5 Reasons Calling Someone a 'Nerd' Is Officially Meaningless
Back in the old days, nobody called themselves a nerd. Other people called them that, and then gave them a wedgie and drove off to Make-Out Point with the nerd's girl. Nowadays, many, many people get so proud of being nerds that they get mad when anyone implies they are not a real nerd, and often write scathing rebuttals on the Internet.
Now, how the hell did that come to be? To figure that out, we have to look at exactly what people think makes up a nerd these days.
#5. Social Rejection
By almost anyone's definition, part of being a nerd is that regular people look down on you. Now, that's pretty broad. They could consider you pathetic for your weekly D&D games, for being very good at math, for being bad with the opposite sex, for wearing sweater vests or for any number of things, depending on how you further define "nerd," but more on that later. The point is that ordinary folks consider you pathetic and uncool.
That's been a part of what "nerd" means ever since people started using that word. A lot of people want to claim the actual origin now that it's a cool word, but all the claims agree (ironically?) it was about calling somebody uncool. Everyone seems to agree that wherever it came from, Happy Days popularized it, with episodes like this one where a She-Devil brings in a nerd for everyone to laugh at (Spoiler: It is Fonzie in disguise).
But now a lot of the people who get labeled "nerds" are hardly social rejects. Movies glorify hackers as cool rebels. The lives of computer moguls like Steve Jobs and the Google guys are actually envied by people. When they give a movie hero 10 unbelievable high-prestige jobs at once to show how cool they are, one of those jobs is often "brilliant scientist," as in "Vin Diesel plays a brilliant scientist who is also a daredevil stuntman and the President of the United States."
"Denise Richards plays a brilliant scientist who is also a stand for attaching large breasts."
So they're hardly rejected by mainstream society, yet they still get labeled "nerds" in some quarters.
When people call these guys nerds, they're clearly not thinking about the social rejection aspect of the word, but about something else ... in this case, smarts.
#4. Smarts
Smarts have been associated with nerds from the beginning, describing people who would rather be studying than partying. Back then, pop culture made it pretty clear that it wasn't cool to be smart.
Via Adam Thinks
While playing a high school dropout, Henry Winkler himself had a bachelor's as well as a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama.
In a time when the U.S. manufacturing sector was booming, people didn't have to be rocket scientists to do well for themselves. Sure, a decent education didn't hurt, but being genius-level brilliant didn't exactly catapult you into top positions or do much for you if you didn't want to be in the space program or something. But times have changed. Fewer and fewer people work with their hands, and all the sweet jobs have something to do with computers, which were little more than a weird government experiment back when the word "nerd" was coined.
The Escapist
People at the time did not picture these things making them into sexy billionaires.
Nowadays, most self-made millionaires build their empires on some fancy computer trick, like building an online community gossip site (Mark Zuckerberg), getting people addicted to virtual farms (Mark Pincus) or stealing other people's operating systems (Bill Gates). Kids that dream of "showing everybody" so that "they'll be sorry" someday often dream of hacking their way to the top with a brilliant computer idea.
Even people who dream of blowing other people away with their unique blend of hip-hop and baroque organ music, or their refreshing comedy routine about how Justin Bieber looks like a girl, hope to make their big break with a YouTube video or word-of-mouth about their amazing blog (spread by buzz from their fake Twitter accounts). No matter which way a person wants to hit it big these days, they've got to master technology and the Internet (or hire someone who can) to get that door open.
Wolfgang Ingenfeld (NSFW)
The other way to get attention, of course, is to completely fail at technology.
People being smart doesn't make them outcasts anymore, it makes them popular and successful, and enough people have carved out that path that we don't even need to wait until they become rich and famous to accept them. That weird kid that figured out how to look up porn on the school computers isn't automatically a target for ridicule. He very well might be running his own company at 21. Also he figured out how to look up porn on the school computers.
In most areas of society, people aren't rejected just for being smart anymore. Maybe it's that we know we need smartness in our computer-driven world, and maybe it's decades of shows like Square One and Mr. Wizard and Mythbusters teaching us that math and science are cool. Either way, being smart hardly fits in with the whole "outcast" picture of nerds. What else defines a nerd, then?
#3. Being Fans
People who are crazy about some sci-fi series or comic book often call themselves "nerds" based just on that. They're not making any claims about their own intelligence, unless we're considering a detailed knowledge of Farscape trivia to be a display of intelligence these days. But they do feel like these hobbies have some kind of connection to a definable "nerd" personality that includes intelligence, so it feels more positive to call themselves a "Buffy nerd," than just a "Buffy fan." That way they can be a smart person who cares too much about Buffy and not just a person who cares too much about Buffy.
The other reason they use the term is for the social outcast aspect, because they feel like the world judges them unfairly for memorizing entire Buffy episodes or getting married in Star Wars regalia.
