Dr. Lauren Rosewarne, author of 'Cyberbullies, Cyberactivists, Cyberpredators: Film, TV, and Internet Stereotypes' and Associate Professor in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia, said a good example of a neckbeard in popular culture is Jeff Albertson from The Simpsons.
"The fat, pony-tailed and bearded sarcastic misanthrope [is] more commonly known as the Comic Book Guy," she said. "In the Bart the Fink episode, Albertson wheels a barrow full of tacos through town commenting 'Yes, this should provide adequate sustenance for the Doctor Who marathon.'
Then there's Plague from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011). "Surrounded by junk food packaging, this greasy hacker has the gracelessness to use the toilet – door agape – with [the] company still in his apartment."
"At a cursory glance, the neckbeard is an easy figure to both loathe and laugh at: he’s the fat guy whose whole pathetic life plays out exclusively in cyberspace," Dr. Rosewarne said.
"This screen stereotype, however, has other interesting elements to it."
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At its inception, virtually every new technology had been associated with fears of addiction and the internet certainly hadn't avoided this, either.
As Dr. Rosewarne pointed out, by the mid-1990s, the online world was said to be ruining relationships and socially isolating teenagers.
"The screen’s neckbeard is a product of this: he's not just a user of the technology, the technology is his life."
In this context, the neckbeard is a physical incarnation of modern gluttony – too much sedentariness, too much darkness, too much isolation, too much computing.
"He is what happens to the body – to society – when we become too reliant on machines: we go soft, we go to fat," Dr. Rosewarne added.
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"The neckbeard is unkempt, of course, because heft and dishevelment are regularly coupled on screen in a culture loathing of fatness," she continued. "But he’s unkempt because of his computing. He’s not leaving his basement, he’s not socializing; the machine has made him reclusive and facilitated his isolation."
But as you can see from these pictures, as well as our previous publications on the subreddit People On This Group Are Shaming ‘Neckbeards’, And Here Are 30 Of Their Best Posts and 30 Entitled ‘Neckbeards’ Who Showed Their True Colors, As Shared By This Online Group (New Pics), the neckbeard is often also a jerk. Be it a misogynist, or just another troll, this character amuses himself by being a bastard online.
#15 Just Saw This And Figured It Belonged Here. Yikes. Comments Are Currently Ripping Him Apart
Dr. Rosewarne said the repulsive exteriors of this stereotype "function as an insight into their filthy psychology."
"These men are socially isolated, and behind their monitors (and invariably in the bravery of mom’s basement), they get to stand up to their tormentors – to the women, for example, who ignored them – and feel a modicum of (digital) power," she said.
No wonder we love to hate these characters.
