So You Think You're a Nerd

Nerds.

At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, you kids these days with your fandoms need to get off my lawn.  Metaphorically speaking.

The popularity of "nerd culture" is about to reach critical mass and, soon enough, it will no longer be cool to be a nerd.  But here's the thing... it never was.  Not really.  What became cool was the interests of nerds, not the nerds themselves.  The problem is that the concept of what constitutes a nerd has become heavily diluted by what constitutes a fan.  Let me explain.

Fans of The Avengers went to see the movie, probably at midnight, probably more than once.  Avengers nerds went to see the movie, consistently read the comic books, and can, on command, construct a point-by-point canonical argument explaining why The Avengers would win in a fight with The Justice League.

Fans of Star Wars have seen the movies, know the characters, and can make a Han Shot First joke.  Star Wars nerds have seen the movies so many times that they're practically committed to memory, know the extended universe from books, TV shows, and video games, possess bootlegged copies of The Holiday Special (which may or may not be autographed by Peter Mayhew), and can make a Jeff Vader joke.

Fans of The X-Men are familiar with the film franchise and discuss at length whether they'd rather sleep with Michael Fassbender or Sir Ian McKellen.  X-Men nerds will discuss at length why Dazzler is the best mutant ever and can tell you the address of the X-Mansion.  It's 1407 Graymalkin Lane, by the way, a bit of information I only know because I'm friends with an X-Men nerd.

Fans of Batman can tell you all about Bruce Wayne.  Batman nerds can tell you all about Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, and Damien Wayne, and saw the TAG plot twist in The Dark Knight Rises coming a mile away.

Fans go to Comic Con.  Nerds spend months on costumes, wait all night in lines, and leave Comic Con already making plans for next year.

I could go on and on with examples of this, but the point I'm making is that most people are fans.  And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.  I encourage people to be fans of these things.  I'm thrilled that there are more people taking an interest.  However, don't go see the highest grossing film of the Summer, put on some thick glasses, and call yourself a nerd.  Not only are you a pretender to the nerd throne, but you probably don't want the burden that comes with it.

There's a reason nerds were never cool.  Because nerds are fucking weird.  Nerds are pathologically obsessive.  When we become fans of something, we can't just stop at the basic information.  We learn everything there is to know about that particular thing.  We spend hours on Wikipedia, clicking through link after link, absorbing as much knowledge and trivia as we can.  We watch and re-watch movies and TV shows in order to know them better than anyone else.  Not because we want to, but because we HAVE to.  You see, we are unbelievably competitive.  We want to win at information because, for the most part, we sure as hell can't win at anything else.  We're also incredibly possessive, jealously guarding our chosen interests and, when attacked, defend those interests.  It's like when a person insults your family... you recognize the flaws and you can point out your family's shortcomings all you want, but when someone else does it...

The unfortunate truth about nerds is that we are addicts.  Were our attentions not devoted to our comic books, films, TV shows, music, sports (yes, sports nerds exist), video games, science, math, and/or other obsessions, we would be highly susceptible to alcoholism, drug addiction, or behavior bordering on stalking that results in restraining orders. 

Nerds also tend to struggle with depression and use their chosen addiction as a means of escape from those feelings of hopelessness and loneliness.  Acquisition of knowledge about Batman might seem a rather useless endeavor to most people, but to someone out there, it was a reason to continue living.  For more people than you'd think, amassing a collection of Doctor Who action figures was a way for them to feel connected to the world instead of crushingly alone.

This may have saved someone's life.

When fans call themselves nerds, it ignores the hardships nerds have gone through and the efforts nerds have made in the name of the things they love.  When a fan dons a geeky t-shirt they picked up at Target, a nerd carefully frames a 30-year-old shirt that has been worshiped like a religious relic.  I'm not saying it's healthy or even admirable.  Nerds are a strange, obsessive, socially awkward, overly sensitive bunch.  It's not easy to be a nerd, to have this unyielding, insatiable need to know all there is to know, see all there is to see, and do all there is to do related to their interests.  But it's who we are and it's all we have and we take it REALLY GODDAMN PERSONALLY when people want to take a shortcut and claim to be one of us.

Casual fans invade our space and we fall back.  They commandeer entire genres and we fall back.  Not again.  The line must be drawn here.  This far, no further.