Damn Cool Pictures
You have to give these people credit for not going with the predictable Han/Leia match-up like all the other Star Wars weddings.
And that makes sense if you realize how monolithic pop culture used to be. Not because people used to be more sheeplike in the old days -- I'm sure everybody had their own individual ideas and opinions -- but because people only had three channels to watch. This was literally true at the dawn of television broadcasting, and stayed relatively true through the '70s, when nine out of 10 American viewers only watched shows on one of the Big Three networks on any given evening. People could have diverse opinions about Leave It To Beaver, but they couldn't express them by watching The Sopranos instead.
If anything was "indie," it stayed "indie" because there wasn't any goddamned mechanism for getting it to everyone. You couldn't put your Keyboard Cat film on NBC. You couldn't print your own records and mail them to everyone in the country. Mainstream pop culture back then truly was mainstream in that everybody got it, and nobody could get anything else. So if you liked or did anything outside of that, you really were a lonely weirdo that would never find anyone else that liked to play princesses and aliens.
And now you can make a billion dollars doing that. Go figure.
Every year since then, though, has seen the development of more and more niche-targeted entertainment, starting from cable and its 500 channels, to satellite radio, to, of course, the Internet. You can watch a news channel that shows only news that proves you are right; you can listen to a personalized radio station that only plays songs you like; and you can find all five other people in the world that enjoy Garfield/James A. Garfield slashfiction.
People have splintered off so much into their own personal choices that almost nobody's favorite entertainment list matches anyone else's. It can be argued there really isn't a mainstream anymore, now that all entertainment is a la carte. If someone is going to judge you for knowing the eye color of every incarnation of the Flash, you can point out their glass house of running a website to track Arnold Schwarzenegger's height.
Yes, it's a real thing. Why shouldn't it be?
It seems like almost everyone these days gets a little fannish over something most other people don't even know about, and wouldn't get, if that's what being a nerd is about. But if everybody is a nerd, can anybody still be a nerd?
Seems like an unnecessary article.
ReplyI think "nerd" generally means someone who is intelligent but who lacks any other notable positive attributes ie. is smart but out of shape and unattractive.
Replyi'm willing to bet a large percentage of those gamers aren't playing real time hogging games. it's like playing lawn bowls once a month and calling yourself a sportsman or an athlete.
ReplyIt only counts if you ditch RL to do a dungeon run with your guildies.
This reminds me of how pissed I would get when people around me would say "my life is music" in their Myspace profiles (yeah, it was that long ago). They would make fun of ME for going to see the Chicago Symphony orchestra, practicing the piano for several hours a day and teaching myself composition. It's kinda like how "nerds" are today. Claiming they're so in to something, but they still make fun of people for liking something different.
ReplyChicago Symphony orchestra? That's pretty amazing! How was it?
I know how that is. Some X-Men movies become a hit and everyone declares themselves "X-Men nerds" but they still think it's so weird that I read the comics.
BTW, the point you made about "mainstream no longer being truly mainstream" affirms why I get annoyed when rock journalists try to stereotype fans of particular bands such as Seether and Nirvana as "lonely, outcasted teenagers." That stereotype might've made more sense in the late-80's when grunge/alternative rock was a strictly underground affair and never got played on the radio or MTV, for the reasons you described. But, nowadays, it's borderline insulting since such bands are not only mainstream but typically get played alongside "hip" bands like The Killers and The Black Eyed Peas on rock radio. You really can't stereotype grunge or metal fans as "lonely, outcasted teenagers" the way you might've been able to 25 years ago, because these genres are now perfectly mainstream and socially acceptable (hell, Avenged Sevenfold had a #1 charting album last year for crying out loud!).
ReplyNerd? I'm a geek, thank you very much. Also, Mac is actual stolen software, unlike Windows.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesI thought they both were. Maybe I've gotten my facts wrong.
Look, everybody stole everything from everyone, that's just the way science works.
The concept for the Mac OS was stolen from Xerox's PARC graphical user interface and Windows was stolen from Mac OS, so that's the sequence right there
isn't OSX just ubuntu with more shiny?
and linux is just unix with more... something. i dunno.
More Torvalds. And Swedish comments in the source code.
"Look, everybody stole everything from everyone, that's just the way science works."
I see this attitude too much. It's wrong. Science doesn't work that way. Scientists do not steal from one another, they actually have a very genteel structure for copying from each other without screwing each other over, called "citations," which actually help the person they're copying from, and make him more likely to make or discover stuff that will be more likely to be copied.
Read more.
GREAT article Christina. Loved reading it.
ReplyOne thing I will add, though, is that for the last 20odd years mainstream media has been misinforming people about what a "cool" kid was.
It's NEVER been cool to be a loser. Geek, Nerd, Jock or otherwise.
