Chris Hardwick
Chris Hardwick
Christopher Ryan "Chris" Hardwickis an American television host, stand-up comedian, actor, writer, producer, podcaster, musician, and voice artist. He is the chief executive officer of Nerdist Industries, the digital division of Legendary Entertainment. He currently hosts @midnight with Chris Hardwick, a nightly comedy-game show series on Comedy Central, and voices Craig in the Nickelodeon series Sanjay and Craig...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComedian
Date of Birth23 November 1971
CityLouisville, KY
CountryUnited States of America
Videogames make you feel like you're actually doing something. Your brain processes the tiered game achievements as real-life achievements. Every time you get to the next level, hot jets of reward chemical coat your brain in a lathery foam, and it seems like you're actually accomplishing stuff.
There's something about shooting webs out of my wrists and climbing up things that just makes me happy.
I think the mistake a lot of people make with new media is they just focus on one thing. But any one thing - just doing podcasts or just having a website or just doing television - isn't enough anymore.
When I was younger, my parents used to say, "Trust us on this. We have more experience than you." And I was like, "Shut up, you don't know anything!" But I was an idiot. They did know more stuff because they'd experienced more things.
Be offended by everything or be offended by nothing.
The idea of the archetypal nerd is totally blurred these days. So many people of this current generation have grown up with technology and video games. It's just a part of the world now, a part of our shared culture.
Our mandate at Nerdist is that we only get involved with nice people around things that we love. We have the luxury of being in the demographic that we're programming for.
You don't need 30 million people to listen to your podcast. If 10,000 people listen to your podcast, which is not a hard number to achieve, then 10,000 people are listening, and you can build a community, and literally change the world just recording into a microphone.
We didn't understand irony yet in the '80s; we just kind of existed at face value, so there was no nerd cool yet because the digital revolution was still in its infancy.
I don't know why people don't want to talk about their numbers. I guess in a sense, there's a bit of performer nudity, a bit of ego nudity when you expose your numbers, I guess because someone's are higher or someone's are lower. I've never really talked about the numbers with anyone, so maybe I'm not supposed to.