[Hated Trope] Nerdy characters who don’t understand nerdy things

[u/BlackHandKUR]

There are too many examples of movies and tv fumbling basic nerd knowledge but the one that particularly bugs me is whenever we have nerdy characters not understanding basic DnD lore or mechanics.

Big bang theory is probably one of the worst offenders when it comes to not understanding nerdom but how they do dnd is especially insulting. They don’t understand any of the basic concepts, lore, mechanics or even how races look. Theres a scene where they do a steamy dnd thing and they describe an orc with multiple arms and breasts. Not a single part of that was even remotely close to correct and Sheldon being the atypical rule lawyer type should know that.

Abed from community isn’t much better. Either he doesn’t know the rules or fragrantly allows his players to ruin a session. There is never a mention of initiative, contesting rolls, or scaling. Pierce, a naked hermit of a character, over powers a high level fighter then charms a high level creature to pose this great threat to the party. What?

Stranger things, and possibly the one the gets me the most, off the rip we have a character who misses a fireball attack by rolling low. That’s not how fireball works, that not how fireball has ever worked. Fireball is an AoE spell where everyone in its radius has to have a save to have the damage halved. These are kids that name the monsters after DnD creatures yet they don’t know the difference between fire bolt and fire ball?

[u/Infinite_Escape9683]

Is there a source for that?

[u/Wrong_Bobcat → u/Infinite_Escape9683]

I believe one of the guys was on the corridor reacts and talks about it. It was a competition between some people on various shows. Another was from csi where they bring out an obvious psu with all the cables and ask to get data off of it.

[u/Butwhatif77 → u/Infinite_Escape9683]

Yea I would like to know more. Hollywood is at least aware their version of "hacking" isn't realistic, it is intended to be exaggerated for entertainment purposes, so this would kind of fit with if they know it is wrong why not have fun with it haha.

[u/HandsomePaddyRedux → u/Butwhatif77]

I don’t know the exact source, but I’ve heard accounts that it was Abby’s actor. Basically most of the cast is young enough to be far more familiar with technology than the average NCIS viewer who skews towards geriatric. Even someone with a passing familiarity with keyboards as a concept would know two people can’t use the same one for anything. What was originally a tongue in cheek scene about silly computer stuff got passed around the internet and the kind of people who mistake satire for stupidity took the scene at face value.

[u/eltrowel → u/HandsomePaddyRedux]

You’re mostly right, but I do remember playing head to head against my brother on a shareware version of the tron light cycle game with him using one half of the keyboard and me using the other half of the same keyboard.

[u/camerakestrel → u/eltrowel]

I miss split-screen multiplayer, especially for PC games.

[u/FlamingRustBucket → u/eltrowel]

The rage I felt in the late 90s trying to play mortal kombat on a cheap keyboard with my brother. Press too many keys at once and the motherboard would beep at you and your keypress wouldn't work. Then my brother would woop my ass while I couldn't move.

Evidently this is something to do with cheap keyboard design and a buffer overflow on the mobo?

[u/BHFlamengo → u/FlamingRustBucket]

Yeah, cheap keyboards usually have only a few input "chains", like 4 different chains for all the keys. If you press keys from the same chain at the same time they only register one, or neither. And some parts of the keyboard have keys from the same chain nearby, where others which are expected to be typed simultaneously usually sit in different chains.

[u/ErasmusDarwin → u/FlamingRustBucket]

Star Control 1 and 2 came with a utility, KEYJAM.EXE, that let you test out different key combinations to see which would cause problems during 2-player.

[u/DEM_DRY_BONES → u/FlamingRustBucket]

Ditto. Fucking num pad.

[u/A_Sinclaire → u/FlamingRustBucket]

I think it was also a limitation with early USB keyboards and a reason to stick with PS/2 keyboards.

[u/Turbogoblin999 → u/eltrowel]

Had a friend in college with an n64 on his laptop, 15 inch with a numpad, and he had player 1 and 2 mapped so he could play mario kart on the keyboard.

[u/Ricordis → u/eltrowel]

I rememver playing a tank simulator with 2 friends and the screen was split in 3 parts, one for each role in the tank and every player had a part ofbthe keyboard for his role. I think the gunner had the number pad and the driver was at the arrow keys.

[u/Slagroomspuit → u/eltrowel]

We used to play Achtung, die Kurve! with 6 people on one keyboard lmao.

[u/scipio0421 → u/eltrowel]

You Don't Know Jack had the different players mapped to different parts of the same keyboard, too.

[u/AnActualTroll → u/eltrowel]

Hell I once played a game with a friend of mine that used the numpad for the movement controls, but we weren’t using an extended keyboard so we played with one of us using both hands on the keyboard for movement control and the other person using the mouse to aim

Honestly was super fun, more games should require that kind of direct cooperative play

[u/IHaveSpecialEyes → u/eltrowel]

Yeah, my brother and I would play Caveman Ughlympics and One Must Fall 2097 using alternate sides of the same keyboard. That was the only way to do it back then.

[u/enaK66 → u/eltrowel]

Definitely did keyboard sharing with some old flash games. Fighters and that one turn based tank game.

[u/Qnopsik → u/eltrowel]

OMG, and the Hidden COMBO Attack - denial of button, where you pressed more useless buttons on your part of the keyboard, so the other player's button presses don't work...

I still remember my cousins face when he didn't turn in time, because his button press didn't register. His "I pressed IT" was hilarious.

[u/KodiakUltimate → u/HandsomePaddyRedux]

Enhance! Enhance! Enhance!

[u/Bamzooki1 → u/HandsomePaddyRedux]

I don’t think it’s unreasonable for people to not assume it was intentional.

[u/ADLuluIsOP → u/HandsomePaddyRedux]

It's literally a known trope to make IT as bad as possible in movies/shows as a gag. Calling stuff harddrives when it's not. Etc.

[u/PeterAnthony_Jackson → u/HandsomePaddyRedux]

Like the Tron game, another had four or more players all having keys to fight over for a multiplayer game that no one would play because it was a mess to have.

Also TV shows might write intentionally bad hacking to have "look we are not teaching people how to do it" when you have people doing absolute nonsense on screen.

[u/Same-Suggestion-1936 → u/HandsomePaddyRedux]

the kind of people who mistake satire for stupidity

And it's only getting worse

[u/Think-Location3830 → u/HandsomePaddyRedux]

Why wouldn’t they take it at face value? Is NCIS a satirical show by nature?

[u/PipsqueakPilot → u/HandsomePaddyRedux]

Two people can't use the same keyboard for anything? Clearly you never played Leiro.

[u/BuvantduPotatoSpirit → u/Butwhatif77]

Calling up a bunch of seccretaries until one gives you a password, or sending a bunch of phishing emails, doesn't make you look cool and talented.

[u/JavMon → u/Infinite_Escape9683]

If you watch the scene you can clearly see that it was ment to have fun and follow the trope of how hacking is perceived, I don't know if they went as far as having people behind the camera ask for suggestions.

[u/JePPeLit → u/Infinite_Escape9683]

I mean, unless they're using handwritten scripts, the writers would know how a keyboard works. The idea that they sincerely thought it makes sense to use half the keyboard each is ridiculous.

[u/Bibeast291 → u/Infinite_Escape9683]

Okay. I actually don't have an official source on this, just what other people say about writers intentionally going ham about tech.