I think the early-00s was when it started to shift from something stigmatized to something that a person could be into and still be cool—or, at least, not regarded as automatically weird. By 2010 the shift was basically done, and The Great Techbro Wave was washing over the industry.
It's been super weird to watch the common idea of a computer person shift from someone with bad skin and shit posture in a pit-stained button-up and thick-rimmed glasses and who rarely sees the sun, to a trim, decent-looking person who's into rock climbing and wears lots of new, clean clothes from Patagonia. It was a really fast transition, in hindsight.
Back when I was in college in the mid-00s and TheFacebook was cool, because it was still limited to people with .edu email addresses from top-tier and Boston-area schools, I remember a group named "I'm a Computer Science Major and I Shower Regularly." I joined it even though I probably didn't shower regularly enough.
(For those who didn't have access to TheFacebook in those days, joining groups was part of how we expressed our political views, interests, sense of humor, etc. Groups had a name and a photo and a list of members and often served little other purpose.)
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I think the early-00s was when it started to shift from something stigmatized to something that a person could be into and still be cool—or, at least, not regarded as automatically weird. By 2010 the shift was basically done, and The Great Techbro Wave was washing over the industry.
It's been super weird to watch the common idea of a computer person shift from someone with bad skin and shit posture in a pit-stained button-up and thick-rimmed glasses and who rarely sees the sun, to a trim, decent-looking person who's into rock climbing and wears lots of new, clean clothes from Patagonia. It was a really fast transition, in hindsight.
Back when I was in college in the mid-00s and TheFacebook was cool, because it was still limited to people with .edu email addresses from top-tier and Boston-area schools, I remember a group named "I'm a Computer Science Major and I Shower Regularly." I joined it even though I probably didn't shower regularly enough.
(For those who didn't have access to TheFacebook in those days, joining groups was part of how we expressed our political views, interests, sense of humor, etc. Groups had a name and a photo and a list of members and often served little other purpose.)