Nerd Alert

Question: What’s “cool” now?

Answer: Everything that was not cool a decade ago.

Okay, I’m joking, sort of. But seriously, like since when is it cool to be nerdy? Like all of a sudden everyone’s saying “no but seriously I am such a nerd” or “I am such a geek”.

Photo by Artur Coelho

I have given myself the right to critique this behavior because I spent my whole life as a geek, disguising myself as a “cool kid”. Seriously, in elementary school I chose a different animal on a weekly basis for an independent research project. I read The Big Book of Knowledge for fun.

If that doesn’t scream nerd alert I don’t know what will. As a kid, these were the things I hid from my friends and for a good reason, had they known how “uncool” I really was I would have been ostracized, abandoned, a complete loner!

Now that I am an adult, it seems like everyone is bragging about his or her nerdy-ness. People all around me are sporting thick-rimmed glasses and trying to outdo one another in how alternative and intellectual they all are. What is this about? What is going on? Why is everyone trying to out nerd and out geek one another?

Photo by Rob Boudon

Anyways, the irony here is that I spent my life hiding my nerd side to avoid being ostracized by my peers, and now it seems that if I were not a nerd I would be running the same risk. Maybe everyone was secretly a closet nerd a kid, and now we are free to express ourselves? Or maybe being nerdy is simply a passing trend and all these newly self-proclaimed “geeks” are still just trying to fit in and form their own identities? I guess we’ll find out soon enough