Nerd Torture: And the Winners Are…

?I’m going to forgo my normal intros here, because 1) I can’t recall any nerd tortures I’ve suffered that match any of the stories I’m about to post, and 2) I thought I’d take a minute to offer you long-suffering TR contest entrants a few tips. Now, there’s no guarantee this will help you win, but here’s two way you can avoid losing:

? Don’t make your entries too long. Seriously, I say this every time, and I had to start doing my word count limit, although occasionally I forget. I’m sorry, but I’m just one dude reading all these things, and after 100, if I see a big huge block of text, I just tend to gloss over it. By 400? I’m barely conscious as is. I understand some stories are epic, and need to be told that way, but I promise keeping it brief will do you so much better in the long run.

? Don’t do the same thing as everybody else. Obviously, for the create-a-nerd torture portion of the contest, a lot of people suggested watching various shitty movies in the Clockwork Orange chair. It’s obviously a good idea, evidenced by the fact that about 50 of you had it. When there’s so many entries that are pretty much the same, it becomes impossible for me to judge them, and they all get lumped together. I think only one Clockwork Orange entry made it as an HM this time. It’s much, much easier for your entry to stand apart the more unique it is

Now remember, nothing about these contests are official, there are no rules other than the ones I make, and there’s no judge other than me. Sorry about that, but on the plus, I do try and give out shirts to new people every week, to spread the love as much as possible. I’m sure it’s torture for some of you, waiting to win, week after week, but… uh… sorry about that, I guess? Let’s just move on the the HMs.

Mentions, with honor:

Mount_Prion said:

Memory of torture:
The loading screen with the ogre on it in the original Everquest launch. Y’all know what I mean.
Idea for torture:
Forcing everybody who has ever cosplayed as Ichigo to sit in a room and watch nothing but Bleach filler. Bleach with nothing but filler could simply be called Blah. So, Blah torture.

Roger Mortis said:

From now until the day I die, every time I make a mistake at anything or something goes wrong in my life, the laughing dog from Duck Hunt pops up from behind a bush and giggles at me.
Seriously, fuck that dog.

Church replied to Roger Mortis:
My entry: You have to fuck that dog.
And it never stops laughing.

mythbri said:

Step 1: Create an awesome, clever, mind-blowing science fiction TV series that is well-cast, well-directed, well-written, and has the juice to go on for at least four seasons.
Step 2: Put it on Fox.
Ah, I can hear the screams…

AfterGlow said:

You know what was torture for me, and I do mean real fucking torture in the most literal sense of the word possible?
Tuning in week after week after week, to see the horrid fucking Naruto fillers, FOR TWO MOTHERFUCKING YEARS!
I would say to myself; “don’t worry Jacob, next week, the show will be bound the be back on track”; no more farting, generic bad guys, retarded missions, characters acting completely out of character or Naruto pissing on people anymore. Soon we will have those awesome shonen adventures which has been the highlight of my week for the last couple of years again…
So I waited and waited, growing increasingly numb, and after two God damn years, I just stopped caring, and once the show was back on the right track, all I could give it was a huge meh, and an anecdote about how Naruto was peed on by some giant rat-bear while acting like some inbred.
The fillers had ruined Naruto for me, and what’s worse, it had made me jaded regarding the entire anime industry with their fillers and constant raping of the source material. To this day, about 6 years later, I can still barely force myself to watch anime without becoming utterly depressed. The illusion is utterly ruined.
Well done Naruto fillers; you killed the one thing in my life that was good, and I hate you for it.
My God do I hate you and every person who has ever been involved with the Naruto anime. I hope you all die.

StrawHat said:

This is for the type of nerds who are obsessed with Batman, and can think Batman can beat anybody, even Superman without kryptonite. I want to see the next Christopher Nolan movie to just be two hours of Batman getting the shit kicked out of him by Michael Cera. And I want Batman to cry and beg for his life.

Elliot Frost said:

The nerd’s phone number is given to every telemarketing company in the country. Then, have their ring tone changed to Navi screaming Hey! Listen!

Paul said:

My mom having me sell my Nintendo games at a garage sale as a grounding punishment. Bye bye, SMB 2 & 3, Metroid, Goonies II, The Guardian Legend, Zelda 1 and 2, Castlevania: Simon’s Quest, Blaster Master, and Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! [All] for a comment of incomplete work on my report card.

