RDCWorld: performing the Black nerd in new media

Abstract

Abstract With their fingers on the pulse of popular culture, RDCWorld, a digital content creation group primarily composed of young Black men, enjoys a following largely gained from their anime-inspired videos that unite a community of like-minded Black nerds in the US and speaks to the power digital media has to construct spaces based on identities that have historically been marginalized, within both Black and White-dominated spaces. Using a content analysis of their videos and textual analysis of fan comments and social media engagement, I argue that RDCWorld’s performance as Black nerds subverts traditional notions of identity, play, and space by resisting notions of the stereotypical cool Black aesthetic, integrating transnational media with Blackness to create new modes of self-representation, challenging hegemonic constructions of public play, and by normalizing spaces of free Black expression through their anime and gaming convention, DreamCon.