4. Dane Cook - Openly Geeked Out Over Video Games To Mass Audiences
Did you ever wonder how geeks, nerds, poindexters or whatever you want to call them got to this 2015-centric position of owning the earth? It feels like a lifetime ago now that you couldn't just up and talk about video games to anyone with reach, but that's what it was like before the Wii took gaming into the living room in a big way and guys like controversial stand-up comic Dane Cook openly mentioned titles like Call of Duty and Halo in their material and interviews. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bgxq3gznUs&t=24 Sure that might seem a bit crazy to pin the entire success of mainstream's embracing of gaming on one comic, but you can't deny how well known he is, especially to a mainstream comedy demographic. When Cook happily discussed playing COD in his downtime on Letterman or did entire 'bits' about camping in Halo on such huge stages as Madison Square Garden, it opened up tens of thousands of people to terminology and video games they'd always heard about but never thought it 'okay' to play.