I fell in love with Dungeons & Dragons, and the storytelling of it, and the weird dice, and the fact that it didn't use a traditional board. It felt like I was a part of something special and almost kind of like a secret club because a lot of people didn't know what it was and didn't understand it.
To be sure, anonymity online has it uses and is very important. Governments hoover up people's telephone and e-mail records without oversight, and companies track astonishingly granular personal information.
When a person makes fun of you, when a person is cruel to you, it has nothing to do with you. It's not about what you said. It's not about what you did. It's not about what you love. It's about them feeling bad about themselves.
Being a nerd is not about what you love; it's about the way you love it.
I think the default position of humans is to be terrible, and we have to train it out of our children. That's just part of survival, right? Predator animals don't survive by being nice; humans are basically predator animals.
If the world were a bar, America would currently be the angry drunk waving around a loaded gun. Yeah, the other people in the bar may be afraid of him, but they sure as hell don't respect him.
I want people to understand and embrace that the art that inspires our technological dreams is just as important as the tech it helps us create.
One of the things that I'm very proud to stand up and yell about is that we need to end gatekeeping in our society. We need to stop people from saying, 'You need to pass the test if you're going to come in here and do this.'
'Ghost Adventures,' 'Mountain Monsters,' weird alien UFO shows like 'Ancient Aliens.' The people who are self-appointed experts in these fields are really a series of national treasures.
I would love to find myself in a position where I have to decide, 'Gosh, do I want to be on a series?'
Someone who I would describe as a 'geek' or 'nerd' is a person who loves something to its greatest extent and then looks for other people who love it the same way so they can celebrate loving it together.
I've done a lot of geeky things in my life, but I think the geekiest of all was my first effort to build props and cosplay, when I was about twelve years-old.
One of the things that drives me crazy is the belief in Hollywood that bittorrent exists solely for stealing things.
To the best of my knowledge, a lot of people who play video games also play tabletop games and vice versa.
Paranormal reality shows are some of the best unintentional comedy in the history of recorded entertainment.
Some ISPs are blocking all BitTorrent traffic, because BitTorrent can be used to share files in a piratical way. Hollywood lobbying groups are trying to pass laws which would force ISPs to block or degrade BitTorrent traffic, too. Personally, I think this is like closing down freeways because a bank robber could use them to get away.
I love tabletop and video games, which should be open and inclusive to everyone.
When you get a group of kids together, especially boys, the psychology of those kids requires that they find a weak kid or a sensitive kid or a soft kid.
I obviously pursued a career in the arts but always wondered if I had just been supported a little more in math, as opposed to it being 'a thing I had to learn,' how that would have changed things for me.
I go around the country, and I speak to colleges, conferences and thousands of people at a time, and I'm like, 'Great. Fine. Whatever.' Coming to speak to about 60 kids, I am scared to death.
