Richard William “Wil” Wheaton is the wunderkind of a particular branch of sci-fi and nerd culture. Though his first major acting role of note was Gordie in the movie Stand By Me, Wheaton remains best known for playing Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: the Next Generation. Wheaton left the cast as a regular in 1990 but made appearances on the show through 1994. By the end of the ’90s he had gone through several acting school programs and found work doing small television and voiceover roles. Wheaton’s later acting career includes recurring roles on some of my favorites from the sci-fi genre — namely, Eureka and Dark Matter — as well as being a main cast member on Leverage, playing himself semi-regularly on The Big Bang Theory, and doing a tremendous amount of acting and voiceover work on children’s TV. Wheaton has also spent the last several years producing Tabletop, a Web-only series where he demonstrates a board game by playing it with friends.
Wheaton is an Internet native, and built his own fan outreach website (wilwheaton.net — still operating as a blog) in 2001. He maintains a strong presence on several social media networks, and has been a columnist and guest editor for the SuicideGirls website (apparently you can read it for the articles) for more than a decade. He’s an outspoken critic of the bad parts of being extremely online, which naturally leads to his eponymous law (as well as regular shitstorms).
Wheaton’s Law is, “Don’t be a dick.” I’m not sure how much I have to explain the implications of this law, but it is notable that it has to be cited often enough that it accreted an eponymous coinage. Wheaton included this maxim in his keynote speech at PAX 2007, in the context of sportsmanship when playing games online, but it is generally applicable.
I’m closing out today’s post, for my own amusement as much as anything, with a genuinely funny and memorable family interaction in public over Twitter involving the Wheatons (the players are Wil, wife Anne, and adopted son/former stepson Ryan):
