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Age of the Geek: Depictions of Nerds
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Edited by
KATHRYN E. LANE
DEPICTIONS OF
NERDS AND GEEKS
IN POPULAR
MEDIA
Age of the Geek
Kathryn E. Lane
Editor
Age of the Geek

Depictions of Nerds and Geeks in Popular Media
Editor
Kathryn E. Lane
Department of English
Northwestern Oklahoma State
University
Alva, OK, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-65743-1 ISBN 978-3-319-65744-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65744-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950699
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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Preface
This book developed out of a “special topics” area of the Southwest

Popular/American Culture Association conference, entitled The Geek in
Popular Culture. Interest in the topic at the conference lead to a visit
with an editor at Palgrave, which lead to this collection of essays examin-
ing depictions of the nerd and/or geek in popular culture. It was fasci-
nating then—and still is—to hear people say “I’m geeking out” or to
see a tweet that proclaims “We’re all NERDY teachers. Well. Some of us
are NERDY grad students.” As these instances demonstrate, the denota-
tion and connotation of these words is changing, as is the cultural per-
ception of the nerd/geek stereotype. This collection of essays grapples
with the evolution of these terms as seen in mediums that illustrate our
lives—Twitter, television, film, fiction, sports, etc. It is not our intent
that this book be the end of the discussion; we see it as the beginning of
a valuable academic and social discourse. Each contribution deals with
a particular type of media versus a variety of media; recognizing that
no contribution is exhaustive. This collection is organized into sections
which focus on a particular theme or media to simplify the reader’s navi-
gation. Within this collection there are a variety of research methodolo-
gies demonstrated, and contributions from around the globe.
The editor would like to thank the contributors for their work,
patience, and timely responses over the last two years. Furthermore, this
v
vi Preface
project would not have been possible without Shaun Vigil of Palgrave
Macmillan, who offered guidance and support to a first-time book
collection editor. Many thanks.
Alva, USA Kathryn E. Lane

Contents
1 How Was the Nerd or Geek Born? 1

Kathryn E. Lane
Part I What Did You Call Me?: Defining Geekdom
2 A Nerd, a Geek, and a Hipster Walk into a Bar 21

Jessica Bodner
3 Mediagasms, Ironic Nerds, and Mainstream Geeks:

A Multimethodological Ideographic Cluster Analysis
of <Nerd> and <Geek> on Twitter 43
Steven S. Vrooman, Tiffiny Sia, Michael Czuchry
and Christopher Bollinger
4 Changing Faces: Exploring Depictions of Geeks

in Various Texts 67
Kathleen M. Earnest
vii
viii Contents
Part II In or Out?: Defending Nerddom
5 Geek Metafiction: Nerds, Footnotes, and Intertextuality 91

Bernardo Bueno
6 Ich Bin Ein Nerd!: Geek Identity in Insider

and Outsider Media 113
Jessica Stanley Neterer
7 Geek Is the New Jock: The Relationship Between Geek

Culture and Sports 129
Łukasz Muniowski
8 Geeking Out and Hulking Out: Toward an

Understanding of Marvel Fan Communities 149
Peter Cullen Bryan
Part III I Saw It on TV: Depictions of “Other”

Nerd/Geek Stereotypes on Television
9 How Is It Okay to Be a Black Nerd? 169

Johnathan Charles Flowers
10 That Geek Look: Beauty and the Female Geek Body 193
Lauren Rocha
11 Modern Nerd: Alex Dunphy and Growing Up Geeky

in Modern Family 213
Alissa Burger
Contents ix
Part IV I Am A Nerd!: Depictions of the Nerd/Geek

Stereotype on Film
12 From Zero to Hero and Back Again: Nerd Nobodies,

Magic Makeovers, and the Power of the American
Dream in Four Teen Films 233
Jennifer Rachel Dutch
13 The Geek as Rake: Roving Masculinity

in Contemporary Film 251
K. Brenna Wardell
14 The Horror of the Geek: The Geek Archetype

in Slasher Film 269
Sotiris Petridis
15 Survival of the Smartest? 285

Kathryn E. Lane
Index 293
Editor and Contributors
About the Editor
Kathryn E. Lane is an Associate Professor of English and Department