DoctorSmashy said:

When I was a lot younger, I had an impressive comic book collection. I always kept my comic books under my desk in my room, ALWAYS, and for the first time ever they were all gone. My mum vaguely recalled that she had asked me if I wanted them and I said no (my parents did not know me at ALL, clearly) and couldn’t remember whether she’d put them in the attic or the rubbish. The first thing I did was grab a torch, goggles and a Swiss army knife (for the bats that I assumed were up there) and stormed the attic. Now, this wasn’t one of those movie attics that’s like a spare room, it was a little cave in the the roof of my house, with no lights, an extremely low ceiling, and weak floors that I was afraid to step on in case they broke and I fell through my sister’s bedroom ceiling. Up there, I was terrified and alone (my parents were ‘busy’ and couldn’t help me look for the comics) but nevertheless I searched through dozens of boxes and bags full of dusty old crap and monstrously sized insects.
To this day, I don’t know what happened to my comic books. Every so often I go up to the old attic when I visit my parents and see if I can find them, but to no avail. What happened? Did they just disappear? Did she even take the comics? Are they rotting in a dump somewhere? Have they been up in the attic all along, just out of reach? These are the questions that kept me up at night as a kid…. sigh.

DirkmeGently said:

Step 1: Nerd is placed in the obligatory “Clockwork Orange” forced-viewing setup
Step 2: On a large monitor, assemble a gaggle of clueless old people including: Wolf Blitzer, Andy Rooney, Bill O’Reilly, and Barbara Walters.
Step 3: Have this round table discuss: Kirk vs. Picard, Wars vs. Trek, Mike vs. Joel, Mario vs. Sonic
Step 4: Watch nerd writhe as media personalities mispronounce “Chakotay”, assert that Chewbacca is an Ewok, and claim that Soundwave was their favorite Go-bot.
Step 5: Have round table defer to their guest pop culture expert, Jack Thompson.

random person said:

G.R.R. Martin dies tomorrow. You know why.

mythbri said:

Real-life Memory of Torture:
My mom tried to raise me as a normal human being (obviously, she failed). Whenever I got a new book, I’d disappear into my bedroom and wouldn’t come out until I’d finished it. Since my room was in the basement and I was virtually irremovable when I was reading, my mom called it my “lair”. So once, after the standard teenage infraction of coming in after curfew, my mom tried to ground me from reading. She put all of my books into boxes and hid them while I was out (which was quite a feat – I had two tall, full bookshelves), and told me that I couldn’t have them back for two weeks. I endured this for a day and a half before I remembered my library card. I snuck the books home in my backpack and hid them under my bed. I had the last laugh!

JediCreeper said:

True Life Nerd Torture:  Masters of the Universe Classics… Toy Nerds (like me, and I know Mr. Bricken) have been enduring torture for about 2 years now. Everything about these toys and aquiring them is painful to the nostalgic toy fan.
They are loving sculpted by the Four Horsemen, easily the greatest toy making team in nerd history. Each figure is chock full of tiny little perfect details that only a true nerd would love and notice, combining both the original MOTU toy series, the cartoon, the mini-comics, the dc comics, the movie, the 2002 updated series and everything inbetween. They would be absolute perfection. And that makes everything else all the worse.
The toys cost $20 each, not terrible, except that shipping is usually $8 or so and there is tax on top, making each figure usually cost around $30 each, brand new. They can only be obtained once a month from a website created especially for it. The website does not have the capacity to handle the in flux of people who swarm there to get the toys. The toys often sell out in less than a half hour.
Occasionally, these $30 figures have major quality control issue, such as loose body parts, messy paint or just assembled incorrectly… for the ENTIRE run of that figure. The website continues to cause delays, crashes, order screw ups, sell outs while an item is in a person’s cart attempting to check out.. Every new figure announced causes a simultaneous cheer and groan from the collective than so desperately feel they NEED these toys.
The next big sale day is monday. I took off work so I could focus on getting these toys, but it’s ok, because my boss wants me to get him one, but doesn’t want to deal with the site. Getting a figure feels like winning a battle that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Baltin said:

