Here’s a question for anybody who watches TV or reads genre fiction!

Let’s say the social and political importance of sci-fi was, originally, its ability to smuggle transgressive material to readers or viewers in the form of an allegory. Genre fiction / TV was an easy way for authors to write…

This response illustrates a couple of examples. I’ve been rewatching the first seasons of the X-Files along with early episodes of Seinfeld and it’s interesting to think of both in terms of the evolution of the internet during the 90s and the phenomenon you describe. In X-Files, you had a show dealing in paranormal ephemera that exists but has never been affirmed by science (i.e., The REAL geeks, the people who first populated the internet). The amount of primitive HTML devoted to X-Files still out there is staggering. I once read an essay about how X-Files was a show for the Clinton years but 24 is a show for the Bush years. They’re really not that different as both shows relied on storylines ripped from the headlines and then made up backstory as they went along. Both shows fed into the chatter that made the internet what it is.

When Seinfeld was on the air, it had a Zen reverence for something the show itself made fun of: because the show was about nothing, it was about everything. In rewatching Seinfeld, you quickly realize that sitcoms have always been about nothing and this show was simply well-cast with good writers and funny people. The internet helped us get more good writing and thinking out there so that everyone is more quickly in on the joke. The Simpsons then brought this out more literally. (Updated: some verb tenses fixed etc)