Chairperson at Northwestern Oklahoma State University. After com-
pleting her BA from Southeastern Louisiana University, Lane pursued
a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Louisiana
at Lafayette. She subsequently earned her doctorate from UL Lafayette,
completing her dissertation, entitled “More Than Girl Talk: Situating Sex
and the City in Feminist Discourse.” Her areas of interest include popu-
lar culture, Victorian literature, and detective fiction. She has published
both creative and scholarly works on a variety of topics. This is her first
time serving as editor of a book collection.
Contributors
Jessica Bodner is enamored of the miracle of human consciousness. In

her younger days that meant she was a teacher by trade and reluctant
researcher; now she is an online learning experience designer and inde-
pendent scholar. Dr. Bodner devotes her time to fandoms, hobbies, and
the normals, jocks, and nerds she calls her husband and children.
Christopher Bollinger is a Professor of Communication Studies at
Texas Lutheran University in Seguin, Texas, USA. His teaching and
research foci reside at the intersections of pedagogy, critical cultural
xi
xii Editor and Contributors
studies, language and social interaction, identity politics, ethnographic

methodologies, violence prevention, and interdisciplinary studies. He
also directs the Center for Teaching and Learning.
Peter Cullen Bryan is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at
Penn State University in the United States. His areas of study include
Transnational American Studies, International Communications, and
twenty first-Century American culture, emphasizing comic art and digi-
tal communities. His Master’s thesis considers the influence of early
cartoonist Windsor McCay upon comics as a genre, and his disserta-
tion focuses on the cultural impact of Donald Duck comics in Germany,
emphasizing Erika Fuchs’s translations and digital fan communities that
arose in response. He often wonders if Stan Lee slips out to see a Marvel
film, just to feel like a fan.
Bernardo Bueno teaches Literature and Creative Writing at the
Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) where
he also acts as undergraduate Creative Writing coordinator. He holds a
Ph.D. in Creative and Critical Writing (University of East Anglia, United
Kingdom) and an MA in Literary Theory (PUCRS, Brazil). His research
interests are the aspects of geek culture in fiction, genre fiction, creative
writing pedagogy, and the dialogue between technology and literature.
Alissa Burger is an Assistant Professor of English and Director of
Writing Across the Curriculum at Culver-Stockton College. She teaches
courses in research, writing, and literature, including a single-author
seminar on Stephen King. She is the author of Teaching Stephen King:
Horror, the Supernatural, and New Approaches to Literature (Palgrave,
2016) and The Wizard of Oz as American Myth: A Critical Study of Six
Versions of the Story, 1900–2007 (McFarland, 2012), and editor of the
collection The Television World of Pushing Daisies: Critical Essays on the
Bryan Fuller Series (McFarland, 2011).
Michael Czuchry is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology
at Texas Lutheran University, in Seguin, Texas, USA. He received his
BA in Psychology from Colorado College, his MA in Experimental
Psychology from East Tennessee State University, and his Ph.D. in
Experimental Psychology at Texas Christian University. Dr. Czuchry
teaches Introduction to Psychology, Quantitative Methods for
Psychology, History and Systems of Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience,
and numerous other courses. He loves to engage students in the research
Editor and Contributors xiii
process. He also loves hiking in the Greenbelt in Austin, Texas with his
wife, Rebecca, and dog, Sophie.
Jennifer Rachel Dutch Since 2013, she has been an Assistant Professor
of English at York College of Nebraska where she teaches a variety of
writing and literature courses. She completed her Ph.D. in American
Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg in 2013. While
her primary research interests are in the intersection of food and cul-
ture in the United States, Dutch is also interested in how the American
Dream is shaped by and helps to shape identity in the United States.
Kathleen M. Earnest is an Assistant Professor of English at
Northwestern Oklahoma State University, USA. She also serves as the
program coordinator for English education, advising English majors
who plan to teach secondary students in public school. Her instruc-
tional responsibilities include introductory composition and humanities
courses and upper division courses in young adult literature, methods
for secondary teachers, and English usage. She earned a Bachelor’s from
NWOSU, a Master’s from the University of Oklahoma, and a doctorate
from Oklahoma State University. Research interests include first genera-
tion college students, place-making, pop culture, and creativity and arts
in community development.
Johnathan Charles Flowers is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the
Department of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale,
Illinois. Since beginning his graduate career, Flowers has taught for the
Departments of Philosophy; Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; and
Education Administration and Higher Education. Flowers has also pre-
sented regularly at academic conferences across the country on issues in
East Asian Philosophy, Philosophy of Race, Feminism, Comics Studies,
and Critical Approaches to Popular Culture. His forthcoming disserta-
tion, Mono no Aware as an Aesthetics of Gender, aims to use the Japanese
aesthetic of mono no aware to discuss gender performativity.
Łukasz Muniowski is a doctoral student at the Institute of English
Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland. He has produced academic arti-
cles on sports, literature, television series, and video games. His doctoral
dissertation focuses on the biographical representations of the achieve-
ments of leading NBA players after Michael Jordan. He is an irregular
contributor to WhatCulture and a full-time dog lover.
xiv Editor and Contributors
Jessica Stanley Neterer is an adjunct instructor at John Tyler

