What/who brought you into "nerdism?"

[DrgoFx]

This might be a strange question, but it's fairly simple. We're all nerds/dorks/geeks of some form, so the question is what brought you to this interest ground? How were you brought here? Was it through a friend, on your own, what was your first interest and so on.

Mine's an odd one when you're given the specifics. My mother, who is currently in her early 50's, showed me several "nerdy" things. She showed me Star Wars and Star Trek, she watched Power Rangers with me growing up, she introduced me to G1 Transformers, she introduced me to comics and sparked my love for the Bat Family, and she's the only person in my family that laughs when I make a reference to MMOs or Games of some sort. So yeah, her and I have done a lot together.

I'm interested in everyone else in how they found their interests.

 

[JayElleBee]

My uncle, probably. I have a photo somewhere of me when I was about three or four years old, playing something on what I think might have been a SNES. Most of my childhood memories revolve around hanging around with him and begging to play on his computer or his video game consoles.

 

[Aris Khandr]

My father couldn't stand to stay in one place for too long. So we took a lot of road trips or flights with him for vacations. It was understood that part of "getting ready" for any trip involved a trip to the mall to load up on books. So I was an avid reader from as early on as I can remember. I got my first comic book on one of those pre-trip book runs. I've been on and off with them ever since.

My mother got an NES for my brother and me to share for Christmas one year. I think that was the year that dad finally left for good.

My first computer of my own was the summer that dad came back into our lives. This is back when you couldn't go to a store and buy them, you ordered them and they arrived like a month later in a bunch of cow-print boxes. I still remember coming home from going out miniature golfing to find a pile of boxes all-but completely blocking the door to his condo. The computer itself had a box (this is also before we started standing them up), the monitor had a box, the keyboard and mouse were in one box, the speakers were in four (it occurs to me I'm still not entirely sure what a "subwoofer" did for my computer), and another box for my joystick.

My first two games were SimCity and Flight Simulator 3.0.

Okay, I have to go aside and tell this story. In that version of Flight Simulator, the graphics were... not good. A plane was more like a cone on a tube with fins. Buildings were grey boxes. So I started up the game, and for some reason there were a couple of really tall buildings right in front of the runway. I must have run into them a hundred times trying to fly through the center. I was like 11, I had no clue what a Flight Simulator was really about, I thought it was a challenge or something. Fast forward many, many years, as I was talking to some friends about old games we played and remembering all the fun I had with that first computer. And I remembered that the game said I was starting at JFK Airport in New York. And realized that those grey boxes I'd rammed into a hundred times were supposed to be the World Trade Center. That kind of blew my mind for a while.

 

[Kae]

I don't know, I never liked or was good at talking to people and I grew up on Star Wars, Arcade games and super hero cartoons, so that must have been it.

 

[Mirroga]

It all started being exposed and getting addicted to GameBoy games as well as Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering card games. It evolved into PC and console gaming and the rest is history.

 

[Mr. GameBrain]

Me?

I was just born for it! XD

Seriously though, I must have played my first game when I was about 5 or so, and it stuck with me.
And it just evolved from there.

No-one "got me into" anything barring music. (My best friend had a huge influence. I went from being a little cheesy pop loving quior boy, to loving metal, hardrock, orchestral, and pretty much anything video game related!), I just sought this sort of stuff out on my own, and I still do.

Ah, the good old days, where little me would read the gaming mags, play the demo discs, read the strategy guides, and study all the moves to street fighter.
(You would not believe how many times I played the demo to Parappa the Rapper. I have it ingrained in my memory permanently. Never did get the full game till much later, (it was a total ***** to get a copy of that game in my area)

DAMMIT PEOPLE! Stop getting me all nostalgic! ;p

 

[exessmirror]

my brother when he was still in highschool

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

As a kid I was obsessed with becoming someone that could better the human race. In my childhood words "I do not want to become a leech on the world by being an actor, football player, or a stock broker."

I was a very arrogant judgmental asshole. Still, because I constant worried about "being worthless" I dove head first into nerdism. It was difficult considering my parents were the normal party going kids. So I generally geeked out alone.

