Maybe an analogy in poor taste, but the premise of BBT is basically “look how many negative stereotypes of scientists and engineers we can get our audience to point and laugh at, if we take our lazy awkward mean-spirited writing and put a laugh track over the top”.
Try searching for versions with laugh track removed to get a better sense of the writing per se without the extra emotional manipulation.
Compare with Silicon Valley, a comedy show which also mercilessly skewers nerds, but more for the sake of social commentary than just piling on insults, and which treats even the most caricatured characters with some dignity and humanity.
I find this sentiment interesting. I find BBT hilarious and identify with the characters. I often drag my wife to watch a specific BBT episode to get her to understand the way I think or understand the way I was in the past before I met her. I don't find it demeaning at all. I often find it hilarious and say, "yeah, that's me right there!" I see myself in Sheldon, Leonard, and Howard all of them. Raj, not so much. I haven't watched enough of The IT Crowd that people here on HN cite as being a better show to know what I think of it. The few clips I've seen on YouTube, I've only seen the IT Crowd characters being bullied more than I ever saw BBT characters get bullied. It's probably a biased sample, maybe those clips are at the top of the list because people like to watch nerds get bullied? I don't know. All I know is that I don't get all the hate towards BBT.
It’s for those of us who aren’t able to express ourselves using the characters. My family, friends, and outsiders use the stereotypes to label me or describe me in ways I find incorrect. It’s not a knock against those it does, I’m just incorrectly placed and it’s frustrating. In some ways, yes, it’s hating the symptom and not the root, but I’m only human despite my steadfast nihilism.
I like IT Crowd, but I agree, it is just some funny, derpy IT guys that nothing every goes right for. But BBT guys have a lot of the stereotypes but generally come out triumphant over the bullies and thugs of the world. If anything, BBT celebrates "nerds" more than any other show in recent memory.
I never really watched much of it, but this PA comic[1] from a few years back clued me into this. I can't say I disagree (even if I've known plenty of nerds that like Big Bang Theory). Sterotypes often have some truth to them, to lesser and greater degrees, but that doesn't mean playing them up to an extreme degree for laughs is something we should necessarily encourage.
Try searching for versions with laugh track removed to get a better sense of the writing per se without the extra emotional manipulation.
Compare with Silicon Valley, a comedy show which also mercilessly skewers nerds, but more for the sake of social commentary than just piling on insults, and which treats even the most caricatured characters with some dignity and humanity.