Actually, nowadays I think there's a skew in the other direction of people not being able to express their opinions about X or Y -- it's called political correctness, which is why something like All in the Family, while controversial for its time, would NEVER be on the air today. While I don't agree at all with things like Archie Bunker-esque epithets, I think society has gone too far when giving someone a wedgie or making fun of him/her for being a nerd is considered a "hate crime." As the nerds or whatever say, O RLY?
ReplyPlus, now that the Internet is so much a part of society, anyone who disses the so-called nerds on their turf (aka the Internet) gets an "epic" hack attack by the Chanonymous basement dwellers and their Warcraft-obsessed butt buddies. Sorry, but I'll stick to my guns in ostracizing the geeks/nerds/dorks (I don't see a distinction) and telling them they p!$$ me off with their pathetic Trekkie fan-fapping.
hmmm....'ostracizing' is the key word here.
Have you been inside any kind of K-12 school recently? Because a LOT of my peers, my entire life, have found absolutely no value in intelligence. It frustrates me every day. Gah...
Reply"Hehe, I'm totally going to get a D in this class lol."
Huh. I've been kind of thrown into the nerdy/stoner category by most social cliques because my high school tended to sway towards the 'nerdy stuff is lame' sort of mind-set. It was f*****g aggravating that just because I like sci-fi and gaming (especially as a girl) everybody I knew would give me crap for being a nerd. Although, it did teach me to just not give a crap and enjoy what I want to enjoy.
ReplyThere are still some things in pop culture that have a small enough fan base that being devoted to them still may make you a nerd. For example, besides the movies, I don't really know a lot of people that are into Marvel/DC. Another thing that might still be relevant is being female. I know that the m:f ratio in the "nerd" kingdom is steadily evening out, but I personally usually find myself being the only female in a group who enjoys nerdy things like video games and all manner of sci-fi and superhero goodness. Lastly, I think that since the diffusion of media, people now need to be more invested and knee-deep in the subject matter than most to be considered a "nerd" (for example: someone who liked the star wars movies as opposed to someone who only like the original trilogy and reads the books and trolls wookiepedia). But then I guess we start creating arbitrary and asinine requirements and things spiral out of control...
ReplyNotice how she steers way clear of the geek vs. nerd debate...
ReplyThe WHAT? Of all the petty, contrived bullshit...
All of this stuff changed radically when I was in high school. I was the type of student who didn't really care about homework and skipped school a lot. (I also told my teachers to their face that I skipped. I just could't be bothered.) Oddly enough, people like me were NOT considered cool. It was the smart kids who participated in class and got good grades who were the cool ones. The bad ass kids who would have been the cool ones in the past were at the bottom of the social ladder with me. To this day, I never understood that. I feel cheated though. I deserved street cred for skipping as much as I did!
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesI feel ya' Bro :(
When exactly did you go to high school? Cause I'm in high school right now and it's pretty much like that too.
When I was in school (10 years ago) This was also the case, it was the 'socially involved' kids in the yearbook committee and student council who were the cool. Mind you - they were in control of the school media outlets, maybe it was all propaganda?
It's nice to peer inside any kind of K-12 student. Because a LOT of them, for their entire lives, have found absolutely no value in intelligence.
"Hehe, I'm totally going to get a D in this class lol."
Stay tuned for my book, "The Worthless Ones"
The way the video game community still latches onto the "we're nerds, because we play video games" notion is just ludicrous IMO.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesThat stereotype might've made more sense in the 80's and early 90's. But there were reasons for this:
1. Computers were just luxeries in those days. They weren't a manditory part of the American home like they are today, mostly because the internet hadn't really caught on yet. And they were generally made for business/government purposes rather than mainstream use. So using them for any other purpose implied that you probably had way too much free time on your hands.
2. Social gaming didn't really exist in those days (unless maybe you went to an arcade). Sure, games had two-player modes. But they were generally just novelties. So, usually if you played video games, it was because you were bored and lonely.
3. Video games were generally marketed towards children in those days. You never saw them advertised on adult or even teen oriented television blocks. And, if they ever appeared on the News, it was usually just because a concerned parent group wanted to complain about how kids were being "corrupted" by them. So naturally, teens and adults perceived them as "toys for kids," and so you were considered weird and/or underdeveloped if you were 16 years old and played them.
Today, this is no longer the case. You see video games being advertised non-stop on networks like CNN and MTV, they've become a pretty common social activity, and they grew up with the kids who were playing them 20 years ago (ie. they're now akin to big budget Hollywood blockbusters in terms of production values, storytelling, and "mature content"). The whole "video games are for nerds" stereotype was gradually dying during the 90's and, by the release of the X-Box, was pretty much dead.
Yet, more than ten years later, the video game community still likes to think they're "nerds/outcasts" for playing video games. It probably ties into #1 (the way nerdiness has become a point of pride in recent times). But it's all but a silly delusion in this day and age. Video games, whether some may like it or not, are now a significant part of American culture.
