Not Nerdy Enough?

So recent events have taken me out of commission for a while, but I will make this relevant somehow:

You may recall some of you, that before the nervous breakdown which ended when I completed my Grad Show at art school, I mentioned that I felt less nerdy than most people who call themselves nerds because I have been called out for using Apple products and use art world theory to explain ideas that somehow turn up in SF literature sometimes.

All the same, I'm not sure if I make the cut as a nerd because I barely saw any of Joss Whedon's work yet, I'm not up to speed with Doctor Who, and most of the fandoms I'm in are of things people haven't built a strong community over or are just plain too out there to attract a cult audience. All the same when I bring up that I like Superman as a superhero (this gets political because I endorse Christopher Reeve as a disabled icon, and as an autistic person who is high functioning I am aware he was worse off than me in every way by the end of his life and seeing somebody persevere through that kind of stuff is inspiring as far as nerd icons go) and all my friends are like BOO BATMAN'S SUPERIOR IN EVERY WAY!

Sigh. At least the anime shows I like have a fanbase on the internet, Dragon Ball Z, Speed Racer, Osamu Tezuka's work, Welcome To The NHK, Miyazaki and the like, but as soon as I try to get my brother to let me watch it on his big screen TV he outright refuses because I'm competing with his watching Six Feet Under and he paid for the big screen TV.

My point is due to my inability to play video games due to motor skills problems and some level of having lived under a rock, I'm not caught up on a lot of things nerds are into now and I still feel like a newcomer to something I'm supposed to feel at home with.

Luckily my summer holidays just started so I'll be able to watch things like Seinfeld and Dragon Ball Z Kai which I've been putting off for time and financial reasons (getting the DBZ Kai box set as a box instead of individual volumes for a start, Seinfeld I already had, but I had no time to watch it).

Of course accusations that I'm a hipster completely fall apart as soon as people discover my CD shelf has Weird Al Yankovic and various nerd-film soundtracks like the Basil Poledouris Conan one, the Blade Runner OST and the Dune and Highlander OS Ts. My point being that if that sounds like a lot of OS Ts it implies most of the music I'm familiar with came from movies at some point. I need to get out more.

That still makes me wonder if I make the cut as a nerd these days though. I still don't understand what Homestuck is and I have no idea who's playing Doctor Who nowadays.

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

Huh, is that really important?

Can't you just, I don't know, do whatever you like without having to use any labels?

I wouldn't recommend Doctor Who and Homestuck, by the way.

edited 14th Nov '12 12:50:06 AM by kay4today

All this sounds like No True Scotsman.

Dude, as long as you're not hurting anyone, do/enjoy whatever you want, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

Seinfeld is considered nerdy?

Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.

So, just to get this right, you are worried that you are, or people deem you as, not "nerdy" enough?

Dude, you have problems...

edited 14th Nov '12 1:29:30 AM by Nyarly

People aren't as awful as the internet makes them out to be.

There's no criteria to be a nerd, it just sort of happens. You can be a nerd for being good at maths, or for liking 80's anime. Hell, you could be a nerd for collecting Mc Donald's toys. It's not a predetermined label; the definition changes from person to person.

Why is it even a popular term? As far as I know, it was used as a derogatory term up to and throughout the 00's.

Who defines what a nerd is anyway? Are obsessive sports or fashion fans nerds? Or does the label only apply if you like video games, anime, comic books etc?

Do you really need to label yourself in that way?

Considering the alternative is to be derided as a hipster by society, yes.

Because hipsters are associated with coffee shops. Coffee shops that sell ice chocolates without any ice cream or cream in them. Just regular ice. In milk. It's just wrong.

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

...

See, this is why I dislike the world. If you're not one thing, you have to be another. Even when you're an individual, you get lumped in with "hipsters".

I don't even know if I'm against the hipsters, or ice chocolate from coffee shops that have the indecency to put regular arse ice in milk with some chocolate mix, no ice cream or whipped cream to be found, anymore.

Because that's an ideology I won't support.

I'll also note that I worry about really weird sociological problems at really odd hours of the night because my brain isn't used to not being highly strung all the time. Now Uni's over for the year I've got a lot of time to drive myself mad some other way. Christmas shopping seems like a good option there. I'm a big Christmas nerd who likes cooking the gingerbread thingies and decorating the lights, but also I'm big on wrapping presents the right way.

Also, as far as Seinfeld goes, if Fresh Prince Of Bel Air is officially nerd territory because Black Nerd Comedy on You Tube helped review it with Lindsay Ellis, we can't kid ourselves that Seinfeld and other sitcoms are not nerdy if other related internet comedians make fun of them.

