You can stop asking him. He doesn't know."Who did Negan kill?" has become this generation's "Who Shot J.R.?," and "Talking Dead" host Chris Hardwick doesn't know, nor wants to know who met with Lucille's sweet spot in the cliffhanger finale for "The Walking Dead's" sixth season.Hardwick will appear at the Carnegie Library Music Hall in Homestead on June 10 as part of his ID10T tour."People shout (the question) at me on the streets,” Hardwick said. “It's good that I don't know because I'm not a great liar. Someone will be able to get it out of me if I knew. For my own protection, this is why I don't watch the show ahead or have them tell me anything about what's coming up."Okay, for record, Hardwick did want to know, but unlike the rest of the internet he can wait.“At the end of the last season, of course I wanted to know who Negan killed, but it didn't enrage me,” Hardwick said. “I just thought, ‘Oh, I guess I'll find out in the fall.’ I would've liked to have known now, but this is the cliffhanger and this is how television works.”He was well aware of fandom’s building backlash as he hosted the season finale of "Talking Dead.""After the finale, when I saw how mad people were getting,” he said, “I asked (producer Scott)Gimple and (creator Robert) Kirkman, ‘People seem very upset about this. Why did you do it this way?’”He got an answer he could live with."They explained, and because I trust them, I said, ‘Okay, I'm satisfied with that answer.’ Of course, the internet said I was lying, and that I'm a puppet for AMC, and that I'm sucking the network's dick, and I'm a big piece of shit. I don't know what to say. I have the opinion that I have. I know Scott and I know Kirkman. I trust them and if they said that it was important...“I think for people to be upset without having seen how it plays out is a little pre-mature,” Hardwick said. “I see bloggers all the time write about 'Walking Dead' or 'Game of Thrones,' or any show where they go, ‘This is dumb. Why did this show do this this way? This show didn't have to do this this way.’ You cannot make that appraisal until you've seen the entire series."Patience may be a virtue lacking in our binge-watching decadence, but it is one Hardwick himself practices.“There's a software that anyone who watches “The Walking Dead” (in advance) has to have access to,” Hardwick explains. “I have access to the software and when they upload new episodes as they're done, they're sitting in there but I only watch (that week’s show) a couple of hours before we do ‘Talking Dead.’”While most of “The Walking Dead’s” audience are not nearly as patient as Hardwick, he see the immediate need for gratification as a term of endearment."On the one hand I will say, I think it's a sign that people care,” he continues. “I don't want to downplay that. I don't want to downplay the fact that people care. At the same time, it shouldn't ruin your life. When all is said is done, when you see the entire series and it didn't pay off, then you can go, ‘Oh, well that was dumb. That didn't pay off.’ You don't know that yet.“If you listen to the Nerdist podcast, or you've seen the Nerdist website, or anything I do, the way that I am on 'Talking Dead' is very consistent with how I am about everything with life. Part of it is just that there's enough cynicism in the world. I honestly think you can look at anything and describe 10 negative things about it or 10 positive things about it. I think that's probably why I don't, on 'Talking Dead' I go, ‘Hey, what the fuck was this all about?"While there may be many that think to the contrary, Hardwick does have free reign to in hosting "Talking Dead."“‘Talking Dead’ is one of the highest rated shows on cable television,” he said. “I'm not going to get in trouble if I say something, even if it's negative. There's never been an edict that was laid down. Kirkman and everyone has always said like, ‘Hey, if you don't like stuff, you can talk about it.’ If I were rude to someone, that's different.”Hardwick’s schedule is currently full. He hosts @midnight” on Comedy Central during the week, as well as hosting duties on the “Talking” shows on AMC after “The Walking Dead,” “Fear The Walking Dead,” “Better Call Saul,” and “Preacher,” and devoting time to his podcast, as well as other projects with Nerdist.Over a decade back, though, it was a different story for the once “Singled Out” host.“I was making a lot of bad life choices at that time. I used to drink. I was unhappy. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what I wanted. I was constantly chasing jobs to survive. I never really thought about what it is I actually wanted to do.”Then he had the idea for what would be the Nerdist network.“In 2007, I sort of had this revelation where I thought, ‘Oh, I like this specific arena of things, and I have a lot of hosting experience, and I have a pretty strong comedy at that time.That happened to coincide with the time where the nature of entertainment was becoming, I don't know how else to describe it, sort of the nichefying of entertainment.