Tortured Memory: My little sister throwing my collection of Star Trek The Next Generation tapes (which I recorded from tv and edited out the commercials, because I didn’t have money to buy the tapes) off the roof of our home in retaliation to my accidentally recording over her copy of My Little Ponies the Movie. I still remember remember that afternoon. I was horrified to see my little sister sitting on the edge of the roof, but then I was mortified as she started chucking tapes down while reciting the entire cast of the My Little Pony movie. The tapes cracked and splintered as soon as they hit the cement and asphalt, while my sister yelled, “This is for Megan! This is for Sundance! This is for Morning Glory!” I tried to catch some of the tapes, but as soon as I did she started throwing them in random directions away from me. Who knew a 6 year old girl could throw that far? In the end 19 tapes were lost that day. To make the day worse, I was the one who got in trouble, because I was the reason put herself in danger climbing to the roof. I spent the day cleaning up the shattered tapes of Star Trek TNG and I had to pay for a brand new copy of the My Little Ponies Movie for my sister.

TomeMinder said:

I am a horror nerd, hugely and insanely so. Not just movies but literature and all other horror media. When I was an undergrad I took an American Lit class where it was a lecture set up, our professor yammered on for an hour and a half and didn’t even allow questions. We were reviewing the work of Edgar Allan Poe. I thought we were going to have a good class session, I was wrong…
During the class he concentrated on Poe’s screwed up home life and possible mental illness and had the audacity to say that his work was mediocre at best. This man did not deserve to be a professor. Then he capped off class by saying that horror was a dying genre and not fit for study as anything other than popular culture. I couldn’t leave because he had a habit of singling out people who left and humiliating them in front of the class so I had to sit and listen to this man criticize what I loved and I couldn’t defend it. And to make matters worse he mentioned H.P. Lovecraft at the end of class and said that he “used a lot of words to convey nothing”. The quote is forever seared in my head due to rage. I defy any horror nerd to sit through that and not prefer the thought of bamboo being driven under their fingernails.

y2jbrak said:

When I was a lil nerd, my much older brother used to take me to the comic book store with him. Near the ceiling of the store on a shelf was one of those doll sized original Star Wars C-3P0s. At the time (Around 1985-6) those doll figures were selling for $100+. My 5-6 year old self DESPERATELY wanted the C-3P0 because he was my favorite character. Every time I asked the store owner about selling the toy he would politely say it wasn’t for sale but if it ever was he would let me know.
A year or so later the store was closing down and I wanted to go one last time. My brother said it was too much of a bother with the store owner boxing stuff up to have a little kid around so I had to stay home. Imagine my surprise when my brother came home with 3P0!!!! He said the owner sold it to him. I immediately want to play with him but no. My brother said, “He is worth too much for you to play with.” So he hid him until we went to a flea market about a month later and I watched as my brother sold 3P0 for $75. Oh by the way, the owner sent the C-3P0 home with my brother as a gift for me as I found out much later. And over the course of my life I have had two more of these C-3P0s and BOTH have been stolen by my brother. I am afraid to buy one now because I never know when my big bro is gonna come and visit. That’s fucking torture my friends.

MajorTom said:

This happened to me when I was 12 and has left me with a mental scare.
I had a huge binber full of the Dragon Ball Z trading cards(This was before the CCG’s.)That binder full of cards was my life, I took that with me every were and stared at them for hours.
At school a boy got all his poke mon cards stolen and I was blamed for it. The thing is I didn’t take the cards I had Dragon Ball Z cards and Poke mon cards were lame. Well my parents did not believe me and for my punishment they gave my Dragon Ball Z cards to the kid who got his Poke mon cards stolen. It was so awful see him with my cards.
I was the saddest 12 year girl ever.

Hex said:

Both of my torture stories have to do with D&D.
Real torture that I endure: I have been playing D&D for a long time. Over 10 years (I know that there are those who scoff at that number). I’ve built up quite the library of rulebooks which are displayed prominently on a bookcase. Every time I buy a new book (adding another dagger to my heart) or look at my still ever growing collection of books i’m forced to confront one cold hard fact: I will never have the time or opportunity to really play D&D on a regular basis like when I was in school. My friends all live in different places and my work and family will just not allow the time commitment (a man’s gotta have priorities you know). Every time i think of this a little piece of me dies inside. The fact that this is essentially my choice does nothing to console me.
Imagined torture: Being a total D&D nerd I idolize the medieval period of swordsmanship and knights and dragons and magic and all that goes with it.
I think that being a man who is quite accustomed to the comforts of the modern world, it would be a terrible ordeal to be sent back (and trapped forever) in the real actual medieval time period where there are no dragons, no spells, and most likely i’m some poor as peasant who has to suffer through the rest of my life as a manual laborer in a shattered version of a time and place which was once so loved by me with no internet, no electricity, and no plumbing just to name a few things.

