On Nerds, Geeks, and Cultural Paradigm Shifts

Hello, hello.

So John Cheese of Cracked wrote this article on ‘the death of nerds’.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-reasons-2013-officially-marked-death-nerd/

I generally try to be objective and balanced on my blog. This time, objectivity and balance are getting defenestrated.

I will spare you the descriptions of my sad childhood as an overweight girl in a small and conservative Bible Belt town. I will not go into being physically inept and being picked on for my vocabulary and being intensely lonely. I will skim over the pressure to be a doctor from my parents and the fact that I counted the balance of years until I could go to university.

Instead, I will tell you about feeling like a hero when I learned to play D&D. I will tell you about goofy girls in fandoms and sonic screwdrivers and discovering that other people like mythology and folklore. I will tell you about social justice blogs and my friends across the world and the way it feels when I can talk to someone about something we both like without apology or explanation.

Being a geek or nerd is about community and connection. Self esteem issues and body hate and isolationism are not the boundaries of nerddom. And as a statistically above-average student who played cello, I know enough about the differences between nerds and geeks to say they do not matter.

So you know nothing, John Cheese. You wrote a poem about the No True Scotsman fallacy and your own self-esteem issues.  If you feel the need to be picked on to certify your geekdom as genuine, fine. But the girls who got picked on as a result of the boys getting picked on, the people of colour who got squeezed out of everything,  and everyone else who did not fit into the Victimized Dude Club—we are glad the walls are coming down. Mainstream geekdom is one of the best things that has happened in the course of my life.

Having a social life and being attractive and fit do not make one less of a geek. And you can imbibe my micturations,  you oort cloud of oananistic, coprophagic Ptolemaic logic.