“You don't see us, now you do, but only if we want you to.”
-The Spiderwick Chronicals.
It was a rainy, rather dreary Saturday morning. Nonetheless, my friends and I ventured out a whole 100 yards away from our small Davidson campus to take a break from the rather dull campus food. We were thoroughly enjoying ourselves, sitting at a back table in a local bakery and café, chatting quietly and sipping coffee while watching the rain come down. My phone was sitting on the edge of the table, face down so that the back of the case was exposed. The waitress came over and began gathering our empty plates when she glanced down and caught a glimpse of my phone.
“Oh my god! Are you into Doctor Who?”
I smiled. My phone case has the doors of the TARDIS opening up to reveal a planet and stars in the background. It’s fairly subtle, and if you didn’t know what the TARDIS was, at first glance, it would just look like a pretty blue Otter Box. But she recognized it immediately.
The waitress continued “I really want to get into Doctor Who. I tried to watch the first season a while ago, but I just couldn’t. I’m really more of a Supernatural person…”
We continued talking about the pros and cons of watching Doctor Who seasons out of order, Classic Who vs. rebooted Who, and the awful, cheesy special effects. We talked for several minutes, excitedly chatting about Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, and Matt Smith. We smiled and laughed good-naturedly, adding our voices to the pleasant sound of babble in the crowded little café.
You wouldn’t know from looking at us that we had anything in common. The waitress, my friends, and I all look very different. We have our own separate individual styles and identities. In movies and TV shows, it is easy to see who is “nerdy” and who is “cool”. In real life, it is not so simple. Anyone can be a nerd, and honestly, I think everyone is, even if it’s just a little bit.
As the author of the Fault in Our Stars, John Green put it
“Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to LOVE stuff, like, jump-up-and-down-in-your-chair-can't-control-yourself LOVE it. When people call people nerds, mostly what they're saying is, 'You like stuff,' which is not a good insult at all, like, 'You are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness”
With the Harry Potter books came a new, noticeable wave of “nerd culture”. Suddenly, it was cool to like books, to be into fantasy, to dream about witches and wizards and dragons. Now, we have books such as Divergent, The Percy Jackson series, The Fault in Our Stars and Game of Thrones. We have TV shows like American Horror Story, Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Firefly. The Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC have thoroughly cemented their place in our culture with The Avengers and The Dark Knight trilogy. Star Trek and Star Wars have both made resounding comebacks with new and fantastic movies, capturing a whole new generation of fans. There is something for everyone, and you can’t escape it.
Nerd culture has become almost omnipresent – people sport t-shirts of Rey or Baby Groot, and those references are understood by almost everyone. Yet the full extent of the branching reach of nerd culture remains surprisingly subtle. If you look for it you can find it, but you have to know exactly what you are looking for. For example, in my room there is a mug that says “Nelson and Murdock: Attorneys at Law.” To most people, this is simply a plain black mug with an advertisement for a law firm on the side. However, anyone who has seen the Netflix original show Daredevil (like my roommate – it’s her mug) knows that this is the name of Foggy Nelson and Matt Murdock’s firm. Another example – on Wednesday I wore a super cute blue and white scarf (pictured). However, the only people who realized that the pattern was not in fact a telephone booth, but a police box that can travel through time and space, were my friends (who are Whovians). All across campus I see Serenity key chains, buttons on backpacks with the winged Scout symbol, or sweatshirts claiming the wearer “solemnly swears they are up to no good”. All these things obviously mean something, but in order to understand you must already be in the know. If you are not, the reference slips past while you are naively unaware of its presence.
One great part of being a nerd is that you are not relegated to one particular fandom. Contrary to popular belief, you can like Star Trek and Star Wars at the same time. It’s totally allowed for you to be into more than one thing. In fact, it's encouraged. Crossovers are a whole other category that take on a life of their own and create some amazing and crazy theories. Ever heard of Super-Who-Lock? I happen to be a firm believer that Mary Poppins is a Time Lord (she always shows up at exactly the right time and her carpet bag is bigger on the inside!).
However, the best part of being a nerd by far is what I experienced in the restaurant. In the period of one second, the waitress and I went from having absolutely nothing in common to being able to have an animated and interesting conversation with no effort. It’s seeing someone with a Peggy Carter sticker on their laptop in the Math and Science tutoring center and thinking ‘I could be friends with that person’. It’s watching your friends gasp with excitement as the opening credits roll across the screen and the first trumpet notes of the Star Wars leitmotif ring out. It’s going to a comic-con in your hometown and being surrounded by people who are just as excited as you are to see Carrie Fisher. It's introducing someone to your favorite show or book and watching them fall in love with the same characters you did.
A nerd is more than just a pair of big thick glasses and a poor sense of fashion. Being a nerd means you are part of a large community of people, incredibly different, amazing, interesting people, who all “like stuff” just as much as you do.