Besides, Seinfeld is hella nerdy. Those outfits... in the pilot episode Jerry dresses like the mutant offspring of the Red and Blue Wiggle. From The Wiggles.

edited 14th Nov '12 3:56:13 AM by NewGeekPhilosopher

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

... I have no idea what you're talking about.

Be not afraid...

The Wiggles, ice chocolate that barely qualifies as ice chocolate, or whether sitcoms are nerdy now?

Either way, no, it doesn't make sense. Just like how Jerry Seinfeld's regrettable fashion choices have come back to haunt my eyelids, when I sleep.

In any case, what brought this whole argument on was my unresolved conflict with a forum I used to post on that rejected me in one of my most vulnerable moments to the extent that right now I have no concept of what a bad breakup is like, but when I listen to Adele's 21 right now, if I filter that album's rage through the lens of me "breaking up" with that internet forum that hated me when I was most vulnerable and afraid, suddenly it all makes sense and suddenly what Adele is singing about is more relatable than it was when I thought she was only singing about bad breakups. But it's not. It's about the turmoil, the hate, the hurt that comes with betrayed and stomped on feelings.

It was brutal, and so was the reason why I fled to TV Tropes again which is so far the only internet forum that tolerates my presence due to various periods in the past when my mental instability goes off the rails and it's weeks until my next shrink appointment.

EDIT: I'm sorry. It's been a really hard six months I've come to the end of, and right now because I didn't have answers to many of the admittedly stupid questions my mind demanded needed attention I turned to you guys because you seem to tolerate my horrendous mood swings a lot better than *other* places I've been to online. Places I have mentioned already didn't think I was nerdy enough because I dared try and explain why a science fiction novel based around graffiti artists in the future was good with a Banksy reference, who I might add would not be obscure enough to warrant the hipster accusation.

It's why I've lost sleep over stupid things like this, especially when I've been run ragged by the end of my University semester I only now have a holiday from.

I understand why I might be annoying. I'm annoying because I feel I have nowhere else to go to ease my mind from this stuff.

edited 14th Nov '12 4:42:21 AM by NewGeekPhilosopher

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

By "society", do you mean "a bunch of people who spend far too much time on the Internet", I guess?*

Yeah, I am aware of the irony; but still...

Society, as a whole, does not really give a damn about "nerds", "goths", "hipsters", "furries", "metalheads", "emos", or whatever kids call themselves nowadays. At most, they are possible descriptions of potential target audiences.

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

Are you... letting other people dictate where you should feel at home?

something

I don't really think you should care about labels. I know i don't, and i'm certainly not a hipster. And I'd recommend Homestuck if you'e got time on your hands. and matt smith is playing the Doctor right now.

4227-1763-3232. My 3DS Friend code.

Labels aren't all bad. I've called myself, at various points in time, a nerd, a geek, a troper, a brony, a nerdfighter, etc.

But they're not these insanely specific things. Definitions can be a bit fuzzy, but usually that's a good thing.

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

"Nerd", "jock", "hipster" and the such are labels. You are a human being. Whatever blanket term people try to crudely define their worlds with should not affect who you are.

Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.

But hipsters listen to awesome music (sometimes).

Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.

I try not to worry about labels. When you do it starts to fuck with your head. I'm pretty much shit at all "nerdy" things and I get along fine.

Also, speaking as one who is quite obsessed with so-called nerd works such as Homestuck and Doctor Who(read:fucking obsessed), those two things in particular don't make you a "nerd".

In fact, nothing really makes you a nerd. There is no specific thing that once you watch it BAM! nerd certificate granted. You just watch what you wanna watch and read what you want to read, and if that aligns you with "nerds" then so be it, if it doesn't fit you exactly into that stereotype then that's fine too because you're a person, and people aren't meant to fit into rigid stereotypes.

no

Why would one want to match exactly the "Nerd" stereotype anyway? Many aspects of it — the escapism, the sense of entitlement, the social ineptitude, the bad physical shape — are far from positive...

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

But I wanna be a basement dweller! I aim to one day describe myself as Hikikomori, but for now I'm content just to read my Harry Potter while wearing a fez (cuz they cool) and listening to Odd Future!

edited 15th Nov '12 1:56:30 AM by 0dd1

Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.

Hey, I have a fez! They are cool, but only when they were actually picked up in Morocco and if worn while smoking an exotic-looking pipe.

'All he needs is for somebody to throw handgrenades at him for the rest of his life...'

That rules out a lot of situations that people wear them.

something

Are fezzes a "nerdy" thing? I was at a quiz once and people didn't even know that it was a hat.

Join us in our quest to play all RPG video games! Moving on to disc 2 of Grandia!