Chris Hardwick
Comedy has sort of been my life-long obsession. I literally obsessed over comedy. I really didn't play sports - for me it was just comedy, computers and chess club; those were my big things.Collection: Computers
Comic-Con is nerd Christmas. People go wanting to have fun.Collection: Christmas
We're not in an information age anymore. We're in the information management age.Collection: Age
Bowling is all physics and energy distribution. It's F = ma. So it is actually one of the most science-y sports, because it literally is just a ball and a surface and objects to knock down.Collection: Sports
Every year on my birthday, I start a new playlist titled after my current age so I can keep track of my favorite songs of the year as a sort of musical diary because I am a teenage girl.Collection: Birthday
Nerds get caught up in minutiae, because there is a tremendous and fulfilling sense of control in understanding every single detail of a thing more than any other living creature.
I think being an outcast is what sort of strengthens the nerd movement, because you're isolated, so you have time.
I think when I look out and I see there's so much negativity in the world and a lot of people are unhappy and a lot people are anxious, it just feels like that's one view of the world. But you don't have to always focus on that view of the world.
I like listening to people talk about things that they love. They get to express things they don't normally get to express.
With stand-up, there's a little bit of an exaggerated reality because things have to be manipulated to create comedy, to create jokes.
For me personally, I have a fear of, 'If I stop, I'm going to die.' If I stop doing the things that are enriching to me or creatively exciting to me or if I stop creating, then I feel stagnant. If something isn't growing, it's dying.
You don't need 30 million people to listen to your podcast. If 10,000 people listen to your podcast, which is not a hard number to achieve, then 10,000 people are listening, and you can build a community, and literally change the world just recording into a microphone.
My best friend, Wil Wheaton, identifies himself as a geek.
Any nerd who grew up around the time that I did, BBC programming was a treasure chest for us.
American television constantly tries to co-op British comedy and create their own version of it. Most of the time it doesn't work; obviously, in the case of 'The Office,' it did. But a lot of times, it doesn't really work.
Comic-Con is interesting because there's so much going on at once, it's literally impossible to do everything. You need clones and some sort of hoverboard so you can surf over the crowd of packed-in nerds.
Steve Martin said that philosophy is good for comedy because it screws up your thinking just enough, and I agree with that. Being forced to see life's metadata is good training for looking for interesting angles on a topic.
Real philosophy is like trying to read an alarm system installation manual in Korean.
Don't tell television, but there is some superior programming being made on the Interwebz.
Any time you're lucky enough to get on a show people watch, it's a good thing.
Traditionally nerd-based culture is now a big sector of pop culture.
If you do a joke that's really old, then what happens is people on Reddit and Twitter just go, 'Real original, you're just doing old jokes!' But bands do it all the time.
The 'Hipster Nerds' like stuff because they hate it. It's like they ironically like it.
I think the mistake a lot of people make with new media is they just focus on one thing. But any one thing - just doing podcasts or just having a website or just doing television - isn't enough anymore.
The lifeblood of YouTube is sharing.
When you first start working, you take whatever job is offered, because you have to build your resume. But you don't think about what you're building.
In the '90s, you couldn't say the word 'nerd' to someone when pitching a show. They would have considered that too niche and wouldn't have listened.
I had a personal blog, but why does anyone care that I went shopping for hats?
I've been out of work so many times in my life that relying too much on just one job is terrifying.
A big company is like trying to steer a luxury liner.
The podcast movement was really a creative survival mechanism for standup comics.
I don't know if I'm a Twitter addict. That seems kind of harsh. I would say it's more that I'm seriously involved. That it's a long-term relationship - like a girlfriend, which my actual girlfriend loves to hear.
When comedians get successful, the fans that they have aren't the fans they would hang out with. I don't have that problem.
I feel like so much of why I sort of want to work in television is so that people know to come see me live.
You can't throw money at the Internet to make it work - it really is all about the quality of the content.
We are in niche consumption mode, but 'niche' doesn't mean 'small' anymore. Niche can mean focused, and particularly with the Web, which is a global audience... you can have something niche and still get 10 to 15 million views.
Our mandate at Nerdist is that we only get involved with nice people around things that we love. We have the luxury of being in the demographic that we're programming for.
Some people learn comedy, and some people just are comedy.
I've gone from being bullied by jocks as a kid to being bullied by nerds as an adult.
The nerdist movement is less about consumers; there is a large contingent that are creative nerdists instead of consumers.
Trying to make strangers laugh is crazy and more than a little narcissistic.
Comedy club audiences pay up to $25 per person and another fistful of cash to cover a two-drink minimum, so when they don't like something, they let you know - with silence.
The goal of almost every comic is to find a comedy voice - a specific point of view that an audience can latch onto.
My father was one of the greatest professional bowlers of all time. Seriously. Billy Hardwick: PBA Hall of Fame, Player of the Year in '63 and '69, and the first winner of the triple crown of bowling, among other things.
While the liberal media elite depict the bowler as a chubby guy with a comb-over and polyester pants, the reality is that bowling is one of the most tech-heavy sports today. Robotic pinsetters and computerized scoring were just the beginning.
What's more unnerving than magnetism, ghosts, and unpurified water? Gadgetmongers who purport to protect us from metaphysical monsters that go bump in the New Age night.
The worst day ever was when I found out my grandfather was going to die.
If I wasn't acting or doing stand-up, I would be in animation. Or if I had the discipline I might studies physics.
Just as someone who's been interested in radio and programming for so long, I can usually tell when an interviewer is doing a segment just to fill a programming slot. They ask questions, but they don't care about the answers.
It's funny: when I first started getting vocal about how much I liked 'Doctor Who,' I didn't realize how deep the fan base was.