Reproach of the Nerds

by: Wayne C. Spencer

Nerds are the worst, guys.

Why are they the worst? Well, I'll tell you. Nerds are snobs to other nerds and snobs to nerd hopefuls. They presume that the enjoyment of their niche interests somehow ordains them keepers of said interests' integrity, and this kind of makes them dicks sometimes.

I know all about it. I mean, who better to tell you about how awful nerds can be than a nerd himself.

Before we get going, let's identify who exactly we're talking about. For the most part, I'm going to be discussing your garden variety pop culture enthusiast. The types that reverently refer to themselves, their peer-group and anything to do with their areas of interest as "geek culture."

I do recognize that there are many types of nerd, especially these days. It has become not only accepted, but in a sense, expected that you self-identify with some group which shares some cultural sameness; so you have church-nerds, sports-nerds, and electronics nerds in addition to the more meat-and-potatoes nerds we might be used to (comics, role-playing, pog collecting etc...). While I recognize that these people exist, we're going to focus primarily on nerds who infest the hallways of various types of entertainments.

First-most, nerds are more precious about and also DEFINE themselves by the things they like, therefore they are prone to being petty and extremely defensive about the things they like. Take, for instance, the row over one attitudinous blue hedgehog. Sonic fans are in an interesting and sort of unique situation when it comes to judging and being judged. While lots of other nerds from other fandoms might glance down-the-nose-ward at rabid groups of Sonic enthusiasts for reasons like there not having been a really great Sonic game in more than a decade, and others because of an extremely vocal and sexually interested contingent, Sonic fans argue with each other over things like the hedgehog's body shape or color of his eyes.

The great dilemma of our times. 

Essentially the split in preference boils down to one group being more interested in the more cartoon-like and carefree, rounded smart-aleck of the original three Genesis games (and some Saturn games, which shan't be spoken of), and the other prefers the lankier, more devil-may-care "Sonic Adventures" styled Sonic, who's universe is steeped in continuity, pathos, comes with an ensemble cast of characters and has a predilection toward somewhat sprawling storylines.

This conflict is one that can be summed up by one question: Green eyes Sonic, or black eyes Sonic? A burning question to which the answer is surely "Who gives a shit."

To be perfectly fair, it is a question which you could likely answer for yourself with some thought. I myself prefer fat cartoon Sonic to some degree, but then again, I also don't care. My feeling is that the question of which cartoon character better embodies the eternal metaphysical ideal that Sonic-ness represents is probably not a pressing question, demanding of resolution. Sure, it may be fun to debate such things in certain circles of people, but let's not lose our heads here. We all like dumb stuff. The crown of slightly superior dumb stuff is probably not worth starting wimpy internet slap-fights over. 

Now, why's this happen in the first place? Tribes. 

We all break down into tribes kind of naturally. The Internet has facilitated this unprecedented tribe-ening, where geography (and largely demographics) don't matter anymore, so what you're left with is this enormous group of people who identify themselves by their ideas and interests. Not only that, but this enormous group like automatically splinters into sub-groups centered around even more specific areas of interest. We all do it, and to varying degrees. I mean, who among you reading this has not sneered at a "Brony", or dismissively huffed over the Twilight books, or their fans? 

This is exactly the kind of thing we need to get a handle on.

The point is, we need to make a real effort to not be dicks about it. 

Case in point. What about the people who don't wear the stripes of any particular nerd pedigree? What about the ever growing torrent of "normies" who traffic more and more in nerd culture, because nerd culture is "pop" culture now?

Short answer is nerds are kind of unfair to them.

There was a time when, if you were really interested in something, if you wanted to know everything about it, you had to get really good at finding information. You had to get good at finding information, and even once you'd found it, you had to be pretty good at extracting a lot from a little. If you wanted to hang out with like-minded people, you had to learn how to suss them out. This, I think, is really where nerd culture has its roots. At some point, being a nerd was a thing you studied at. There was this feeling that by attaining certain knowledge, that something had been earned.

I don't think it's a secret to anyone reading this that this feeling has given rise to a certain resentment when dealing with those newcomers to our enthusiasm. There are new kids in the house and sometimes we're jerks to them because we're afraid they will take our toys if we aren't careful. There is actually a lot to say about this, but in the interest of space, I'm going to focus on one key area:

Girls.

There has been a great deal of noise made, not to mention lots of cute little memes and tumblrs and no end to posts on reddit about girl nerds. Specifically the idea that a girl, in asserting that she is a nerd, or a geek of some stripe, is only faking that interest to get attention from boys. The best kind of attention, to be sure, but it is a specious aspersion to say the least. There was also a pretty well known comics guy who lost his damned mind over how cosplay girls aren't authentic enough nerds and, again, adopt this hyper-sexualized nerd-flavored facade for... attention, right. Look, there have been plenty of arguments about this already, so I'm not going to beat this to death.

Here's the thing. You don't get to pick who's a "real" nerd or not. Are there fake nerds? Sure. Are some of them women? I have met several. The larger issue is that there are plenty of women who are as dedicated, or more dedicated than any three Lewis Skolnicks you might know. At a glance, it is difficult to impossible to distinguish these people from phony girl nerds, who are apparently a scourge on the order of a Tyranid Swarmlord. And since you can't distinguish one from the other, the only reasonable thing to do is fall back on that old chestnut -- DON'T BE A DICK!

As with every situation, it's the Tyranids who are the real bad guys here. 

Besides, at least where cosplay is concerned, we're talking about a craft that takes extensive study to master, the particulars of which are relatively little known and who's immediate appeal may be lost on the casual observer. It is clear that these people are clearly tremendous nerds.

Look, there is very little utility in being this eternal judge who gets to determine the authenticity of potential fans, forever unseen until someone dares to enjoy something the wrong way. Liking something is not the same thing as owning it. Even if you own some kind of entertainment,  you STILL don't get to decide how people will experience or interpret it.

Yes. The Michael Bay Transformers movies are kind of incomprehensible to me, yes, I think the animated movie from the 80's is deeper and more satisfying, but at the end of the day, they're both elaborate commercials about talking robots who want to punch each other.

Guys. This is still dumb.

And whether you like Transformers, or anything else, remember: The only reason you are as well versed as you are in the lore and as close as you are to the community, is because sometime in the past, when you were still new, someone was cool enough to just let you like it.

In recent years there have been shows like "Beauty and the Geek", "The Tester" and "Big Bang Theory," which market the idea and "chic" of geek/nerd culture to the masses (normies). The shows get a lot of things wrong, and more often than not, their depiction of nerd-dom is shallow and less than flattering, so I don't think its unreasonable that nerds bristle quite often about them. Personally, I think it is a side-effect of corporate media trying to grapple with a concept it does not understand and is not properly equipped to convey. That concept being one of "entertainment that becomes more than entertainment," because it means something personal to the person experiencing it.

The special thing about any of this is that it can be bigger than its purpose, given the right mind to incubate it. So listen, let people like things.

Don't be a dick.

Tell 'em, Ogre. 

NEXT: M. Glenn Gore returns from the weird and haunted shores at World's End to explain why Hollywood can't make a good videogame-based film to save their miserable lives.