Pop culture has a massive lady boner for Tesla, who appears in comics, movies, TV shows and video games. There's even a big, nerdy steampunk con named after him. The Oatmeal just raised exactly one bajillion dollars to start a Nikola Tesla museum with nothing more than hilarious cat and dog cartoons as inspiration.

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Much of this pop culture love seems to be centered around him online, where, if you Google "Tesla fan fiction," you'll get a few million results, and only a third as many for "Thomas Edison fan fiction," which is generally much more poorly written and homoerotic in nature. Edison usually starts out by dropping a light bulb and has an assistant bend over and pick it up, one thing leads to another, and everyone's bloomers get thrown out the window.

At first glance, Tesla seems like he might be a good choice for an Internet icon, minus the fact that he's been dead since World War II. He was a bit of a mad scientist type of a guy, he had an irrational hate for fat people, he liked to make lightning and he apparently created a functional earthquake machine. He's pretty much the template for modern-day nerd fantasy.

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On the other hand, Tesla was ruined in life by Thomas Edison and died broke and alone, and also celibate, because he didn't like germs. He was hardcore OCD and refused to stay in hotel rooms with numbers not divisible by three, he would use 18 napkins to clean a plate and silverware before eating, and he told people he'd been in radio contact with aliens. So, you know, he was kind of batshit.