Realitycrash said:
WarDialler said:
Realitycrash said:
WarDialler said:
Becuase like us true Nerds, you dispise the Hipsters who think they're nerds becuase they bought a mac or an iPod and say lol and post on facebook. My advice is to take over the world and make it a crime punishable by catapult.
What makes you a "true nerd", how are you "truer" than anyone else who thinks they are a nerd?
This is really what annoys me, that some people think they have "mandate" on what is "nerd" and what is not, just because this is the internet.
I'm gonna go as far as to say that if you claim to be a "true" nerd and mean it with pride, you aren't one any more. "Nerd" used to be some derogatory, something mean. Something the big guys called the small guy who liked building model rockets or watch Star Trek. These small guys never saw themselves as "nerds", just normal guys with a hobby.
I think the disassembled Playmates TNG Phaser toy in my desk drawer, the dog-eared windows 95 manual and big bag of Polyhedral dice on my desk qualify me as a Nerd as it happens.
Nerds took back the word to make it empowering rather than derogatory, synonymous with Geek I feel.
And yes, I feel I do have a mandate on the word, and if you don't like it...tough.
"Nerds" didn't "take back" the word to make it empowering, it's just that what was classically considered "nerdy" is now considered "cult" and "nostalgia", and we aren't in Highschool anymore. By saying "this and this is Nerd, the rest is not", you are just as bad as the assholes in school going "this and this is cool, the rest is not".
Frankly, you're "some are true, some are not"-attitude is downright rude, and the fact that you think you got mandate to dictate just makes me wonder if you've ever truely felt like a nerd yourself.
I have to tell you, something /changed/ about this in the mid 90's or early 2000's, and you seem to have missed it. Nerds (and geeks) really did claim the title as their own; this isn't some highschool thing, I remember reading articles in Knights of the Dinner Table (a combination comic book and gaming magazine, which was started back when "gaming" meant tabletop gaming) talking about the distinction between nerds, geeks, and dorks, and how the first two were no longer negative terms (and remember, the authors of these articles were most likely in their 30's at this point. This wasn't the scatterbrained musings of a teenager.)
Anyway, "geek" in modern parlance is someone who, irrespective of any intelligence or social awkwardness, has a deep interest in some subject or another, nearing the point of obsession, and a nearly complete knowledge of it. Those guys who obsess over their fantasy football league are every bit as "geeky" as the people who could re-write the script to the original
Star Wars trilogy from memory. A "nerd" is someone who takes part in traditionally geeky or nerdy activities -- think gaming, watching sci fi, fantasy, and horror, reading comic books, stuff like that. If you have to ask whether it's nerdy or not, you're either not from the culture you're asking in relation to, or it's not nerdy. A "dork" is a socially awkward person. "Dork" does not imply intelligence, and in fact, in some ways implies a lack of it. Dorks are often seen in the company of nerds and geeks -- they may even be nerds or geeks themselves -- but unlike geek and nerd, it's not a positive term. Geeks and nerds tend to be accepting of dorks, since even the ones who aren't dorks anymore likely were at some point while growing up. Especially for those of us who grew up before "geek" became something cool; when I was a kid, we were still in the process of reclaiming the term, and the cool kids wouldn't be caught dead identifying by it.
OT: It only bugs me because it shows that there's still a certain stigma attached to the word. I mean, you don't hear athletic geeks going "oh, man, I'm such a jock, LOL" when they display their knowledge of sports; why do non-geeky people who have a slight interest in something geeky say "I'm such a geek, LOL" when they do something traditionally nerdy? It's because the stigma is still there, and they're trying to pass off their (usually mild) interest as some funny little quirk. It's become cool in a way, but only in a self aware "hey, look at me, I'm being weird, isn't that funny?" way. These people don't really care about nerd culture, and once the next fad comes, they'll start up with some other subculture.