A Discussion on ‘Nerd Culture’
Being Weird is quirky now
Don’t believe me? Many of the things that were originally considered geeky and bully worthy have become something cool - Dungeons and Dragons, Star Wars, Star Trek, almost anything that has a cult following has become the mainstream. In fact, its no longer cool to bully the kids that have deep interests in topics; society has advanced, in that regard, to the point where if you have a deep interest in something, people won’t make fun of you for it and instead think that you yourself are interesting and fun to talk to. This, obviously, comes with an acception; if you have some difficulty talking.
I think everyone has that awkward phase growing up where you’re never quite sure what to say or how to say anything. I remember a good part of my elementary school years were spent continually wondering “why am I always entering the conversation at the wrong time?” and “I never say anything that goes with what the topic of this conversation was supposed to be - everyone always looks at me like I said the wrong thing”. That’s just a part of growing up; we’ve all socialized ourselves, in a certain way, to discuss things and impart our own personal knowledge in certain ways. This obviously varies from person to person - some people are more listeners, some people are more observers. But at the end of the day, I think that what’s interesting is how we all reach the “societal norm” at a certain stage. Similar to my first post about tomatoes and the different forms of intelligence, I think that the ability to be in tune with what is “right” to say at the right time is as much practice as it is innate intellect - certain people just find it easier than others.
This brings me to what exactly it means to be a nerd, or to be socially awkward, in modern day. I think the main differentiating factor is that many of the people who are “nerdy” now are people who struggled to overcome that initial charisma gap - that isn’t to say that they aren’t charismatic, or that they aren’t extraverted, but rather that they understand implicitly what it means to be the ‘weirdo’, to have said the wrong things in conversations. I think that many people online now, especially in communities like “Epic the Musical”, “Five Nights at Freddy’s”, and other ‘cult followings’ tend to be united under the idea that at one point or another, they had something about them that wasn’t quite right, and so now they chose to find other people who are similar.
Sometimes this results in a “we’re better than them” mindset - in fact, so many books made being the “weirdo” cool, and being “popular” bad, that often times groups of “social outcasts” will be extremely pretentious (I’m looking back at my highschool friendgroup - myself included - for this specific point). Often times, there is little “oppression” when it comes to being a bit socially awkward, since so much of society now is aime at making being awkward acceptable. So I think that the definitions and guidepoles for nerd have been changed completely, and the question is less so “are you at the bottom of the social hierarchy” and moreso “where are you in all of the many pools that society has made” - which is a good thing.