Community College in Virginia (USA) where she teaches composi-
tion and literature courses. She graduated with an MA in English from
Longwood University in 2015. Her research interests include children’s
and young adult literature, pop culture studies, and all things geek. In
her spare time, she enjoys baking, board games, and taking pictures
of her cat. “Ich Bin Ein Nerd!: Geek Identity in Insider and Outsider
Media” is her first publication.
Sotiris Petridis is a Ph.D. candidate at Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki, Greece. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Film Studies
(Aristotle University) and a Master’s degree in Art, Law, and Economy
(International Hellenic University). He has been awarded a scholarship
from the Onassis Foundation for his doctoral studies. His research area is
about the evolution of the slasher film subgenre. He is currently teaching
Film Theory and Television History at Aristotle University as part of his
doctoral studies.
Lauren Rocha is an adjunct instructor at Merrimack College. Her
research focuses on gender in nineteenth-century Transatlantic Gothic
texts and popular culture. She has presented her work at the conferences
of the Popular Culture Association, American Literature Association,
and the Association of Adaptation Studies. Her articles have appeared in
Popular Culture Review, Journal of Gender Studies, and Critical Survey.
She is currently working on examining female bodies and identity in
relationship to the domestic in horror.
Tiffiny Sia is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Texas Lutheran
University. This position gives her an excuse to include research in all
her classes, which resulted in her being awarded the Piper Professor
of 2016. She is basically an experimental research junkie and is con-
stantly involving students and colleagues in this habit-forming scientific
endeavor. Favorite research paradigms involve documenting the more
questionable social media sites, like YikYak and ChatRoulette. She earned
her Ph.D. and Master’s in Experimental Psychology from Texas Christian
University in 1996 and 1993, respectively. Her research interests include
any amusing topic she can operationally define.
Steven S. Vrooman, Ph.D. is Professor at Texas Lutheran University.
He received his MA and Ph.D. in Communication from Arizona State
University. He teaches, among other things, on rhetoric, social media,
Editor and Contributors xv
and popular culture. He has been researching Internet communica-

