At 23 I am technically a real adult and should, by virtue of that fact, have grown out of the adolescent tendency to need to belong to a clique or group. However, at 23, I also find myself undeniably tethered to a strange identity that has been twisted into a baffling paradox. Yes, ladies and germs, I am a nerd. And while my ten-year-old self winces and cowers in the corner of the playground, at 23 I let my book-reading, video-game-playing, art-museum-loving, glasses-wearing, fangirl-for-life flag wave proudly in the wind.
I don’t know when or how or why but in recent years it’s become cool to be a nerd. Perhaps it’s the Internet turning us all into tech-zombies who never leave our houses, or maybe it’s Hollywood’s exploitation of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, or perhaps it’s all just part of a good old-fashioned American CIA conspiracy. At this point all I know is that there is a giant community of losers, freaks, weirdos, geeks, and nerds that has found a way to break into the mainstream. (And we don’t even need to wait for ComicCon to roll around in order for us to connect and plan world dominance! Thanks, Tumblr!)
But while it’s all well and good to have a support community that understands the pain and trauma behind “Not Penny’s Boat,” or the excited frustration of having to watch The Hobbit in three parts, I can’t help but feel a bit cheated. Where were you guys when I was getting picked on at recess? Was I the only one not invited into the AOL chat (throwback!) regarding making glasses look cool? I bet I’m not alone in asking myself these questions. Truly, the nerds and dorks of the late ’90s and early 2000s must have been closeted until Netflix and Reddit brought us together, into the light. However, what’s more likely to have happened is that somewhere along the line our obsessions and access to those obsessions snowballed and picked up the non-nerds along the way.
Now we’re all nerds! The stark lines between cool and uncool have blurred. Everyone belongs to a fandom — be it Breaking Bad or The Golden Girls! Suspenders and glasses are now symbols of power and cultural relevance. Book titles have become pick-up lines and those cheesy chemistry jokes are so redundant one doesn’t even have to know what the periodic table of elements is in order to comprehend them. So I guess that makes the early 2010s a dream come true! We nerds have successfully taken over and become an unstoppable army. Oh, “Revenge, should have no bounds!” [Hamlet 4.7.143] (Shout outs to my fellow English majors!)
But before you bust out those celebratory Loki costumes and cackle like the Death Eaters you swore to never become, let me break some strange news to you. Nerdery and geekdom might actually be slowly becoming obsolete. You see, the whole premise of being a nerd hinges on the reality that one has to be a minority. I grew up getting made fun of for loving the things I love. Now, as an adult, I am often being out-nerded by crowds of devotees. And while there’s nothing wrong with existing in a community of likeminded people, it’s also dishonest to function under a title that symbolizes the opposite of that lifestyle. There is a strange sadness to this revenge thing, isn’t there? Somehow… we have become the majority, the cool kids that understand all of the pop-culture references. The ones who decide who does and does not get to participate. We’re now functioning in a post-nerd era… as meta-nerds!
In the end, the title of nerd or geek doesn’t make much of a difference. It really only represents an interesting (and frankly, awesome) shift in the cultural conscious. And all semantics aside, I have to admit that it’s nice to be a majority — especially one that appreciates the nuances of good grammar and traditional vampire tropes. I often find myself gloriously basking in other people’s arguments over who played the best doctor. It’s a welcome change from eating lunch alone during fifth period. So cheers to you, my fellow nerds! May we be supplied with endless .gifs from our favorite movies. May our secret handshakes be written into the history books. And may we all live long and prosper. Together. Like the giant freaky family we always hoped for.
Flickr photo (cc) by mccun934
