I’m not sure when it happened, but it suddenly became okay
to be nerdy. I am not certain whether this was a result of popularizing Geek
Culture (i.e. The Lord of The Rings, Twilight, comic book films, The Big Bang
Theory, video games, etc.) or if it was just the natural progression that comes
with graduating from the cut-throat social order of high school into a more accepting
world, but the evidence is tangible.
Most of the people I know, to some degree, are nerdy, myself
included. If I said this ten years ago, when I was still in high school, I
would have offended most of the people I associated with, but now they would tend
to agree, although possibly half-heartedly.
So what happened? Did society as a whole become more
welcoming to “outsiders” or did the unending quest for status in high school make
us deny our geeky tendencies?
High school was (and probably still is) hell for a nerd, but
I tend to believe that popular culture has made it far more tolerable, perhaps
even cool, to have nerdy hobbies,
interests, and proclivities, to the point that people will self-identify as
nerds.
Why, then, does every nerd I know need to feel like he or she is discriminated
against?