tion since it emerged from BITNET in the 1990s. He has researched
and written on Internet social movements, online fandoms, word use on
Twitter, flaming, trolling and invective, the maintenance of online com-
munities, and the incorporation of social media into elearning. He pro-
fessionally consults on social media theory and strategy and spoke on
Twitter at TEDxSanAntonio. He tweets at @MoreBrainz.
K. Brenna Wardell is an Assistant Professor of Film and Literature at
the University of North Alabama in the United States. Her research
focuses on gender and sexuality, aesthetics, and issues of place and space
in media and literary texts. Publications include work on Joss Whedon’s
acting ensemble for Slayage and a piece on Alfred Hitchcock’s film
Frenzy, published in Critical Insights Film: Alfred Hitchcock from Salem
Press.
CHAPTER 1
How Was the Nerd or Geek Born?
Kathryn E. Lane
“It’s the age of the geek, baby,” proclaims Alec Hardison in numerous
episodes of the TV series Leverage. Perhaps Hardison is right. The
highest-ranked show on primetime is The Big Bang Theory,1 which
depicts a group of “nerdy” scientists trying to connect with the non-
nerdy world surrounding them. In addition, Scorpion, a show that
chronicles a team of geniuses who exhibit “nerd” characteristics from
the very first episode, was the highest-ranked new primetime show
in 2014. As Brian L. Ott contends in his book The Small Screen: How
Television Equips Us to Live in the Information Age, if television func-
tions as public discourse, then it stands to reason that what is on our tel-
evision sets, Netflix accounts, or Hulu does, in fact, go far beyond mere
entertainment. This leads to the inevitable question: why can American
culture accept a nerd or geek character in the media—television, film,
YouTube—and yet not accept a person who would be characterized as a
“nerd” or “geek” in real life?
And, just to be clear, when asked, “by a 2-to-1 margin (60 to 28%),
American parents say, if forced to choose, they would prefer their sons
or daughters make C grades and be active in extracurricular activities
K.E. Lane (*)