"a significant part of American culture"
Because they're products from Detroit, right? No, Japan!
This isn't even "revenge of the nerds" anymore. It's friggin' payback for Fat Man and Little Boy. Just like Al Qaeda used our 911 emergency system as a sick joke to pick 9/11 as the date of attack, now the Japanese, those brilliant engineers with no human soul, are using the code names of the dual H-bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to attack American culture. Who's up late at night playing Warcraft? A fat man, probably. And what's his real choice of romantic target? Someone who's just getting started on these things, or growing up with them as the case may be.
A little boy.
And that little boy doesn't know on his XBox Live that the fat man isn't another little boy. So when the little boy arranges to meet him after school to trade Pokemon cards or head to his house to play Nintendo...
He gets "pwned" by a mentally deranged sumo wrestler with Assmuncher disorder. Only in the real world, no matter how many magic mushrooms you eat or which way you point your light saber, there's no extra life.
Video didn't only kill the radio star. It bred a nation of pedophiles with easy access to "unlockable" vulnerable populations. I say we intern the interns at Sony and nuke the whole of Tokyo before it creates any more humanoid robots (who are very similar to personality-devoid Asspees) and makes things even worse.
@jpdoe321
That's the most beautiful insane conspiracy i have ever heard... give this man a CRAZY HOBO prize...
@jpdoe321
That's the most beautiful insane conspiracy i have ever heard... give this man a CRAZY HOBO prize...
The first four are still kind of sports... or at least close enough that if you skydive or poledance(!!!) you're probably less than a nerd than you think...
Reply"Skydiving, bodysurfing, pole dancing, belly dancing, geocaching, tabletop RPGs, photoshopping, drawing webcomics, criticizing webcomics, building fighting robots"
alt + twida to disable images with web developer
ReplyI never noticed the 'nerd crowd'-trend thing going on... I did not know that it actually happened. The only thing I was noticing nowadays are the hipsters--unless that's the exclusive 'nerd crowd' you speak of.
ReplyThen it'll all make sense to me.
The nerd crowd hates the hipster crowd.
Vehemently.
The problem is, hispters are sometimes nerds too, and they definitely love to call themselves nerds, so that's usually where #1 comes in.
I thought nerds hated crowds. In fact, I didn't think they liked being with people at all, except for humanlike hobbits and vulcans in their imaginary fan-fap gamer forums.
I think the writer is mistaking "nerd" for "aficionado" or "enthusiast." Careers have been made from specializations, like film, music, or restaurant critic. A nerd is someone who makes pointing out Easter eggs in the Underworld movies his whole life and nothing else. I would think people like Gordon Ramsay or Kurt Loder have better things to do in their spare time.
I think that many people equate the ability to understand pop culture references and memes with being nerdy and I think that it's way more than that. True nerds actually devote their intelligence in the focus and pursuit of something and they earn their knowledge and intelligence the hard way. They devote their time and brainpower to a pursuit with such strong passion and dedication. Their knowledge on specific stuff is not spoonfed, oversimplified nor watered down loosely coupled references or memes.
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesstfu butthurt nerd
I'm officially subscribing to your definition of the word.
So according to it I'm actually a nerd in....nope, still a slacker :P
It can't just be anything though. They have to be either useless or esoteric (like obsession with anime), and/or have some kind of mainstream mental annoyance (usually math). Also, it can't be too glamorous, it's hard for a fighter pilot or racecar driver to be considered a nerd, even if they study and practice it from sun up to sun down (e.g., Ayton Senna).
Also, its used a bit differently in lower education, where someone unattractive, overweight, or who is socially awkward will by default be generally classified as a nerd, unless they have other socially valued characteristics, such as being a good athlete, or especially funny. Being especially stupid (such as in remedial classes) can also prevent someone from being considered a nerd.
And on the other hand being a starter in varsity basketball or football, or especially good looking, will keep you from being considered a nerd, barring some significant effort on your part. The captain of my school's baseball team is now a PhD candidate in applied mathematics at one of the top 5 grad math programs in the nation, and the captain of the football team is at a top 10 vet school, yet no one ever considered them nerds.
Being a nerd is not just a intellectual passion for your favorite topics, it is also a lifestyle.
I feel as if I should point out that the caption under the Millenium Falcon is wrong. It's incorrect to refer to them as Legos. They are Lego brand bricks or simply Lego bricks.
ReplyHere comes the plural police. Go back to Denmark, asshole. They're Legos. Deal with it.
- Nerd now mainstream and accepted
Reply- someone who was called a nerd before still unpopular
- call being called a nerd meaningless
OH BOY I WONDER WHAT'S THE MOTIVATION FOR THIS ARTICLE
O.o... I'm confused. Were you trying to be sarcastic? Ironic? Or maybe just a douche?