Culture tends to reward the traits that are good for society. In a way, I think that you could say when it comes down to it, success is cool. Thats an oversimplification obviously, since we all know successful people that are total tools, but still holds in the general I'd say.
But what kind of people do we need now? We need crazy creative people that are going to come up with new ways to entertain us, help us communicate, solve our energy and consumption problems, etc. This won't come from people that are jaded and overly self-editing.
Its going to come from a group that embraces the idea of doing whatever you like and following it down the path for as long as you can. Basically, we need nerds. They are driving our economy and our culture is going to reflect that in the future I think, for at least a while.
Along this line, here's a writer for the Atlantic talking about teaching his son D&D. Now I wouldn't say that D&D goes on the list of things I'd think of as "awesome". But its interesting that parents are intentionally getting their kids into the game because it promotes skills like imagination and problem solving that parents want them to have.
One last point, I think that a lot of "nerdy" activities were blacklisted because so many of the people that were doing them were socially inept. But two things are going on now:
1) We are realizing that there is nothing that says you can't find people to do those things with who aren't socially inept. Lots of cool people do nerdy things now.
2) Because so many people are invading their activities, lots of traditionally socially inept people are getting more socialized. So you might say they are getting less "nerdy" (which is vague i admit, since we never really defined nerdiness. hopefully people know what we mean.)
What do you think about this idea of sincerity and nerdiness and how it relates to the rise of the creative class?
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