Ubiq said:

September 2004. For several months, I have been eagerly awaiting the debut of one of my favorite shows. So I get up earlier than usual on a Saturday morning and turn on FOX. I am greeted with the following:
YA-yo-YA-yo!
DREAMIN’ – Don’t give it up, Luffy!
DREAMIN’ – Don’t give it up, Zolo!
DREAMIN’ – Don’t give it up, NAMI!
It was all downhill from there. For THREE WHOLE YEARS, that bastardization of a dub plagued an entire fanbase with goofy voice acting, tremendously awful edits, and entire plot arcs discarded. It was so bad that the later, vastly superior dub almost instantly fell off the map because the stench of Death by 4Kids was still strongly upon the series.
Nerd torture for me is not only watching a beloved series like One Piece be mangled by incompetent dubs, but watching a series like Naruto get a high quality dub that is heavily promoted by each network that airs it. Even now, One Piece languishes well behind properties like Naruto and Bleach in North America.

Vespavenger said:

Idea for nerd torture: All nerds are given first access to every new show, movie and game that comes out and are given a continually updating entertainment system/computer for free, along with free internet for life and a digital library of every film or television show ever recorded on the condition that they give up their physical DVD or VHS collection.
What they are not told is that every time they write something critical about a franchise, a single line of dialogue in one of their favorite episodes or movies will be permanently replaced by a version recorded by Bobcat Goldthwait or Gilbert Gottfried.

My favorite part about this torture is how slowly it all starts. Maybe you’re watching Serenity, and suddenly you hear Gilbert Gottfried’s voice delivers the line “I’m a leaf on the wind”, or maybe you’re watching Star Trek and instead of William Shatner it’s Bobcat Goldthwait informing you that Spock’s soul “was the most human.” You complain online about this unbelievable screw-up, and as you complain another moment is forever replaced. Gilbert Gottfried’s famous “The line must be drawn here!”, Goldthwait’s haunting “I know” When Leia says she loves him. Just go through and imagine your favorite lines ever spoken in sci-fi or anime replaced by those shrieking, grating voices.

caitlin said:

This is true nerd torture I inflicted on my friends for April Fool’s Day: I went up to each of them- individually and at different times so they couldn’t warn each other- and told them that Firefly had been picked up for a second season with all the original cast, including Alan Tudyk and Ron Glass since they decided to ret-con Serenity, original set, and a HUGE budget… I then endured my own physical torture as they each pummeled me, tears streaming down their faces, when I yelled “April Fools!”

Scortia said:

My torture was self-induced. Being an Avatar: The Last Airbender fan, seeing the reviews the day of the midnight release and knowing it was panned in every way possible, then going to the midnight show anyhow… suffering through almost two hours of the destruction of a beloved cast and world, bit-by-bit after months of eager anticipation. That, Rob, is true torture.

zadek said:

Past torture: I live in Dubai, and although all the cinemas show movies in English, you do have to put up with Arabic subtitles written crudely on the bottom of the print. Anyway, as a massive Batman fan, The Dark Knight was the most important film event of 2008 for me, and I had booked my tickets for the first midnight showing weeks before it was due to show. All was going well until the movie started, and an Emirati and his young son sat right in front of me. I don’t know if the kid was retarded or just too young to read, but the dad read out all the arabic subtitles LOUDLY to his son, completely destroying the film for me as all my attention was concentrated on this selfish douche. If I was by myself I would have probably walked out and gone to see it the next morning, but instead I had to sit there watching possibly one of the greatest geek movies for the first time while being shouted at in Arabic.

dmnyo said:
torture for rob:

All you hear from now.
Are all haikus, everyday.
No alcohol drinks.

