Zero Charisma (Katie graham, Andrew Matthews)

[number8]

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-YnjpymsO8mQ/UUikj9mcAEI/AAAAAAAAc9A/o2HxO6ZDya4/2012-03-16-zero_charisma_poster-533x710.jpg

IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2294965/)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pF-CrfxIlg

[number8]

Found this largely insightful and well done, but its central point is a bit strawman-y by making the Miles character so insufferably braggy (going from "Millennium Falcon is faster than the Enterprise" to "oh man my gorgeous girlfriend is so horny, she's sexting me" so enthusiastically like he's got something to prove). It doesn't really try to confront the issue of what constitutes a quote-unquote real geek, which is fine given that it's a singular character piece, but it would have been more interesting if the Miles character is given more depth than just seen as a hipster usurper in geekland. What it does try to do, though, posing a chicken-egg question of "did Scott turn into an unlikable nerd because everyone abandons him, or does everyone abandon him because he's an unlikable nerd?" is pretty successful, balancing the two sides without ever answering the question.

It's somewhat clearly made for a narrow margin of people who will get Scott's plight, and might be somewhat alienating to others. I'm kind of in the middle, mostly because I only marginally relate to Scott's world (I did get made fun of and called names a lot for my interests growing up, but never beat up or shunned or rejected by girls because of it). So I think tolerance for Scott's portrayal may vary.

[number8]

My review (http://www.artboiled.com/2013/nerds-social-sacrifice-and-tabletop-gaming/).