The Word on Nerds

There have been many questions lately on why us nerds obsess over something stupid and not even real.  To those people asking those questions: it is not any different from the things you obsess over.  Many of you obsess over fictional things as well. Whether its following a sports team, being on Team Jacob or Team Edward or simply following a celebrity, we all obsess over something. None of things affect our personal life, yet we all enjoy following them. Just for us nerds those things happen to be less mainstream. Yet for some reason, people still do not understand why we have "fan-gasms,"a word used by my friend to describe an obsessive fan freak-out. So, I am writing this to inform all of you non-nerds on why we are the way we are.

The first thing you need to know is that the word nerd covers a wide range of people, who classify themselves as nerd, geek, dork, etc. You can have your Social Modern Nerd, who obsess over newer geeky things such as Sherlock, Doctor Who, Marvel, Big Bang Theory, and new animated movies. You can also have your Book Worms, who will constantly read and are always the first in line to get the newly published book by their favorite author.  There are also Computer Geeks, those who know almost anything thing about computers and spend most of their time writing programs on them (they will be the ones running the world as we head further into the digital age). You have Otaku Nerds, who obsess over Japanese culture and anime. There are the Video Game Nerds, who play video games non-stop, enjoy hacking the game console network, finding cheats, and obsess over any type of video game (the most popular among my friends is Portal!). You have your Old School Nerds, the ones who are stuck in their basement playing Dungeons & Dragons with no social life (almost no one anymore falls under this category anymore, nerds are actually quite social). Most of us fall into more than one of these categories, but none of us are in all of them. No two nerds are the same, despite what you might think.

However, until you understand what it is like to be a part of a fandom (to the non-nerds that means fan group) or at least recognize that you are probably already in one, you will never understand us. Once you do, you will understand why we get mad at Steven Moffat for creating plot twists and cliffhangers that piss us off to no end.You will finally know why we get into heated arguments on why Mark Ruffalo was a better Hulk or why Star Trek: Next Generation is better then the original series (I have a death wish in the minds of some people just for saying that). You will understand why we get annoyed when people ruin movies for us. (Thanks Michael, I totally wanted to know who Benedict Cumberbatch's character in Star Trek was!) You will start to understand why we throw books at the wall because the author makes our favorite characters life hell (cough, cough John Green). You will start to understand why we camp out at movie theaters to be the first in line for the midnight premiers for movies even if it makes us insanely tired the next day (I apologize to my English. Iron Man 3 is really good and totally worth pulling an all-nighter for). The first step to understanding us is to realize you will never understand us fully, until you recognize how you are like us.

We definitely have it well as a social group, too. When we meet other nerds, instead of fighting, we obsess together.  Following these things gives us some common ground with other people all over the world. You can find us talking to them on Tumblr all the time about the stuff we enjoy.  I have a few friends in Tennessee, one in Virginia, a couple in New York, all just solely based on the fact that we are in the same fandom. It lets us connect with other people. Obsessing over different things is a fun way to let us escape from our problems.  We choose to embrace our obsessions by going to conventions and premiers.  Its a lot of fun to cosplay (non-nerds: it means to dress up as characters) at conventions. When we cosplay, it makes it easier to meet others we never knew before that have the same interests as us. It is just a social thing we like to participate in.

We have some of the best and most ridiculously fun debates ever. Even when we are in die-hard arguments, we all walk away from it still friends with everyone and relativity unaffected by the argument. One thing that is pretty common between all nerds is that we LOVE being right, and we get into some hard core discussions  trying to prove our opinion is correct even though that is not technically possible.  If you do classify yourself as a nerd, you are probably yelling at your computer screen right now saying that of course your opinion is the right one and that it is possible to prove correct. If the world is going to end, it will most likely not be from atomic warfare or a zombie infestation, but because someone at Comic Con ignorantly asked who the best super hero was.

In my experience,  nerds are some of the most confident, out going, if not slightly insane people, I have ever met.  They enjoy doing some of the craziest and most fun things ever. If you have never participated in a slow-motion lightsaber battle or jumped into a random person's bush trying to hide from the "cops" in Fugitive, you are really missing out. Trust me when I say that the image of the Old School Nerd you have in your head of us couldn't be further from the truth.