Now I'm a Technical Director at a news station and am slowly working towards working in episodic television in California. If my childhood self saw me right now he'd kick my ass.

 

[Flamezdudes]

No one really... I just sort of wandered into it. I don't really remember how I got into a lot of the things I like initially, I just randomly bought nerdy things and happened to watch nerdy things of my own accord. When I got into secondary school however and joined my group of friends (most of whom are still my best friends), they helped to enhance my interests, since then I could do nerdy things and dicuss these things with like-minded people. For example, they even got me into watching anime and reading manga among other things.

But I mostly just like what I like. Although I did find a lot of cool stuff through topics on this website also. I guess you could also say some of my family members helped to get me into a variety of different games aswell.

 

[gazumped]

I guess my uncle's mostly to blame, he does comics and was really into Marvel, gave me a load of his old comics, got really into Fantastic Four (because that took up most of his collection). And he was also really into Doctor Who, so I sort of wanted to live up to that too.

But then I got into computer games just because my step-granddad showed me the Discworld point 'n' click adventure game when I was about 5 (and this is how I got into Terry Pratchett as well). And then I guess just everything I liked from then on was nerdy.

I tried to avoid the temptation of manga/anime when it was getting popular when I was about 10, but it was hard to avoid Dragonball Z on Cartoon Network and I thought it was pretty awesome. And I didn't want to like Pokemon but then my cousin had Yellow and I'd play it at his house when I was bored there and it was amazing, so I got that.

So I guess all little things got me into various separate parts of it...

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I was born this way...

My parents have some geeky habits, but I'm by far the geekiest in my family.
If I had to point where exactly it started, it would probably be when I stole my brothers SNES and started playing Final Fantasy, although I couldn't actually read at the time.

I've never been "normal" for my gender, while other little girls were playing with barbies, I was asking for Jurassic Park action figures. The barbies were victims of the dinosaurs.

 

[felbot]

my big brothers nintendo 64, and an old pc from 2000, which i was using in up until 2010.

i was hooked pretty much from the start when i first played on that little square, and i actually dreamed about being a hard core gamer and being the best gamer in the world.

then i realized that the title of hardcore gamer really wasn't anything worthwhile and i never got dedicated to a game long enough to actually be a professional, would probably hate it after a while anyway.

 

[Froggy Slayer]

I was always a bit of a strange kid. I think that I really started identifying as a nerd, however, when I picked up a copy of Watchmen. Damn if that ain't a great book. I think my experiences playing Mass Effect 1 and getting really invested also helped.

 

[Mr Fixit]

My brother bought an NES back in the day, I think I was five years old & thats when the awesome madness began. We used to play games all weekend, such an awesome time & with Transformers & Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on tv everyday it was a great time to be introduced to all things nerdy. Then I moved way out into the boondocks, straight up BFE, & the Scifi Channel(back when it was Scifi) became my friend. I watched all the old scifi shows from Star Trek to Lost in Space & many others. Yeah being out in the middle of nowhere with no friends around it makes you start looking for other things to entertain yourself.

 

[DanielBrown]

I'm not a nerd. I just like videogames! ;<
It was my mother who brought me into it though. Played some SNES/NES at my friends houses when I was around five years old. She bought me a Playstation when I was six or seven and from there it went downhill.

 

[Benni88]

I have two older brothers. It was pre-determined after they chose.

 

[Nantucket_v1legacy]

I only realized I was a nerd when I went to High School and realized I was into different things from everybody else.

My dad liked Star Trek - I did.
My dad liked BSG - I did.
Doctor Who is snazzy - I liked it.
Retro TV Shows - FUCK YES!

Once I got into school all this came crashing down on me... I was a nerd. So I went to the internet and met other nerds. Yay!

 

[SlaveNumber23]

When I was maybe 6 or 7 I played Super Smash Bros on my best friends N64, soon after I got one myself and it blossomed into a wonderful nerdy lifestyle.

 

[Quiet Stranger]

Well I read a NES when I was too young to even remember it (there's pictures) and every weekend my father use to take my brother and I to two local comic book shops, so I guess it started back then when I was young.