Re: Is the modern nerd different from the nerds of old?
Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2012 3:20 am
Seems like there are a few different schools for defining the "nerd quotient": one by the genre of a particular interest, one by the social standing of an interest, and one by the fervor exhibited for an interest. These often used to be bundled under the same heading, but aren't as much anymore.
I equate "nerd" with specific interests. It keeps the definition relatively stable and based in content rather than form, which is how I like it. It's practical. It's way less complicated to know that if someone says they're a nerd, they mean that they genuinely enjoy one or many items on a standardized roster of stuff. If it instead meant they enjoyed one or many items on a list of things that happened to be considered by the masses as nerdy today, as opposed to yesterday or next week, I think my head would explode. Unless they invent a Nerd Stock Market, I'd have to spend my time following trends and reclassifying hobbies as they fell in and out of style, or reclassifying people as they gained or lost obsessive drives for their pursuits. Not only is that a lot of work to keep up with, it's a little silly.
If we both like a certain hobby, we're in the same club and we have something to connect over. If you also happen annoy me, or I suddenly become less passionate about the hobby than you are, or you have a million friends and I'm upset that I don't, that doesn't make us any less connected as club members. It just means you're annoying, or I don't want to talk about the hobby quite as much as you do anymore, or you're Joe Cool and I'm immature about it, and such details might affect how much we hang out. These are all reasons independent of club membership, though.
If I cared about bragging rights, obscurity points, or relative popularity, then I'd be much more concerned about retaining the nerd = the underdog/under-appreciated/tragically misunderstood/too-unique-for-you definition. But I think the term has been reclaimed in the present. It's broken free. Nerd obviously carried a stigma before -- a lot of us lived it -- and I'm not saying we should wave that off. I just don't think the fact that cool people can be into "nerd" things nowadays detracts from the ballsiness of having pursued those interests back when they made you a target, or requires these hobbies to adopt different genre labels in response.
I equate "nerd" with specific interests. It keeps the definition relatively stable and based in content rather than form, which is how I like it. It's practical. It's way less complicated to know that if someone says they're a nerd, they mean that they genuinely enjoy one or many items on a standardized roster of stuff. If it instead meant they enjoyed one or many items on a list of things that happened to be considered by the masses as nerdy today, as opposed to yesterday or next week, I think my head would explode. Unless they invent a Nerd Stock Market, I'd have to spend my time following trends and reclassifying hobbies as they fell in and out of style, or reclassifying people as they gained or lost obsessive drives for their pursuits. Not only is that a lot of work to keep up with, it's a little silly.
If we both like a certain hobby, we're in the same club and we have something to connect over. If you also happen annoy me, or I suddenly become less passionate about the hobby than you are, or you have a million friends and I'm upset that I don't, that doesn't make us any less connected as club members. It just means you're annoying, or I don't want to talk about the hobby quite as much as you do anymore, or you're Joe Cool and I'm immature about it, and such details might affect how much we hang out. These are all reasons independent of club membership, though.
If I cared about bragging rights, obscurity points, or relative popularity, then I'd be much more concerned about retaining the nerd = the underdog/under-appreciated/tragically misunderstood/too-unique-for-you definition. But I think the term has been reclaimed in the present. It's broken free. Nerd obviously carried a stigma before -- a lot of us lived it -- and I'm not saying we should wave that off. I just don't think the fact that cool people can be into "nerd" things nowadays detracts from the ballsiness of having pursued those interests back when they made you a target, or requires these hobbies to adopt different genre labels in response.