Stex said:

Last year I bought the first part of Marvel Zombies in paperback. So naturally I asked for the next 4 parts for my birthday. As my parents separated many years ago I asked for two from my Mum and two from my Dad, to spread the load so to speak. Now I like my comic shelves to look nice so I specified to both of them to get the paperbacks, just so my collection matches up. Well my Birthday comes around, I open my presents from my Dad and lo and behold I get the second and third Marvel Zombie trade paperbacks (he’s good like that). The next day I head over to my Mum’s, eagerly anticipating the next two comics coming my way (her also being good like that). Anyway I get round to opening my presents and to my horror I realise she’s bought me the hardbacks. “They weren’t much more expensive than the paperbacks so I thought I’d treat you” She said. Now my guilt won’t let me upgrade the present lovingly bought for me from my Dad so I must spend the rest of my life staring at my comic shelf with my complete Marvel Zombies Collection, 3 in paperback, 2 in hardback. THAT is my torture. Seems I’m way nerdier than I previously thought…

Beppo said:

Being the middle link in a human centipede with George Lucas and Michael Bay

Jedisilk said:

Ok, wow, amazed no-one thought of this. Being forced to watch the scenes, back-to-back, that involve character/world deaths. For me this would involve: Book’s, Wash’s, Tasha Yar’s, Fred’s, Buffy’s, Daniel Jackson’s, Kate’s (NCIS), Yoda’s, Obi-Wan’s, Alderaan, 10’s, Spock’s, etc, ending with the destruction of VULCAN…
You get the point. Every fucking death/destruction that has been used as a plot device…and tore out my heart.
Past Torture: This happened just a couple of months ago. I have a poster of the Enterprise that I have been systematically getting signed by the original cast. All I have left to get is Walter Koenig. Note: THAT IS PRESENT TENSE. At first I thought I was going to have to go to Halifax, NS to get this signature. Then I find out that he is going to be at a convention in NYC…from which I live 1/2 hr north. Now I know that people cancel, so I waited until the week of the convention to get the tickets (my Dad started this quest so he and I will have to finish it together)…after checking that he was still going. That week I was elated…I was happy so fucking happy that I was finally going to finish my 13 year journey. Night before I check the schedule to find out what time Koenig was going to appear that weekend…and discovered that he had, sometime in the mere DAYS after I got the tickets, cancelled.
FUCK YOU GOD OF CONVENTIONS. Worse, Dad and I ONLY were going for Chekov and we couldn’t get a refund. I hope the shattering of two months of elation in one horrible moment would still warrant a torture rating.

Modokslover said:

Michael Bay and Uwe Boll are teamed up to make a movie of every comic, sci-fi, and video game licence in existence. All of them are box office successes, and become the new standard for all of those licences.
Now, for the past. Imagine you are 9 years old, and it is the halcyon days of The Real Ghostbusters. Now imagine you own every single toy. Not some, not most, all of them. (I did some checking against online lists, I think I actually did have all of them) Now imagine you’re living with your mom’s boyfriend with far too much money, and you open the filter to his 100 gallon fish tank. Because hey, you’re 9. Imagine said douchebag first spanks you with the fire pole from the firehouse playset so hard that is shatters, and leaves welts. That’s bad, but that’s not the torture. Imagine this…beast…takes a hammer to all of your ghostbusters toys. From ecto 1, to your proton pack (the pack was fine, the blaster got shattered:() It tooks a year for my family to replace them all, after my mom left him of course. But it broke little 9 year old me. I still have all the replacement toys in storage, and must periodicly check on their health and wellbeing.

The Great A’tuin said:

possible torture: All the MST3K movies, in a row, no bots. And just when it gets to the end of the last, it starts looping over again.

Scooter Atreides replied to The Great A’tuin:
Replace Joel/Mike and the Bots with the cast of Jersey Shore.
Continue as indicated.
Pray for Death.

Mothcluster said:

gym class…still haunts me to this day should be obvious really

Winner time!

Now, my intention was to have one winner for actual, experienced nerd torture, and one for creative nerd torture. Then I read these two actual nerd torture entries, and I couldn’t decide between them.

