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.
— Chris Hardwick
If you can build your career around your passions, then you're winning in life; that's one of the best things you can ask for.
I do find some of the meanest, most exclusionary people are the nerds. And they rebel against other nerds! What are you doing? As much as I love nerds and the nerd movement, the nerd-on-nerd violence is really bad. A lot of times, nerds are the meanest ones online. And also, the trolling can be very extensive because they're smart.
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.
I almost think of nerd brains as rattlesnake venom; like, you can milk it. You can milk the pulpy venom out of the nerd brain and use it for good if you want to.
For podcasters, people are just being themselves in a public fashion. So when someone is attacking a podcast, they're really attacking the person, because the person is the podcast. So I think that's why podcasters take it to heart. It's a very personal form of media, probably the most personal form of media.
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 played tournament chess from fifth grade up into high school.
I am a freelancer. My services are available to anyone at any time.
If I wasn't acting or doing stand-up, I would be in animation. Or if I had the discipline I might studies physics.
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.
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 nerdist movement is less about consumers; there is a large contingent that are creative nerdists instead of consumers.
Some people learn comedy, and some people just are comedy.
You can't throw money at the Internet to make it work - it really is all about the quality of the content.
Comic-Con is nerd Christmas. People go wanting to have fun.
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.
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.
Even before I had an assistant, my calendar was color-coded and I had all these different e-mail rules for how to prioritize e-mails, so I made it a point years ago to figure all that stuff out because my life was a mess.
I think being an outcast is what sort of strengthens the nerd movement, because you're isolated, so you have time.
I probably get one or two days off every five or six weeks.
Television and movies just take so long. If you pitch a show or develop a project, it can be a year before your show even gets on the air, if it gets picked up.
I don't really read reviews and comments that much. There just isn't a lot to be gained from it.
Videogames make you feel like you're actually doing something. Your brain processes the tiered game achievements as real-life achievements. Every time you get to the next level, hot jets of reward chemical coat your brain in a lathery foam, and it seems like you're actually accomplishing stuff.
Freelancers are 'free' because they take risks - they don't like being told what to do. That's both exciting and daunting, because you have to police you.
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.
The worst day ever was when I found out my grandfather was going to die.
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.
Trying to make strangers laugh is crazy and more than a little narcissistic.
I've gone from being bullied by jocks as a kid to being bullied by nerds as an adult.
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.
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.
When comedians get successful, the fans that they have aren't the fans they would hang out with. I don't have that problem.
The podcast movement was really a creative survival mechanism for standup comics.
Bowling really was a big American sport in the '50s, '60s, and '70s, and then it kind of died off in the '80s.
In the end, all that time I spent in the 'Star Wars' universe fostered galaxies of creativity and made me a better person here on Earth, because it taught me that everyone counts. That's why I can sincerely and with a straight face say: 'May the Force be with you.'
I think for a lot of people, bowling is sort of a joke. But I love it, and it means a lot to me, so any chance to help promote it or celebrate it or not make the hackiest jokes - 'Bowlers are like plumbers and they wear the craziest shirts!' - I'm way into.
We didn't understand irony yet in the '80s; we just kind of existed at face value, so there was no nerd cool yet because the digital revolution was still in its infancy.
With stand-up, there's a little bit of an exaggerated reality because things have to be manipulated to create comedy, to create jokes.
Comment threads are the new therapy for people. They just go and post the worst things they can think of because they feel bad, and then other people start attacking them, and then they attack back.
Like lycanthropy, the nerd gene can skip a generation. My maternal grandfather was a technophile.
I learned not to confuse 'busy' with 'productive,' but I'm still far too addicted to email to resist its early-morning digital snuggles.
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.
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 goal of almost every comic is to find a comedy voice - a specific point of view that an audience can latch onto.
My best friend, Wil Wheaton, identifies himself as a geek.
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.
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.
I like listening to people talk about things that they love. They get to express things they don't normally get to express.
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.
