intoxicated or not, this is a very good overview of why corporations assimilate art and culture. musk has done this so many times — one of my earliest memories of white-hot rage towards musk was when he declared himself a socialist because he was also (claiming to be) a Culture fan. the first example I know of corporations butchering nerd culture was Google turning April Fools pranks into deeply unfunny corporatized marketing opportunities, but I’m sure it’s been happening much longer than that

what’s interesting, and you touched on this in your post, is the degree to which nerd culture itself interacts with a thin facade that substitutes for the artistic work it claims to exalt. in college I volunteered at a couple of conventions, and two things were obvious:

• con nerds don’t give a fuck if you’re bleeding and broken, they’ve got overpriced cultural signifiers to buy and you’re in the way (part of my job was to keep injured folks safe before the ambulance and folks with real medical training came — it’s kind of amazing how many folks walked up and asked us about the vendor booths or event schedule while we were dealing with, ah, gore)
• the kid who won’t stop listing DS9 episode summaries and asking you gotcha trivia questions to prove you’re not a fan doesn’t know anything about the text or subtext of the series. they memorized a whole bunch of facts to prove their worth as a fan to other toxic assholes, but couldn’t tell you anything about the cultural or artistic merit of the work they claim to love

in short, fuck nerds