Nerd/ Supermarket Pastoral

Oswalt defines the terms nerd, geek, and otako as someone who has a serious interest in a particular item or  items. In the 80's when Oswalt was growing up, people did not have access to resources like the internet. Serious time and effort had to be put into becoming very knowledgable about a certain topic. In today's world, Oswalt says that everyone is a nerd because people can get so much information at once. It is possible to know as much as a Star Wars "nerd" does just by Googling it. It takes a few minutes to read the articles online while it took them years to learn everything that they did.
I really enjoyed this article and I think that he made a very valid point about society today. I think that the idea of destroying our culture in order to get back to the way things used to be seems a little extreme though. I think that society has definitely embraced geekiness more than previous decades, and there are instances where being a nerd is seen as cool now. I'm not sure if the internet was the sole reason for this but  I think that it is safe to say that it played a role.

A supermarket pastoral is the technique of adding information about a product's origin on the label as a way to entice customers. Where most products simply list the price of the item, organic products have started to not only put the world organic on the label, but also a background story to try to paint a picture in the customers mind. The idea behind this is that if you can paint a nice picture of where the product came from, the customer will care less about the increased price of the item because they think they are getting a higher quality product. Pollan later explains in the article that the customer may also purchase the product as an attempt to feel better about themselves. The quote, referring to non-organic food that said, “ I wouldn’t use that stuff to make compost”, makes you realize that people buy these products because they think that they will look like a better person.

While organic food definitely has its positive aspects and is the healthiest option on the market, I think that the industry comes off as shady because they try to trick you into buying a product instead of letting the products flavors speak for itself.