Northwestern Oklahoma State University,
Alva, OK, USA
© The Author(s) 2018 1

K.E. Lane (ed.), Age of the Geek,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65744-8_1
2 K.E. Lane
than make A grades and not be active.”2 Furthermore, the authors were
quick to suggest that “parents responding to the Gallup survey inter-
preted ‘make A grades and not be active’ as a code for nerd or dork,
while athletics is the ticket to social status.”3 That statement is telling as
well. Parents would rather their children risk injury in athletics than be
labeled a “nerd”? Really? That doesn’t make sense if we consider what
Americans are actively selecting on their televisions, Netflix, or mobile
devices for entertainment. The Big Bang Theory is the most popular sit-
com on American television and has held the coveted position for years.4
In fact, the show rakes in consistently high ratings even in syndication,
which would explain why it is on at least one channel every night in most
markets, whether new episodes are airing or syndication reruns are grac-
ing our TV screens. So, if Americans are willing to watch “geeks” on tel-
evision, Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube, self-identify as “nerds” on Twitter
and Instagram, and read fiction that either features nerds or geeks or
marks the reader as such, then why are the terms still considered negative
if someone else uses them to describe you? It doesn’t make sense that
you can call yourself a geek but be offended when someone else does.
Perhaps we need to consider the meaning of the words themselves.
What is a “nerd”? What is a “geek”? How are they different? When
Hardison says it’s the “age of the geek,” what does that mean? Let’s
start with some basic definitions to ensure we’re all speaking the same
language.5
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines “nerd” as “an insig-
nificant, foolish, or socially inept person; a person who is boringly con-
ventional or studious. Now also: specifically a person who pursues an
unfashionable or highly technical interest with obsessive or exclusive
dedication.”6 The definition of a nerd, specifically their pursuance of
highly technical interests—“with obsessive or exclusive dedication”—
is what some individuals would associate with geekdom. However, the
definitions of the two terms are very similar, so a comparison to estab-
lish basic similarities will be helpful. The OED offers two distinct defi-
nitions of “geek.”7 For the sake of this introduction, let us focus on
the first definition and its subcategories. The OED states that “geek”
is chiefly a US slang word with three subdefinitions that are relevant to
our understanding of the nerd/geek stereotype. The first definition of
“geek” is originally English in origin, specific to the north of the coun-
try, and is defined as “a person, a fellow, especially one who is regarded
as foolish, offensive, worthless, etc.”8 This first subdefinition focuses on
1 HOW WAS THE NERD OR GEEK BORN? 3
the gender of the person being described, with its denoting “a fellow.”
This definition also points out that the person being described is either
“foolish, offensive, or worthless.” Our understanding of the nerd/geek
stereotype, then, takes male gender and “studiousness” as its founda-
tion, followed by a string of negative characteristics. But what if this early
definition of a geek is an attempt to articulate social awkwardness, all of
which could be described using the adjectives listed above, depending
upon the situation?
The second definition of “geek” is noted as “frequently depreciative”
and is defined as “any unsociable person obsessively devoted to a par-
ticular pursuit (usually specified in a preceding attributed noun).” For
example, someone might be identified as a “computer geek,” “book
geek,” or “football geek.” The portion of this definition that is relevant
to our understanding of the nerd/geek stereotype is the obsessiveness
that many claim marks the stereotype as it is perceived today. Of course,
obsessiveness was noted in the “nerd” definition also, so this is definitely
a uniform concept as far as these labels are concerned. Not surprisingly,
this particular definition notes that “geek” is often used as a simile for
“nerd.”
The third subdefinition is the most specific: “A person who is
extremely devoted to and knowledgeable about computers or related
technology. In this sense, especially when as a self-designation, not nec-
essarily depreciative.” This definition focuses on knowledge, specifically
knowledge of things having to do with technology. From these defini-
tions and subdefinitions we can take away a few common established
characteristics: intelligence, obsessiveness, and male gender. The other
thing that all of these definitions have in common is that calling yourself
a geek is not a bad thing, but someone else calling you a “geek” can be
an insult.9, 10
Yet, how did these words come to have the meanings they do? Both
terms are obviously loaded with connotations, but the denotation of the
terms is very similar. How then do we differentiate between the terms?
Perhaps more importantly, should we differentiate? How did our con-
cept or understanding of the words “nerd” and “geek” come into being?
How did this all start?
The nerd/geek stereotype that is the focus of this collection is a twen-
tieth-century construct that is changing with each step we make further
into the twenty-first century. The term “nerd,” coined at polytechnic
institutes in the 1930s and 1940s, is not the same characterization we
4 K.E. Lane
see in the media today.11 The nerd has evolved from his or her humble
beginnings as a social outcast into a mainstream character ripe for analy-
sis and study, as this character, more than any other, tells us how we feel
about ourselves as we face a world dominated by technology and isola-
tion. Considering how much of Americans’ daily lives are dominated by
media, for this study we need to look at the nerd/geek stereotype in its
first incarnation in our current medium to fully understand the implica-
tions. It’s not until the nerd is seen and identified on television that the
