Fund This: ‘Hot N’ Nerdy’ Looks To Revive The Spirit Of Old-School Geekdom

Welcome to the Fund This column! Each week, we’ll look at a planned web series or other online video project currently in search of funding on crowdfunding sites. We’ll tell you what the series is all about and explain why it is worth your money. Do you have a project that’s currently being crowdfunded? Contact us to let us know and we may feature it in upcoming installments and check out previous installments right here.

Project Name: Hot N’ Nerdy

Asking For: $13,500 via Indiegogo

Amount Raised Thus Far (At Time Of Post): $1,648

Days Remaining In Campaign (At Time Of Post): 30

Description: Being nerdy is cool now, but that wasn’t always the case, and Steven Tsapelas wants to inform viewers about the not-so-halcyon past days of intense pop culture fandom. Tsapelas is the creator behind Hot N’ Nerdy, a web series that will be a nostalgia trip to the nerd world’s decidedly un-hip past.

Tsapelas grew up on Long Island in the 80s and 90s, and his show, set in the year 2000, will take viewers back to that point in time. Its heroes will be old-school, anxious nerds who find themselves vexed by the first girl they’ve ever seen at a convention. “This is a time before comic book conventions were mainstream,” Tsapelas explains in his pitch video, “when a lot of them were in basements and back rooms populated by socially awkward young men like myself.”

With his campaign, Tsapelas hopes to raise the funds he needs to create a great pilot. From there, he’ll shop the project around in hopes of turning it into a full-length series.

Creator Bio: Tsapelas was one of the creators of the 2007 web series We Need Girlfriends, which became one of the first web series to get a TV deal when CBS looked into making it a series.

Best Perk: For backers who chip in at least $35, Tsapelas will throw in a comic book from his personal collection, which tells you how many comic books this guy owns.

Why You Should Fund It: In today’s world, where comic book adaptations reel in billions at the multiplexes and video games generate chatter across social media, it can be easy to lose sight of where nerd-dom came from. Hot N’ Nerdy can serve as an important reminder of the history of one of America’s most enduring countercultures. Plus, given Tsapelas’ track record, we have a pretty good feeling that it will be funny, too. Perhaps you’ll give him a hand so he can get his pilot onto the web.

Got a crowdfunding campaign you’d like to see featured in Fund This? Be sure to contact us here.