【Gary Eberhart Archives】

"As a husband,Gary Eberhart Archives a son, and future father, I do not condone any kind of mistreatment of women."

On Friday night, entertainer and geek "hero" Chris Hardwick responded to Chloe Dykstra's allegations that he sexually assaulted her and engaged in other toxic behavior while the two were dating. His carefully worded statement refuted Dykstra's account, and ended with that oh-so-familiar defense you see above.

SEE ALSO: Chris Hardwick responds to Chloe Dykstra's allegations of sexual and emotional abuse

Let's be clear: "Innocent until proven guilty" is for a court of law to decide, if that's where this story eventually goes. The court of public opinion operates under no such constraints, and in the post-Harvey Weinstein days of 2018 we believe the accuser.

Hardwick's response, then, reads as textbook gaslighting.

His alleged actions and subsequent statement drew quick condemnation on social media, and in those responses a common theme began to emerge: Nerd culture itself is toxic.

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(h/t to Vanity Fair's Joanna Robinson for sharing that last set of tweets into my feed.)

Just a handful of examples. There are plenty more.

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Nerd culture is what's given way to movements (read: hate groups) like GamerGate and Sad Puppies. It's why Leslie Jones took a social media hiatus and probably why Kelly Marie Tran deleted her Instagram.

It's why, if you look far enough back, you can still find headlines like this on the internet.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

(Protip: Nothing ever "ruined" San Diego Comic Con's Hall H. Twilight was huge and drew big crowds, just like Marvel, Star Wars, The Walking Dead, and more. If you think big crowds like the one Twilight drew ruined Hall H... well... Chris Hardwick and the commodification of geek culture plays a big role there. But that's a conversation for another day.)

For a long, long time in pop culture, geeks have been the "good guys" to the jocks' "bad guys." That's been reinforced ad nauseum by everything from Spider-Man alter-ego Peter Parker's existence to the conceit of an entire fictional universe in Ernest Cline's book, Ready Player One.

But over the course of the past decade, as geeky interests have moved in to dominate the mainstream, that facade has crumbled. A male geek's pursuit of an "out of his league" love interest used to be the basis for a fictional story's emotional beats; as we all look back now and re-examine how we got here, we pick up on the deeply unsettling aspects of those plotlines.

This isn't to suggest that loving a thing adored by the geeky set is inherently bad. But, as some suggested in the social media musings above, tethering your identity to the products you consume can have toxic results. If you are what you like, any criticism of the thing you like can come off as a personal attack.

No one's suggesting that all geek properties should be put to death. But this conversation that's sprung up in the wake of the Hardwick revelations is yet another product of our culture's ongoing process of self-reflection as would-be "heroes" and "industry giants" are revealed as the villains they actually are.

It wasn't so long ago that we cheered at the idea of geeks inheriting the Earth. Now, we know better.

UPDATEDJune 17, 2018 7:59 a.m. ET to correct a very unfortunate typo. An earlier version of this story asserted that "guilty until proven innocent" is the rule of law in the United States. That was a misstatement; it's "innocent until proven guilty." LOL. I sure do regret that error.

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