SO, NERD IS THE NEW COME-UP…
Like many of my fellow millennials, I grew up in the 1990’s. This was back when the term “nerd” was considered an affront to those kids who wanted so badly just to be liked and accepted by the general populace. Fast-forward to the 2010s, and beyond. Nowadays, being different is actually embraced and seen as better than being just like everyone else.
My Childhood
I was bullied for three overt reasons in my childhood.
The First
The first reason was that I wore hideously thick glasses. I’m talking the kind of specs your grandmother probably wore on one of those beaded lanyards around her neck in the 80’s when she was playing BINGO with her buddies from assisted living. I even lovingly earned the oh-so-clever nickname of “Four-Eyes” at one point when I was in the second grade. The name-slinging back then was so brilliant and original, those kids should have won Lifetime Achievement Awards for their creativity, let me tell you.
The Second
The second reason was that I wasn’t allowed to dress myself until about the end of middle school, thus, creating the combination of elementary school ‘90s kid getups that can only be winced at when reflected upon. Shoulder pad dresses, MC Hammer pants…it’s like my parents were living out their “cool kid” fantasy vicariously through an era of trends that didn’t ever truly exist for someone in my age bracket.
The Third
The third reason was that I was excruciatingly shy, and hardly ever spoke in school and many other social situations, unless it was in response to being addressed. Even then, sometimes I remember clamming up. If we want to get intersectional with it as well, whenever I did speak I used proper English and a softer tone of voice. I didn’t use or even know the majority of the AAVE terminology typically spoken by my peers at the time, which made me an easy target who wouldn’t stand up for myself when I got clowned and denigrated at school. I even used to get accused of “talking white” – as if talking in a particular color is a real thing.
For these reasons, I opted to avoid many people and didn’t bring much attention to my existence when I was a child. I focused all of my attention on my grades, and getting lost in chapter books and art. Now, picture the shy, soft-spoken, awkwardly-dressed, too-nice girl with the big thick glasses who sat at the back corner of the classroom, most likely either doodling or reading unassigned material. Nerd was my metonym.
Back then, it wasn’t the cool thing to be called, and it definitely wasn’t trendy. In fact, it was the antithesis of trendy.
The 2010s & Beyond
Fast-forward to the 2010s, and beyond. Nowadays, being different is actually embraced and seen as better than being just like everyone else — which is the complete opposite of what people seemed to be going for back in my day. I’m not sure what actually gave birth to this notion, but my guess is that the semi-recent “hipster” movement gave it a steroid boost; suddenly, the idea stands that it’s cool to be a contrarian or a cynic of mainstream society, and go boldly against the grain of the status quo, instead of fitting neatly into the puzzle piece-like grooves, a’ la Barbie and Ken.
From the overtly-attractive, Instagram swimsuit model-types donning those popular black, almost cartoonish Ray-Ban wayfarers over a pound of makeup and wearing hardly anything else, to the gatekeepers of music, who have to make it known that they’ve had an affinity for your favorite band “before it was cool”, and only listen to their tunes on vinyl, because, if you don’t then you’re just a “poser”. Yet, those same “nerds” can’t correctly answer a test question about Quantum Theory and Universal Law, or the Pythagorean Theorem, and have never even heard of the Harlem Renaissance.
This new, diluted, trendy version of “Maybe, if I appear a cultured intellectual on social media, then the people I went to school with will forget how much of a bully I was, and how I vitriolically regarded others whom I felt were beneath me as nerds and geeks”, is pretty old and tired, if you ask me.
Don’t Get Me Wrong…
I mean, don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining that the internet has seen a marked spike in people who are interested in more of the quirky and off-beat topics that in past decades would’ve been considered lame, such as astronomy, astrophysics and even a few of my personal favorites, Jungian psychology, parapsychology, metaphysics and philosophy. I’m pretty stoked that the brainy community is growing, and that people are beginning to give more of a damn about science and other topics that impact our world way more often than they’re given popular credit for.
I’m glad that more of us are doing deep dives into educational Ted Talks and wanting to explore more about what makes our world tick, and to overall have a greater understanding of the human experience as a whole. I’m also happy that we, as a generation, are becoming more interested in the arts and historical aspects of our world.
But as with any community, with the risk of sounding like a gatekeeper myself, I just can’t stand the fakes. Knowledge is power, and a birthright for all. Being “nerdy” isn’t about classism or exclusivity.
What Bugs Me
I’ll end on a side note that bugs the living daylights out of me, to this day.
Wearing glasses, prescription or not, DOES NOT A NERD MAKE.
So the next time you see someone on social media faking the funk and promoting being geeky as a commodity or trend, just be aware that if it weren’t for us who used to get flamed in school for being studious and keeping to ourselves and our hobbies as well as being quiet and not dressing in the more popular brands, this whole new wave of “hashtag nerd life” would not have become what it is today.