I used to love nerds. Or at least, I loved the idea of nerds. In the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s, there was an endless stream of movies and media, from “Revenge of the Nerds” to “Spider-Man” to “Beauty and the Geek,” dedicated to telling women that they’d be better off with nerds than with the arrogant jocks who would grunt cavemanlike in response to anything women said, before kicking sand in a nerd’s face.

Nerds were smart and decent underdogs who just needed a good-hearted lady to notice them and maybe get them a pair of contact lenses.

Boy, that stereotype does not hold up in 2018.

These days, stories of misogyny in nerd-world — and allegations of sexual harassment in tech companies — have become incredibly common. If I see someone in a Batman T-shirt, I no longer assume they’re a sensitive soul. Instead, I wonder if they harassed women during Gamergate or hang out on incel message boards talking about how Elliot Rodger was right to kill “blonde sorority sluts.” The most realistic part of “Revenge of the Nerds” now seems to be the creepy scene where the nerd protagonist tricks a woman into sex.

I wasn’t that surprised, then, when Chloe Dykstra, the ex-girlfriend of the Nerdist founder Chris Hardwick (whom Rolling Stone has called “King of the Nerds”), wrote in an essay that her boyfriend of three years had emotionally and sexually abused her. (While she did not name him, the piece is understood by everyone in the industry to refer to him. He denied the abuse.)