Words for Nerds

We need more words for nerds!

I say this because I’m a huge nerd! Like, COLOSSAL. However, I’m not nerdy the way most people use the word today. For example, I don’t like Lego, Marvel, video games, costumes, sci-fi or fantasy. Meanwhile, I’m a total nerd when you use the word’s traditional definition:

Nerd (noun): An unfashionable person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious.

Unfashionable? Boring? Studious? You rannnnnnnngggggg?

Here’s my resumé:

• Unfashionable

With rare exceptions like weddings, for two decades I’ve worn only plain, mono-colored t-shirts over one of three pairs of jeans, and I also went twenty years without a professional haircut, choosing to cut my own until my fiancé (now wife) threatened to call off our wedding if I didn’t opt into “the system.”

• Boring

I’ve read, for pleasure, thousands of big, long, old books that most people lie about reading (Here’s lookin’ at you, Moby Dick). I even write notes as I read so I can reflect on what I’ve thought about later.

• Studious

I write weekly essays. By choice. With self-imposed deadlines. And, as if that’s not nerdy enough, I started this in my twenties, by email, before the word blog even existed. Yup. While friends slept off hangovers, I was awake, with a headache from the same party, publishing my nerdy thoughts.

What I’m getting at is that our culture has lost its sense of nuance with nearly everything, and while I gave this a huge pass when it happened in sports and politics, I’m taking a stand before it permeates society and culture. I’m officially becoming a “Trad-Nerd advocate.”

So what are Trad-Nerds (you didn’t ask because you’re not a studious, boring nerd)? Great question!

We are traditional nerds who like reading, writing, and science. Unlike geeks, dorks, and dweebs, who enjoy dungeons, dragons, and Lego replicas of the Millenium Falcon, we have pen stains and uncombed hair and wear clothes that don’t fit, because we’re too busy thinking about boring, nerdy stuff.

I don’t know why my society has rebranded nerds to include non-nerds, but when I was a kid, we stayed in our lane. Jocks played sports, nerds read books, and if you painted miniature orcs, talked about Spider Man, or collected plastic inter-locking blocks from Sweden, you were a geek, a dork, or a dweeb.

So what happened? Why did our Nerd Overton Window (trad-nerd term) expand to include geeks, dorks, dweebs, and other unpopular, niche-loving weirdos? I ask, because, as a trad-nerd, I have nothing in common with these people, except that we’re both unpopular, a concept we already have a word for!

Take goth kids. Are they nerds? I think not. They may be boring (especially the straight edge ones), but they’re anything but un-fashionable! These moody folks are friendly to nerds, but not nerds themselves.

And what about those adorable Dungeons and Dragons kids? How can we call them boring when they use their imagination all day and night to entertain themselves, often while high on recreational drugs? These kids think they’re paladins and talk to NPCs. That’s not nerdy!

I’m sorry, “culture,” but enough is enough! If so many people like Marvel, Star Wars, and LOTR that these products can take over Hollywood and China, then its fans cannot be called nerds, even with the looser definition of “a person who is enthusiastic and knowledgeable about a niche interest.”

There is nothing niche about an adult in 2024 who likes Lego, sci-fi, fantasy, or even YA. Harry Potter has theme parks, Lego is a multinational corporation, and Comic-Con has more fans than the WNBA! I’m not making fun of these people, I’m just saying their fanbase is too popular to be called nerdy.

Meanwhile, we trad-nerds are suffering! Tremendously. Every movie is full of action, all our computers use operating systems so far removed from MSDOS that we can’t adapt them to our liking, and worst of all, no one reads anything, ever. And if they do, it’s gotta be six words or less in a ‘for-the-lulz’ meme!

I’m so mad I could write a blog about this!

As an early adopter of the Internet (1991, bro), I’m ashamed. This modern, popular Internet has nothing in common with what we nerds planned to use it for. And, ironically, most of its mainstream changes came from the minds of epic nerds like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and “Tom” from MySpace.

I guess what I’m asking for is to let us unpopular, brainy folk retain the title of nerds, since it’s now cool to like everything except what is actually nerdy, etymologically speaking (a term only a nerd would use). Put another way: If you like something a politician, athlete, or actor can reference: it’s not nerdy.

I’m probably screwed. I can see Gandalf frolicking outside right now with Pandora. I should just get used to having people find out I’m a writer and then assume it means I know or care about who landed on Hoth, which kid on Stranger Things is an alien, or why it’s always winter in some game with thrones.

As I like to tell my three-year-old each morning when she wakes up and can’t figure out what the hell is going on with the sun, sky, or darkness, “Yes, dear. Today is yesterday’s tomorrow. And tomorrow is that tomorrow’s past. But yesterday was also last week’s future. So brush your teeth and eat a waffle.”

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This week on Coffin Talk we interview Vicki Paris Goodman. After the death of her husband Sam, the love of her life, she was unexpectedly flooded with optimism and presented with a host of possibilities for an exciting and meaningful future. She wrote To Sam, With Love: A Surviving Spouse’s Story of Inspired Grief and she came on our podcast to discuss her life changing philosophy! Listen here or on any app.