"Despite this being a massive victory for my teenage self, and generally enjoying nerdom at a personal level (I admit I too would be intrigued by Silmarillion references in a pitch) my concern is that nerdom, in an unintentional way, is strangling high culture."

"That’s what some segment of nerds should be doing, metamorphosing from nerd into that more delicate but potent creature, the intellectual, but instead they are drawn to the easy honeypot of modern middlebrow culture because it is too nerdy, too attractive, too omnipresent, to ever leave."

very much agree