“Before around 2007 or so, and still a little bit today, traditional media companies and networks still were operating in the old way which was, you have to appeal to as many people as possible. Now, most entertainment just appeals to as specific a group as possible. All of the things that I was interested in doing, it just wasn't possible when I started working entertainment in the 90s. Anything that was considered traditional nerd culture was considered too niche. There just weren't a lot of opportunities then. You look at some of the shows that are on now, the Syfy channel had a pretty successful show with film makeup effects. If you pitched a makeup effects competition show in the '90s, you would've been laughed out of the building.”Broadband became the preferred way to access the internet in the mid-00s and it helped connect mediums that were not connected before.“Also, the weaving in of the wide adoption rate of broadband in the mid- 2000s, that helped everything too, to sort of tie digital and television together as one. It's just all an entertainment hub.“That's when I sort of realized, all these things that I like, I can now work in television and digital and make a living just doing those things. That's really all it was. It was me getting the skill set, realizing that it was possible. That's why when I first started Nerdist people were like, ‘You hosted “Singled Out,” you don't like any of this shit.' I would say, ‘You don't know me, and I always have, there just wasn't a way to do it before.’”It was in the chaos of the internet expansion that Hardwick found his moment of clarity.“It was finally waking up and realizing that I only wanted to do things that made me happy instead of trying to do things for other people or what made other people happy. Ironically, that was the decision that actually made my career take off, which I never thought would happen. I just thought, ‘I'll carve out a little living, but as long as I'm happy and if I'm doing stuff that I like, happiness is the key, not making a shit ton of money.’ If you make money or not make money, you still have to be happy doing what you're doing. I just wanted to be happy.”One thing that makes Hardwick happy is being able to continue the standup, his first love.“For me to do stand-up, to get around the country and then get back in time for my other jobs, I could only do that if I loved it and if it was my favorite thing.“Stand-up was the first thing that I ever identified with as a small child. It was the thing that I always wanted to do. To me, it's always where my heart is the most. I love everything that I get to do, but stand-up is still always the number one thing to me. I will always do it as long as I'm able.”With a such a busy schedule, Hardwick admits that his schedule just does not allow him to keep up with all things pop culture.“The truth is it's not possible (to keep up with everything in entertainment). I don't have enough time to watch everything, read everything, play everything anymore. If I were the only one running Nerdist, then it would not be good right now. The site would be terrible if it were just me. That's why there's a staff of thirty-something people at Nerdist. I realized early on that it needed more points of view than just mine, more people writing about different things. I do the best that I can to keep up with what I can with the time that I have.“('@midnight’) is a daily topical show. That does keep a lot of my focus on things that are going on. Obviously, there's just too much information now. There's just too much entertainment. There's a lot of good entertainment, but it's a job just to keep up with literally everything that's going on right now. That would be a job in of itself.“It is kind of weird when you build your career around fandom and around consuming things and then your career gets to a point where you just don't have time to consume everything anymore. I do the best that I can. I watch as much as I can. I try to play things when I can. I'll try to rifle through comics during breakfast when I can.”As the face of Nerdist, Hardwick knows that he is the guy who sometimes get the moniker “Top Nerd.”“I never claimed to be the top anything. I think around Comic-Con (International: San Diego) maybe five years ago, someone wrote a story and assigned me with (the title of 'Top Nerd') because I was moderating so many panels, and because of the website, and because of the podcast. (If) someone were to come up to me and wags a finger like, ’You're supposed to be ...’, I'm like, ‘I'm not supposed to be anything. I just like what I like, and these are my jobs."Hardwick knows the tried and true philosophy that with great power comes great responsibility.“My responsibility is to the hundreds of people that have jobs because of stuff that I do that I don't want to fuck that up. I need to make sure that we all still get to keep working. My responsibility is more to the people that I employ than to some guy who comes up on the street and gets on me because I didn't read something or play something.”