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The Power of Nerdfury
Everyone knows that the best way to find a good restaurant in a strange city is to ask the Chowhounds. Sometimes, however, a request gets ignored, or gets a boring “look in the archives” response. Anthony Bourdain has a suggestion if you want your request to get more attention. As LiveJournal-keeper Robert Donoghue reports, during a recent New York talk Bourdain outlined the approach:
The question at hand was how to find good restaurants, and his answer was to take the city you want to go to and just google up some restaurant names that serve the dish you’re after. Then go to chowhound or another foodie site, and rather than asking about restaurants, you put up an enthusiastic post talking about how you just had the best whatever you’re looking for at one of these restaurants.
At that point, what [LiveJournal writer] drivingblind likes to call the nerdfury will begin. Posters will show up from nowhere to shower you with disdain, tell you how that place used to be good but has now totally sold out and—most important to your quest—will tell you where you would have gone if you were not some sort of mouth breathing water buffalo.
The term nerdfury has been doing a little blog swirling ever since. Like Bourdain, it’s provocative. And who better to take advice from about starting a good fight?
Posted by | Monday, November 19, 2007 at 8:12am | 1 comment
I love Anthony Bourdain. I despise myself for loving a foul-mouthed, hyper-macho poly-substance addict, and yet, I love him just the same. Maybe because in addition to spouting obscenities, he does an awful lot of clever "wordsmithing."
I've been posting on chowhound for over six years now, and he's totally right: being provocative (aka starting a fight) is the best way to really get a conversation rolling. You should have seen the incredibly fruitful thread generated on the SF board a few years ago by the header: "San Francisco - City of mediocre ribs, sushi, dimsum..."