies before anything else, but that's just me. -shrug-

I never really got this either, though.

Princess Alice

"Nerd" is kinda such a broad category as to be meaningless without some kind of qualifier

I mean, is there anyone at HH who COULDN'T be considered a nerd? Even if you don't self-identify as one...

Salix Babylonika

is there anyone at HH who COULDN'T be considered a nerd?

Security

Yarrun XIX

Wailord.

lee4hmz

When I first started caring about anime (that wasn't Voltron, The Little Prince or World Masterpiece Theater), I remember being disappointed that there weren't a lot of zany, Western-style comedies. The closest things then (this was around 1997) were Ranma 1/2 and Tenchi Muyo!—both screwball comedies featuring harems. :P 

Why do Japanese nerds like romantic comedies so damn much, aside from the whole "forever alone ;_;" thing?

Excel Saga was closer, but I'm also pretty sure the manga is a whole lot more interesting. I remember liking Love Hina because I thought Naru was cute, but..."problematic" doesn't begin to describe it. Yeah, I know, it's another goofy romantic comedy, but the characters have Issues with a capital I, and I seriously doubt Naru and Keitaro would even be speaking if they hadn't been strangled by the red string. Also, later in the manga, there's a halfway-decent adventure arc desperately begging to escape the harem comedy mold.

Ebichu was about as good as it could have been. It's a comedy of errors (mainly because Ebichu has a big mouth and seems to think her master is kind of gross even while worshipping the ground she walks on), and it's Gainax so of course the character have Issues, but it was actually funny, and it wasn't a goddamn harem comedy.

Anonus

kingCrackers said:

You do need to stop that.

That said, folks loved Futurama, The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Superjail, The Critic, Archer...I could go on and on.

I would include things that predate those

MetaFour

First, define "nerd".

Then, conduct a survey of the viewing habits of a representative sample of nerds. Analyze that data.

(Actually, you should first search the literature to see if someone else has already conducted such a study. But even if someone has, it may be worth conducting again if it's old enough.)

The results will be much more useful than a vague impression based on anecdotal evidence.

Previous Calica

MetaFour said:

First, define "nerd".

Then, conduct a survey of the viewing habits of a representative sample of nerds. Analyze that data.

The results will be much more useful than a vague impression based on anecdotal evidence.

Anonus

Okay, what term should I use other than "nerd"?

Because I can't think of a better one.

Crystal

Isn't that, like, entirely for you to decide? You're the one always asking these things.

MetaFour

I don't give a fig what you call them. The point is: if you're going to make a statement about the entertainment preferences of some demographic, I'm not going to trust it unless there is hard data (not just a bunch of anecdotes) backing it up.

lee4hmz

I think the point here is that there's not a handy, one-word term to describe what you're trying to describe. It would have read better as "It seems like animated action shows get more hype than animated comedy shows. Why is that?" 

Anonus

Well, for lack of hard data, I'm talking about people who lament the lack of "action cartoons" on Cartoon Network at this point in time, for instance.

(they tend to get canceled after a season or two for not selling enough toys, and perhaps a little Time Warner infighting too)

Obā-san

Anonus said:

Well, for lack of hard data, I'm talking about people who lament the lack of "action cartoons" on Cartoon Network at this point in time, for instance.

so what you're saying is that people who want there to be more action cartoons like action cartoons?

Anonus

I don't know

They just seem really vocal to me

(this was a stupid thread)

lee4hmz

That makes more sense. There's always been a back-and-forth between the anime fans and the comedy fans on [adult swim] (and [as] didn't help much by broadcasting a comment from the forums saying that "anime is teh s uck"), and I imagine some of it has bled over to CN.

Crystal

Like MetaFour, I don't really care unless you have the hard data. Now, putting that aside, I question the relative importance of these people you're referencing. They genuinely sound like little more than faceless nobodies, probably some random folk commenting on in an online cartoon community. Not really anyone to pay attention to, or at least not enough to extrapolate the workings of an incredibly large demographic from.

Lee's point is good too. Generalizations are nice and all, and certainly have their place, just not from here (probably). They could easily be worked down from with the right tools and whatnot, and probably help get that information. With enough caveats and limitations they also create a nice area for discussion too. Though, that's hit-and-miss between anecdotal discussions and actual hard information.

Edit: Slow typer, got ninja'd by those more succinct than me.

Anonus

To be honest, I'm a bit taken aback by these requests for "hard data" because I thought the preference was pretty widespread.

There's also the Nostalgia Critic's Top 11 Animated Shows - I'm pretty sure they were almost all action cartoons (shitty ones too)

[is the Nostalgia Critic a dubious reference point? Because he is/was pretty popular]

Haven

Heaven forfend someone try to start a casual conversation about a personal observation without making it scientifically rigorous.

Not that the OP wasn't a little too generalized, but what do you expect to accomplish by saying "I don't really care unless you have the hard data"? 

MetaFour

If we're going to extrapolate from anecdotes, then in my experience, these sorts of conversations always seem to reach an impasse at "In my experience, X", then "Oh yeah, well in my experience, not-X, so you're wrong" ad nauseum.

One-Winged Eagle

The Nostalgia Critic is but one man expressing his views. He does not represent anyone. He may be popular, but people do not agree with everything that their heroes say or think. Otherwise we would be actual sheeple.

My point about Futurama and company was that animation and comedy are not mutually exclusive. There are animated comedies. 

Anonus

I wasn't saying that there weren't!

Tre

and also there are comedies that take elements of action shows

e.g. Adventure Time and Regular Show, especially the former

Sredni Vashtar

I think the problem is that you are talking about something very specific by using a very broad, vague term. I know what group of people you are talking about - although I think that you are still straw-manning and stereotyping them - but just calling them "nerds" when a nerd or a geek can be anything is exceedingly problematic.

How so?

Here's a question: "Why do book people prefer nineteenth-century German literature to nineteenth-century French literature?" That question makes absolutely no sense because it generalises to the point of meaninglessness. You need to be more specific than that.

Odradek

I can see what Anonus means perfectly well.

Sredni Vashtar

It makes sense when it is explained, but as a blanket statement the title and original post are utterly useless and frankly a bit insulting.

Salix Babylonika

why is everyone here so angry

Odradek

Mo The Show said:

why is everyone here so angry

Section42L

telling someone when they made a mistake ≠ being angry at them

Crystal

Haven said:

Heaven forfend someone try to start a casual conversation about a personal observation without making it scientifically rigorous.

Not that the OP wasn't a little too generalized, but what do you expect to accomplish by saying "I don't really care unless you have the hard data"? 

I'm only being serious because Anonus seems to treat it seriously (more power to him), and does it often. Casual or not, the OP provides little for starting any sort of good conversation, is what most of us commenting about that are getting at. I'm hardly saying that it needs to be ridiculously rigorous, just that, as far as getting responses go it would be nice. So would ridiculous amounts of rigor, personally, but oh well really. Otherwise the topic gets stale and repetitive.

Mo The Show said:

why is everyone here so angry

I'm really not angry. I do wish the same blanket statements would change a bit, but I'm not angry.

EDIT: I'm also not the most succinct person, unfortunately.