D. Highmore said:

The single worst thing that ever happened to me (until I discovered women) occurred sometime in 1986. Star Wars had been my first love, but by then I’d moved onto Transformers, and my collection of SW toys was boxed up. Now, I had a fairly big collection – 70-odd figures, the cardboard Death Star, Millenium Falcon, all the mini-vehicles, and they were all pretty much mint (I was an anal little bastard even then).
Then one day I came home from school to find my mother had given them to the slightly backwards lad next door. That in itself was bad enough, but this lad had no other friends, so my mother would make me go round to play with him. Over the next few months, I watched my once-precious collection dwindle as he systematically destroyed everything. Seeing how much that upset only served to spur him on further, until he’d ruined everything. I managed to salvage a single figure – an armless Darth Vader, the least damaged item (I still have it).
I will never forgive her, as long as I live.

Cajun Spade said:

Imagine yourself a young, nerdy Magic: The Gathering player. You play at the local library with all sorts of interesting nerdlings around the same age. The public library allows in other, less polite people as well, unfortunately. I was like any other 6th grade child, playing my card games and avoiding jerks who’s idea of a good time would be to ruin a nerd’s day. I had a respectable collection of cards, decks I spent hours crafting and reworking. The pride of my collection was my Stations deck, a crafty, yet moderately hard to play strategy. Well, one day, a kid I didn’t get along with (aka a bully) came along and stole all of my cards while I was busy. He left, and someone told me who it was that stole all of my stuff. Parents were involved, and you know what they decided? To make up for it, he would give all my cards back and we should HANG OUT and I should TEACH HIM HOW TO PLAY. Well, the catch was, he kept my Stations deck (he knew it was important because I kept that particular deck in sleeves) and brought it with him when I was going to teach him how to play. His mother did not believe me when I said they were mine as well, so I had to sit and teach the kid who stole my cards how to play the game and watch him butcher my strategy for that deck. And the next day, I received a box of shredded cards with a note that said, “I can’t believe you told my mom. This is what you get.” A long day with a huge ending… Nerd torture.

Maybe Cajun Spade’s story is a bit worse in that his Magic cards were stolen, but D. Highmore’s torture lasted longer. I honestly couldn’t decide between which torture it worse, so they both get shirts. I don’t think it’ll make up for the psychological scars created by these tortures, but it’s all I can do. Eesh. Now for the creative…

McJean said:

I got a way to torture a nerd, but it’s kind of cruel. It’s like the plot of The Truman Show:
So you take a nerd and offer him the best job in a big city so he has to move there (it could be anything at all, you just need to get him to this town) but here’s the thing: Once he leaves, he can never leave again. That’s one way it’s like the Truman Show. The other way? Well, all the people that live in the town are paid actors. And they are paid to be his friends, be his “extras”, fillers, whatever, they just need to be actors BECAUSE these people are being paid to be nerd instigators. I call them that. What are nerd instigators? What they will be paid to do you ask? They exist to troll him, but he doesn’t know it. They will be fed information about his favorite comics and movies and other nerd-interests, and they will purposely be sent to interact with him and say differing opinions about his interests or say things that are completely incorrect about a comic, etc.
NOT ONE PERSON CAN/WILL SHARE ANY OF HIS INTERESTS IN. THEY HAVE TO PRETEND HE’S ALONE IN WHAT HE LIKES IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING CITY. THEY WILL TROLL HIM WITH COMMENTS LIKE: “Hey, so I heard there’s a Watchmen comic. I can’t believe they would make that after the success of the movie.” Or he goes to the comic book store but it’s filled with manga, and then the comic book manager goes, “Oh yeah, we used to have all kinds of comic books, but then manga got popular so I went with that instead.” Vice-versa if you must.
And he can never leave that city. Know why? Because the Convention people will be behind this entire experiment. SDCC is coming up? Well too, bad. They’ve killed his mother, and he have to go to her funeral. Ok it won’t be that harsh… He’ll have to attend the weekend long meeting that is that same weekend.
Something along those lines was my idea. 😀

YIKES. This is some Prisoner-level shit here. Yes, maybe the first week you’re okay, but to live in a city when you can’t discuss your nerd interests with anyone who knows what they’re talking about? A city full of people who, when you mention something nerdy, get all their info wrong? That is torture in the the truest sense of the word, folks. Hell, I shuddered just reading it. Anyways, that wraps up another TR contest. Thanks to all you poor and/or sick bastards for entering.