Being a nerd is not cool. It means dealing with pimples till you’re 40, being passionate about things that make others think you’re weird, dealing with rejection from the opposite sex all while being absolutely terrified of the world for the aforementioned reasons. The myth is that being a nerd is cool, when really it’s the exact opposite.
If people do think being a nerd is cool it’s because it’s all of a sudden become popular to like nerdy things, which is true. Liking Batman and Marvel is undoubtedly becoming cool. But attending a Sunday night screener of “Guardians of the Galaxy” and wearing Scorsese glasses is not being a nerd. It’s mimicking a style you saw in Instagram or Tumblr and went “hey, maybe that will make me seem complex.”
The reality is that you’re wrong. A real nerd is someone who has spent a lifetime fueled by rejection from their peers, having to hide themselves and their interests from the world out of fear they will be mocked and targeted by the masses. Because being a nerd means being truly passionate for something to the point where it may weird people out, and even at this time of inner exploration for the college crowd to be weird is to be outcast.
So as a result nerds have retreated into the shadows where they live under the staircases of schools playing Magic: The Gathering and discussing Doctor Who fan-fiction, hoping to catch a whiff of the cool kids like mutants watching “Land-Walkers” from the sewers.
They hide in the dark of their rooms binge-watching “Harry Potter” not because they’ve turned it into a drinking game with their many friends, but because they want to notice every Easter egg while actively avoiding the real world they don’t feel like they belong in.
But that’s the beauty of being a true nerd. Knowing you have a lifestyle completely separate from the mass populace of rave-goers and frat boys is precisely what makes nerds special when everyone else is lame. Nerds have a passion for something when most people around you don’t even know why they’re in college in the first place. Nerds are special, and the unspecials want to take that from them.
That’s why it has become “cool” to be a nerd. People who say they’re nerds get to walk around and act as though the things they just “like” make them special and set them apart from their party-going friends. But if someone asks you “Who shot first? Han or Greedo?” and you don’t respond immediately then you aren’t a nerd. You’re someone who woke up in the morning and said “I think I’m going to start being an awful person today.”
Granted you can be a nerd about anything: books, movies, chemistry, sand, garbage, etc. But that’s why most people aren’t nerds. Very few people in this world are passionate about anything. It’s a sickness that isn’t fixed with seeing part of the first “Star Trek” movie and poking the lenses out of thick-framed glasses. That is the myth about nerdy being cool: You think its something you can just “do.”
But being nerdy is not cool, and that’s OK. As a result nerds are something even better. They’re interesting, which is way better than being cool, and something almost no one is. They have a passion, which is something very rare in today’s world.
So gather and untie all my basement dwellers that live on a steady diet of Pizza Hut and Mountain Dew. Take pride in knowing that–as you’re pushing up the rim of the glasses you actually need to see while dealing with that gland thing you have, and all of a sudden see a sorority girl with a Thor shirt on-if someone asks you who Donald Blake is you actually know what the hell they’re talking about.
