Revenge of the Nerds

Something, if not someone, comes to mind for everyone when they hear the word “nerd”. It’s not usually a word with positive connotations, and the visualization is usually a dorkily dressed, physically weak, and socially maladroit teenage male. Whereas geeks choose to have an intense interest in some niche subject area, nerds try their best to fit into the standard social molds but can’t. Granted, the differences are numbered and there is a significant overlap between the two groups, but this is the distinction that I want to work with.

Children are cruel creatures. As a group, they will often pick another kid to isolate and torment, completely on a whim. The bullies have superficial rationalizations for their choice of victim: glasses, poverty, or ineptitude and difference in any shape or form, but the hazing is never deserved, and always punishing. When I was in primary and secondary education, being competent with computers the internet were already positive traits, or at a minimum, no longer carried the strong negative connotations of duct-taped glasses of twenty years ago. Video games had developed to the point where they were accessible to most people, social media had started blowing up, and people were already starting to worry about an oversaturation of STEM job fields. What I want to examine is the period just prior to that.

Nerds always had interests that were outside of the mainstream, stereotypically books, comics, and tabletop games before the advent of the internet. While those at the top of the social food chain indulged in underage drinking and varsity sports, nerds found other ways to pass the time and compete with one another. Though there was always the expectation that the more bookish nerds would eventually inherit the world, it often wasn’t the case. Their hobbies were no more productive than the conventional and interfered with their schooling all the same. Whatever intellectual meritocracy was left in society would generally prevail, things getting better for the nerds as they went to college and met a wider diversity of people, though they would soon see that sociability and alcohol tolerance were gatekeepers to many interesting paths.

For those who grew into their nerd-hood in the nineties and the early aughts however, the internet was also just beginning to come of age. To a nerd, the internet is a treasure trove of information and entertainment just waiting to be tapped into. The barriers of entry were perhaps a bit prohibitive, no websites and apps designed to force users spiraling down dopamine loops, but this mattered little to those who were excluded from all other social spheres. Online, they found a community of like-minded people who had also overcome obstacles to become computer-literate when typing classes were still offered at community colleges. I’m not asserting that all the nerds instantly exchanged their Dungeons and Dragons sessions for internet forums, nor am I saying that a majority of them were smart enough to do that well. What I do posit is that there is an extreme overrepresentation of nerds within the population of young, malleable, minds on the internet, tenacious enough to become good at computers in the early days of the technology.

This isn’t an original idea; that many people picture nerds constantly on their computers is evidence enough that society has accepted the association. The impact has also been noted, most prominently in the 2010 Fincher-Sorkin collaboration, The Social Network, portraying Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as a status-obsessed nerd giddy with power. In my initial viewing of the movie, I understood it to be a direct critique of Zuckerberg as an individual, though its relevance endures as a portrayal of angry white incel men.

What it also shows however, is the revenge of the nerds. It’s what can happen when not only movie-Zuck, but anyone who has been bullied and excluded during their developmental years discovers newfound status and power in society. They want everything they were previously denied, and they want to express their righteous anger. They are not only men-children in command of formidable wealth, but also somewhat indignant at being told what they can and cannot do. Whereas the old scions know the system is what brought them into power and what keeps them there, the tech barons made their billions fighting against the establishment. In fairness, having smart young people with a chip on their shoulder force change to broken systems is perhaps the most effective way to do it. At other times however, they move too fast and break too much.

I’m aware the world is still mostly in the hands of old money instead of new tech money. I don’t feel much better about leaving fratty finance bros in charge of the future compared to the nerds, but just because the nerds were once bullied, the process hasn’t necessarily made them better people. I attribute these reasons to the recent rash of tech scandals where extremely problematic business decisions have been made, or the CEO has been caught committing one atrocity or another. They haven’t gotten the kinks out of their system yet, and they weren’t told that certain behaviours were wrong earlier in their careers, but they’re the kings of the mountain now.

I don’t think there’s much that can be done about this phenomenon, nor that there’s much that needs to be done, since it’s largely over. By the time I was in high school, the classical swirling-giving, book-knocking, shoulder-bumping, sort of physical bullying was already anecdotally in decline, the behaviour existing predominantly in the form of in-groups and out-groups, snide comments, and social isolation. Using computers had already become an academic and social necessity, and no longer required much skill. Often, the popular kids were the ones that were better at video games or had more Instagram clout. Humour and jokes from the internet had already leaked into the real world, and staying updated with real-world trends meant keeping abreast of internet news.

Nerds still existed, and they were on the internet too. But being on the computer and internet wasn’t a challenge anymore, and consequently no longer afforded them any sort of advantage in terms of becoming the next Zuckerberg. They found their way down rabbit holes like Tumblr, Reddit, or any of the more nefarious avenues to explore varied tastes and meet new people, spending time with people online. The transformation of tech from a niche sector into a vaunted mainstream industry has also led to a change in the type of person working there, no longer the asocial computer savant, but all smart people. A certain degree of the nerd culture persists, but it’s increasingly the same sort of type-A high-flying personality as the ones in finance, appropriately dubbed the ‘tech bro’.

So it seems the nerds lose again. Or rather, the smart ones had their fifteen-year window to shine and it’s now over. Sorry kid, if you can’t make a viral TikTok video with a trendy dance, it’s back to playing video games. But with more people playing video games, they have become more acceptable and there’s more of a social aspect behind it. The ostracised no longer jump through multiple hoops to find a few internet friends on a backwater internet forum, but can easily and immediately find thousands of people with whom to fraternize if in-person friendships are impossible. Nerd culture, or at least geek culture, has become mainstream, from Game of Thrones to anime, from board games to the Marvel cinematic universe. If there’s ever a time to be a nerd, to march to the beat of your own drum, it’s now. And it only gets better from here.