positivelyBLEAK Grinning back into the abyss.

Is Metal For Nerds?

Prissy aca­d­e­mics love to sit behind their pol­ished desks and quiz teenaged long-​hairs about what aspect of Satan’s music exactly appeals to them…and there are scads of hilar­ious studies proving that met­al­heads are both sui­cidal man­chil­dren and frus­trated teen geniuses. Let’s look at a few!

Here’s one that you can bust out to jus­tify your­self when­ever someone tells you that metal is stupid:

“Many themes of heavy metal are about alien­ation. If you have these kinds of feel­ings there is a lot you can get out of the music and the com­mu­nity of fans who are into it.”

Most young, smart kids go one of two ways — they achieve their way into the Ivy Leagues and come out at the tippy-​top, or they come to the real­iza­tion that class is for suckers and they’d rather learn about what inter­ests them. A pro­fessor of mine referred to the latter type as the “gifted under­achiever,” and when he ran a work­shop about that very topic — sur­prise! Loads of odd­ball twen­tysome­things showed up to dis­cuss the matter.

This writeup covers a whole bunch of metal-​related sound­bites, but the part that leapt out at me most was this:

“Some studies have found that ado­les­cents of both gen­ders who listen to heavy metal tend to have lower grades in school, but this is likely due to aspects of per­son­ality or envi­ron­ment (such as high stress) rather than any direct effects of the music itself. […] Interestingly, col­lege stu­dents whose musical pref­er­ences are alter­na­tive, rock or heavy metal actu­ally obtain higher IQ test scores on average, par­tic­u­larly on ques­tions where abstrac­tion is required. Some studies have also found high intel­li­gence among ado­les­cent heavy metal listeners.”

Gosh, a high IQ, poor aca­d­emic per­for­mance, low self-​image, high rates of depres­sion? Sounds like a bud­ding system admin­is­trator to me.

The down­side is, while dis­proving the stereo­type of the terrifying-​yet-​lunkheaded metal fan, it intro­duces a new one - and it looks a lot more like that kid from The Gate. Is metal for nerds now?

Apparently:

“Our large Microsoft Gold Certified team of engi­neers was com­forted that IT people are twice as likely to wear Megadeth and sim­ilar t-​shirts, and that black jeans and pony­tails are still hot items.”

My trade of choice is IT, I am most def­i­nitely a nerd, and I can def­i­nitely vouch for the pres­ence of unfor­tu­nate pony­tails and Wranglers in the cube­farm. I’m all for it — keep IT weird. (One user refers to me as “Sunn girl,” because she always for­gets my name but rec­og­nizes me by the Sunn O))) hoodie that I keep around to ward off the server room chill.)

Also note that these sup­pos­edly hyper­in­tel­li­gent fans are skewing the results with their shitty false metal — I see ref­er­ences to System of a Down and Tool (are they even around any­more?), but no notes on Lair of the Minotaur or Bathory to be found.

So, what have we learned today? That lonely, smug, over­achieving nerds love shitty metal almost as much as they love not doing laundry? (Do your laundry right, kids!)

Fuck!