Nerd! Stop Being Stereotypical!

I go out of my way to act un-nerdy: I do sports, I am extremely sociable and go out of my way to make friends with people, and I dress and eat (and drink and smoke and dance) well and with taste. All of which I have achieved faster than others because I Read the Freaking Manual. Somehow that has only achieved moving me from "disgusting nerd" to "strange poet", which pisses me off to no end, because I still haven't overcome the goddamned isolation.

Anyway, yeah, I'm not the only one doing this. I'm still a nerd through and through, and a public brony, but that doesn't mean I have to be unfit, unclean, unkind, or uncouth. I'm at a technical university, and our rugby team performs above average both on the field and in the classroom. In fact, our studies are so demanding that an unhealthy body is a luxury that few can afford.

edited 17th Aug '12 9:46:18 AM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Over the course of high school, I've gained a pretty decent circle of friends, even though I'm still pretty shy. Lately I've been trying to dress stylishly rather than just throwing something on last minute, so there's that. I'm pretty bad in the athleticism department, though. Oh, and I take care of my hygiene and have a proper diet.

edited 17th Aug '12 9:50:41 AM by Haldo

‽‽‽‽ ^These are interrobangs. Love them. Learn them. Use them.

Thanks. Why don't you tell us about your sexual conquests next?

edited 17th Aug '12 9:53:19 AM by Wheezy

Project progress: The Adroan (102k words), The Pigeon Witch, (40k). Done but in need of reworking: Yume Hime, (50k)

edited 17th Aug '12 9:57:20 AM by Haldo

‽‽‽‽ ^These are interrobangs. Love them. Learn them. Use them.

Being a womanizer won't grant you respect in our society, and it can leave you with some very bad vibes emotionally and psychologically, so I don't go for that. Being good at maintaining a proper, healthy, long-term relationship, took me a lot effort, but it pays off and grants me the strength and happiness to do all those other things: all the things I said I do, they're a daily struggle, but one I'm committed to winning, and my parter helps me bear the pressure (of course, I reciprocate in kind).

I don't come out on top every day, that's for sure, and old habits die hard. But I refuse to be pegged and pigeonholed into some kind of role of misery and loneliness just because I like ponies, or reading books, or science, or video games, or poetry.

Thanks, Haldo.

edited 17th Aug '12 10:09:33 AM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Amen to that. For me it was Star Trek. For the longest time I felt embarrassed because it seemed like nobody else around me liked Trek and I kinda thought I would be persecuted for admitting it. But then I learned how to say, "So what? I think your interests are stupid too. Can we move on?"

Fear is a superpower.

Yeah, I don't think having strange interests is really anybody's real problem. Like, I have trouble socializing because I'm shy, not because I like anime.

edited 17th Aug '12 10:31:55 AM by Haldo

‽‽‽‽ ^These are interrobangs. Love them. Learn them. Use them.

I agree. And once I learned that, I was able to take a large step forward in my level of self-confidence.

Fear is a superpower.

Socializing is just like any other skill: it's built with practice. Shyness is overcome by having a strong weight of evidence in people liking what you have to show them of yourself. This is acheived by meeting new people in socialization-conductive environments, and progressively moving on to less conductive environments, with the expectation that you will be liked. The minor occarions where you will not be liked will provide you with feedback on how to avoid making mistakes, by presenting an element in a better way or not presenting it at all. Reading books on the art of a salessman or a public speaker is also useful: you are essentially selling yourself and your ideas, and have to calibrate what you do to your audience.

To sum it up, if you want to, you can overcome your shiness. I just don't see no reason why people should expect you to want that.

edited 17th Aug '12 10:54:46 AM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I think the line of causality here actually points in the opposite direction: People have strange interests because they're socially inept, not vice-versa.

I mean, it obviously isn't that simple, but the basic idea seems pretty logical. Some people are extroverted by nature, others are introverted. Those who grow up socializing with their peers are more likely to pick up the same interests as those peers, because that's what they are in touch with. They might even pick up similar interests to others simply in order to spend more time with people. Meanwhile, children who grow up less social will inevitably focus their energy on something else. That something else could easily be the cartoons they grow up with and turn into a long-lasting fascination with that sort of thing. And in any case, anyone developing more or less independently from the mainstream will inevitably end up with "strange" interests and ideas, by virtue of not being the mainstream (although no one is completely independent, obviously).

