When the mainstream goes new-nerd chic, the nerds go mainstream. And we are all nerds no more.
Over the holidays, I witnessed something that has become a little bit too common in our society — the use of the term “nerd” to describe technology-centric, hipster behavior. It was a family gathering, and my millennial step sister sat next to my Gen-Y step-brother, each with their MacBooks in full glory, trying to IM each other during breakfast. Another sibling saw this interchange and dismissed the behavior, saying, “You guys are such nerds!”
I could think of many things that would have been nerdy, but this simply failed to rise to the occasion. Had they been re-wiring an Ethernet cable for direct computer-to-computer communication so that they could share some files, that could have sufficed. But simply using software? Nerdy? Definitely not.
I think we’ve shifted the meaning of “nerd” from one who is proficient in technology…and thereby lacking in social skills to the softer: one who is interested in (certain types of) technology. So if it’s a technology you can discuss after learning about it while listening to NPR, then you can be a nerd. But if it’s a technology that your average reporter can’t explain, then it’s not nerd-capable.
This is why the new-nerds are into consumer electronics and their iPhones in particular. It’s new-nerdy to buy the newest technology and then to get rid of it after complaining about the design, function and user interface. Every new-nerd is an expert in technology without having to get their hands dirty in networking protocols, software engineering or human factors design.
If hipsters populate the rank of new-nerds with their black plastic glasses, Chairman Mao hats, increasingly bizarre facial hair and fixed-gear bicycles; then the real nerds have simply moved to the suburbs and have gone mainstream, disappearing into the fray of software engineers, physicists, biotech researchers, pharmaceutical lab techs and so on and so forth. These are noble middle-class professions, lacking any exception, and different in no way.
As with so many other things, everyone is now an expert. And nobody is a technician. We are foodies who read about cooking and then go out to eat. We talk about beer but do not drink it. We are pundits and policy experts who don’t bother to go to town meetings.
We are jacks of all trades and masters of none. Which goes to the subject of nerds themselves — people with tremendous know-how and ability.
The new-nerds glean what they need from the real nerds.
As for those mal-adjusted individuals with the tape on their glasses, we’ve explained that by saying that they have Aspberger’s Syndrome. By giving another name to real nerdiness, The Revenge of the Nerds is no longer apropos media, because nerds are now everywhere, appearing in appropriately-garbed, multi-ethnic, hipster tribes on television, online, and even in public.
It’s 2010. Two out of three people in the U.S. are online with broadband connectivity. Everyone is a nerd, and nobody is a nerd. Long live the nerd, for we are nerds no more.
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