Recent Articles



































Nerd



         


Nerd was adopted in the mid-1960s to describe a stereotypical intelligent recluse with poor social skills, one who is usually the butt of others' jokes. The word was first used in Dr. Seuss's book If I Ran the Zoo, published in 1950 where it is simply a name for one of Seuss's many comical imaginary animals. (The context is narrator Gerald McGrew's claim that he would collect "a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too" for his imaginary zoo.) Another theory of the word's origin is that it is a version of Mortimer Snerd, the name of Edgar Bergen's ventriloquist dummy. Yet another theory is that it comes from Northern Electric Research and Developments where the employees wore pocket protectors with the acronym N.E.R.D. printed on them. And yet another theory is that it comes from the word "drunk" reversed to "knurd", to illustrate someone who did not drink at parties.

The stereotypical nerd image as seen in the mass media and cartoons is a young man wearing thick black glasses (preferably broken and taped up with electrical tape), pocket protectors and dress shirts or clothes that are in general too formal for the circumstances in which they are worn. Sometimes, he is lacking in personal hygeine skills, and he will typically be either very skinny or extremely fat. Stereotypical nerds are usually socially awkward and incapable of social interaction, except on technical topics.

[Top]

Nerds in art and literature

Dramatic depictions of good nerds typically have them as good hearted people who wish harm on no one, but are bullied by their obvious intellectual inferiors. Many nerds in fiction are supporting characters who are valuable sources of information or useful skills for the heroes. When used as lead characters, it is often considered a natural character type for a superhero's secret identity as a put upon person with a wonderful secret. Nerds in supporting roles often feature as a technological genius who invents or repairs plot devices that enable the main characters to move towards a goal. They are also used as socially inept foils to much more charming main characters.

Evil nerds, typically embittered through a lifetime lived as a social outcast and seeking revenge upon the world, are a popular archetype for the supervillain, often as a mad scientist.

In the late 1990s, "nerd" developed distinct positive connotations within social spheres connected to computing and the Internet, to denote with pride a technically skilled person. Popular computer news website Slashdot bills itself as "News for nerds. Stuff that matters."

Among non-nerds, nerds are often thought of as people who are intelligent, yet socially awkward. Those labelled as nerds in high school are often ridiculed and bullied by more "popular", or more socially adept teens. Nerds generally express an above-normal interest in complex topics such as computers, technology in general, and academic subjects. Comic books, role playing games, anime, film, and science fiction and fantasy literature are heavily associated with nerds.

[Top]

Nerds and geeks

Within the nerd community, nerds dispute among themselves the relationship of the "nerd" to the "geek"; some view the geek as a less technically skilled nerd, although some factions maintain that "nerds" are both technically skilled and socially competent, whereas "geeks" are only technically skilled, and socially incompetent. Still other nerds call themselves "geeks" with pride, in much the same way as is done with "nerd" (c.f. Geekcorps, an organization that sends people with technical skills to Third World countries to assist in computer infrastructure development.)

There may be some regional differences in the use of the words "nerd" and "geek". Some claim that on the North American East coast the word "nerd" is preferred to "geek", and the meanings of the words are switched (see MIT professor Gerald Sussman aims to instill pride in nerds:

My idea is to present an image to children that it is good to be intellectual, and not to care about the peer pressures to be anti-intellectual. I want every child to turn into a nerd - where that means someone who prefers studying and learning to competing for social dominance.

-- Gerald Sussman, quoted by Katie Hafner, "New York Times", 1994-08-29.

[Top]

Stereotypical examples in media

[Top]

See also

[Top]




  View Live Article   This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License