Oh. So that's what it is.

Hm. Now I understand why my new sociable friends don't get it when I say I need time alone doing my own thing, like browsing TVT, nor do they understand why I get a little self-absorbed (which is my way of dealing with impatience) when we spend long swathes of time together talking about nothing much. Alcohol and tobacco (and some other substances) make those more tolerable, but I still feel a stark need to just stare off into space and think of my own stuff.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

... I really don't see the point of posting this.

Ignore stereotypes.

Be yourself.

Tell anyone who bitches at you for it to piss off, as it's not their life.

Simple.

"Lock up your girlfriends, lock up your wives, Grim's on the loose so run for your lives." - Pyrite

Be Yourself is a bit of a tautological recommendation, though, isn't it?

Unless it means "never change", which means "don't get worse" but also "don't improve".

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I find the "nerd" label to be fundamentally useless, to be honest; and I feel that the corresponding subculture is not particularly interesting.

In a sane world, this would be trivial; but no, enjoying Star Trek and superhero comics does not make one more "special", or more clever, than enjoying The Bold And The Beautiful and Twilight. Also, it does not make one part of a persecuted minority.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

No.

"Be yourself" means be who you are, at any given moment.

Learn things, have opinions, allow them to change and grow as you learn other new information.

Be the best human being that you can be, and be interested in whatever you happen to be interested in. If you love music, devour it. If you love Star Trek, obsess over it. And so on.

It is nothing about constancy or permanency or any of that. It's simply, in the most basic way I can express it, being.

Nothing is constant or permanent in the first place. By the end of any given year, the vast majority of atoms and cells in your body have replaced themselves with new ones, as you lost others to sweat, skin shedding (there's a reason we shower every day, people), hair growth and loss, and so on. Who we are one day, in a physical sense, is quite literally not who we are the next day.

We are constantly changing and growing and learning, about all sorts of different things. Different people learn different things, and get different results from the same information. As a result, everyone is different.

Hence, stop looking at others, and be yourself.

"Lock up your girlfriends, lock up your wives, Grim's on the loose so run for your lives." - Pyrite

I'm given to understand that being a nerd used to be significantly more persecutioney not too long ago.

Hey now, there's no need to be insulting!

I'm kidding. Yeah, you make a good point.

Fear is a superpower.

Ah. You mean "follow your own desires wherever they may lead, instead of mimicking others and then hoping for the best"? That's very Slitherin of you...

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I have friends I can have fun with, and I like being with them, but I also like being alone, which is how I recharge. I don't like parties or socialising with people outside my vague circle, but since I'm happy to expand the group I see nothing wrong with this. Parties take a lot of energy anyhow. I loathe organised sports, don't watch the TV shows others in my classes do, practise math outside school, etc. — this is all me being myself. I see no point in taking care of my appearance; as long as I'm clean and my hair won't need to be cut off to get rid of tangles, I'm fine.

Oh, and don't confuse nerds with geeks, dorks, or boffins.

That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.

... No, that's very human.

Stop trying to reduce everything to stereotypes.

"Lock up your girlfriends, lock up your wives, Grim's on the loose so run for your lives." - Pyrite

Feeding your Pokemon nerds will not make it prettier, and feeding it dorks will make you a felon.

Be Yourself!

Unless you totally suck!

I've found that only people who self-identify as geeks or nerds think there's a difference. To most other people, geek, nerd, and dork are all interchangeable.

Personally, I always thought that nerds liked sci-fi and geeks liked fantasy.

Fear is a superpower.

The definitions here at TVT are that nerds are socially, aesthetically and physically inept, and geeks are experts at an un-mainstream field. Therefore, my title for this thread is wrong: it should be "geek, stop being a nerd".

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I don't see any real point in giving them solid definitions, or in trying to make a subculture out of any of them. If I had to pin down how they are used at my school, nerd is for lack of social skills, geek is that combined with intelligence, and boff is just the intelligence. Dork is a mild insult where the others have lost meaning, and is a form of nerd.

That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.