So, to you hipsters, posers, and fakers, I say this: If you REALLY want to be a nerd, you had better fucking earn the title.

Eternal Distraction of the Enamored Mind

My brain wanders off sometimes.  The last two days, it has done more than wander off... it has bolted away the second my back is turned, like me as a small child.  I'll sit down to read a book and find myself ten minutes later, just staring at the bottom of the page, having discovered that my brain has slipped out the back door when I wasn't looking.  To what dangerous locales does it run on its little adventures?  These last 48 hours, it has gone venturing towards two abandoned neighborhoods: Love and Comic Con.  One of these is significantly easier to address than the other, so let's begin with Comic Con.

Is there a Doctor in the house?
I sincerely apologize for the above joke. The writer has been sacked.

I'm back there, somewhere, dressed as the Ninth Doctor.  Also, somewhere, are my two friends, dressed as Four and Five.  However, the group that separates us from each other is comprised entirely of strangers.  Strangers.  But there we are, arms around each other, posing for hundreds of photos over the course of about an hour, acting like the oldest of friends.  Why?  Because a TV show means enough to all of us that we'd spend time and money to create costumes and trek out to San Diego for a weekend, just to hang with people as crazy as us.  I did a whole post on this a few months back and I don't mean to harp on the same thing over and over, but that is my favorite picture from the whole weekend.  (My second favorite can be found here which is a link to CNN's GeekOut blog, wherein there is a picture of me and Amanda winning the Adam Incognito contest.)  The reason a picture of me with a bunch of strangers wins over me with a Ring Wraith Mythbuster is very simple: meeting real people is more important than meeting celebrities.  Yes, it's extremely cool to have those few moments with a famous person whose work I admire and respect, or at least enjoy.  But then it's over and that person goes on to the next fan in line.  We aren't friends and we aren't going to go out for drinks later.  Meeting me is just part of their job description.  However, when you meet regular people at Comic Con, it's different.  You might go to the bar down the street or exchange phone numbers or become friends on Facebook.  People who go to Comic Con can and will form lasting connections to strangers, all because we have these random things in common.  Comic books, TV shows, anime, D&D, whatever.  Things that seem silly to the rest of the world, but mean the world to us.  Comic Con brings us all to one place, says, "Hey, you know that thing you love?  Well, here's 50,000 other people who feel the same way." and then gives us all a big group hug.  It's a really beautiful thing and I hope I always feel the same way about it.

So that's the easy one.  That leaves my other current distraction: the tedious issue of feelings.  As much as I'd like to be an emotionless automaton, I have found myself the most unfortunate owner of romantic feelings lately.  Since this situation never works out in my favor, I am attempting to handle it with an appropriate level of caution.

For use in case of love or nuclear fallout

My ego got a little bit ahead of my weight loss and started throwing feelings at people who, for the time being, remain well out of my league.  And now, despite the fact that my brain recognizes that these feelings are entirely irrational, my heart is stubbornly set on this person with whom I have exactly no chance.  I'm not writing all this to elicit a chorus of compliments or because I'm feeling down about myself.  For the record, I think I'm a pretty swell dame with a few physically attractive traits.  But I do recognize when someone can do better than me.  And this is one of those cases.  But feelings won't go away just because I know that they're illogical.

Don't even pretend you didn't think of him when you read the word "illogical."

I keep thinking of Schrodinger's Cat.  The cat can be thought of as simultaneously alive and dead, until you open the box and find out for sure.  Statistically, there's a 50/50 shot of either outcome.  But, from a rational standpoint, let's face it... you put a cat in a box with some radioactive poisoning contraption, you've more than likely got yourself a dead cat.  Also, the neighbors have called the cops because torturing animals and possession of radioactive materials are both activities generally frowned upon in polite society.

Criminal mischief charges notwithstanding, I trust you grasp the metaphor I'm going for here.  I'm pretty certain I know and my sane, rational side is content to leave the box closed.  Unfortunately, the part of me currently addled with feelings keeps drowning out its rational counterpart with Brad Pitt from Seven.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX?

I guess I'm hoping that writing this here will get it out of my head, because it's been bouncing around in there like a hyperactive kid in one of those inflatable castles and it's incredibly distracting.  But I know, when it comes to situations such as this, love and logic will always be fighting with each other.  I just wish one of them would shut the hell up and let me read sometimes.