Astral Codex Ten

Kriss

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Kriss

Article

Kriss is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 19, 2023 and April 27, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “I had always heard “nerd” used to mean … in Kriss’ post”; “people like Kriss use “nerd” almost synonymously with “person who is only into popular things””; “The problem (and I think Kriss alludes to this)“. It most often appears alongside Disney Corporation, Sam Kriss, Star Wars.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: April 19, 2023
  • Last seen: April 27, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Contra Kriss On Nerds And Hipsters
April 19, 2023 · Original source
Sam Kriss has a post on nerds and hipsters. I think he gets the hipsters right, but bungles the nerds.
Inline links: has a post on nerds and hipsters.
This was Kriss on hipsters. I appreciated this perspective and can’t unsee it. Then he moves on to nerds.
Kriss defines nerds as “someone who likes things that aren’t good”. More specifically, someone who is an obsessive (counting, itemizing, collecting) fan of something bad. Kriss doesn’t define “bad”, but it’s fine - the rest of the post will be entirely about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Most of his examples of bad things are popular, and he sort of equivocates between liking bad things full stop and liking bad things that are popular in order to go along with the herd.
Highlights From The Comments On Nerds And Hipsters
April 27, 2023 · Original source
Original post: Contra Kriss On Nerds And Hipsters
Inline links: Contra Kriss On Nerds And Hipsters
Sam Kriss writes a response on Substack Notes (starting here). After agreeing that “nerd” has many conflicting definitions, and overall agreeing with my thesis, he writes:
Inline links: starting here
On a rational level, I’m less sure. Suppose we took the Ant-Man movie, translated the plot into concepts that would make sense in medieval Welsh, and wrote it up in the style of a Mabinogion myth - The Tale Of Albanaidd Hir, The Warrior Who Could Turn Into An Ant (ironically, Sam Kriss is probably the single person alive most qualified to do this). Then we showed a dozen real Mabinogion stories plus our fake one to an intelligent, good-taste-having person who had never encountered either story before. Would we expect them to say “Wow, these stories are great - except that one about the ant warrior, that one’s total garbage, just an utterly valueless myth, doesn’t speak to anything in the human spirit at all”?
Inline links: probably the single person alive most qualified to do this