stereotype will begin to solidify.12 Furthermore, it’s no coincidence that
it’s in the powerful medium of television, with its capacity for discourse
with the viewer and society as a whole, that the nerd stereotype fully
comes into being. It would take Saturday Night Live to make “nerd”
into a household word, even though the visual template is already estab-
lished and easily recognized. We know this character when we see them:
a male character of high intelligence, demonstrating obsessiveness and
social awkwardness, wearing “coke bottle glasses,” a pocket protector, or
a comic book-related item to fully “clue” the viewer that this is the nerd
character.
“The first Saturday Night Live (SNL) nerds sketch was writ-
ten by Rosie Shuster and Anne Beatts shortly after the appearance of
Elvis Costello as the musical guest on December 17, 1977.”13 In fact,
Costello’s fill-in performance sparked the idea for the first nerd skit per-
formed on SNL, which would ultimately lead to the widespread use of
the term and its current characteristics. Anne Beatts recounts how watch-
ing Costello in his signature garb prior to the performance that fateful
night actually prompted her revelation that “this isn’t punk rock. This
is nerd rock.”14 Costello’s glasses, his short pants, and threadbare jacket
shifted Beatts’s view. Costello’s performance was a hit and ultimately
opened the door for Beatts and Shuster to pitch their nerd skit idea to
SNL. After a bit of pushback, the first skit, starring Bill Murray and Gilda
Radner as “nerds,” premiered on January 28, 1978, entitled “Nerd
Rock.”
As the nerd stereotype is finally labeled, it might be helpful to look
analytically at the first visual representation of the character who would
come to be seen and termed “nerd” in the American consciousness. It’s
not surprising that this first instance of image and label together comes
from television; even in 1978, TV was having a major impact on the
national consciousness.15 The skit “Nerd Rock” aired approximately one
hour into SNL on January 28, 1978. This was the tenth episode of the
show’s third season. This particular episode was hosted by Robert Klein
and featured Bonnie Raitt as the musical guest. Klein would appear as
the leader of the “nerds” band, with the three nerd characters playing
opposite the cool radio host, portrayed by Dan Ackroyd. As is common
in media, viewers often recognize the nerd or geek character because of
their difference from the dominant hegemony. Ackroyd’s character wears
sunglasses for the duration of the skit. His posture, even though seated,
is relaxed and speaks of confidence in his position and what he’s doing.
In contrast, all three nerds depicted in the skit are clearly nervous in their
space, alternating between slouching and avoiding eye contact. The three
nerd characters are identified by nicknames only in the first skit. The first
and implied leader due to positioning of the group at the “interview”
table is “Spaz,” portrayed by Robert Klein. The second nerd character is
“Four Eyes” and is played by Gilda Radner. The final character is “Pizza
Face,” portrayed by Bill Murray. All three of the nerd characters are
wearing “outdated” or mismatched clothes in comparison to Ackroyd’s
on-trend shirt and jacket.
The skit opens with music playing in the background. As the chorus
winds down, Ackroyd’s character leads into the interview with the fol-
lowing comment: “Acid Rock. Punk Rock. What’s next? Nerd Rock.”
He then proceeds to introduce the song, “Gimme Back My Algebra
Homework, Baby,” and the group he’s interviewing—the Nerds. The
first question posed to the group is, “So, where did you all come up with
the name ‘nerds’? Is that what you call yourselves?” The character of
Spaz immediately answers with, “No, other people did.”
At this point, the studio audience laughs and the nerd stereotype has
been named. This statement also establishes—in a living example broad-
cast through our television screens—the idea that you can self-identify as
a nerd, but that when the term is used by someone else to describe you,
you have to react in some way. These three characters who have been
labeled “nerds” have created an album as a sort of rebellion against the
name-calling, reappropriating the term for their own use. It’s no coinci-
dence that the album is identified as “rock,” which has a history of being
seen as the “rebellious” genre.
Next, the three characters are seated on one side of the table in a line,
and the character of Dugan even comments that he wishes his audi-
ence could see what he’s seeing. In hopes of giving the listening audi-
ence a sense of what he’s faced with in his studio, he acknowledges
each nerd character and describes a physical detail to his audience. For
6 K.E. Lane
the character of Pizza Face, Dugan states, “You’re wearing some plastic
thing in your pocket with a dozen pencils,” which calls to mind the
pocket protectors worn by the engineering students of earlier years. With
Four Eyes, Dugan appears to struggle for a descriptor (perhaps due to
her female gender and an ingrained need not to insult a woman) and
settles for “You have a lot of yellow plaque on your teeth.” Interestingly,
this comment is met with an nod of agreement from the female nerd of
the group. Finally, Dugan has worked his way “up” the table of nerds to
Spaz, who he notes is “wearing a think button.” During the “interview,”
the nerd characters don’t stay on topic, don’t always answer Dugan’s
questions as expected—or at all—and they show little understanding of
social expectation. In many ways, the nerds depicted on-screen demon-
strate our cultural understanding of the nerd character with one major
difference—gender. In this group of nerds, there is a single female nerd,
the character of Four Eyes. Furthermore, it’s not simply that a female
version of the nerd stereotype is depicted on-screen, but, even more
than that, that this female nerd gives voice to the nerds’ struggles and
motivation.
The character of Dugan asks the group “Why now?” Four Eyes
answers: “We’re an idea whose time has come. We’re young. We’re
brilliant. We’re nerds. It’s our turn to be popular.”16 This answer
reveals a number of things about the nerd stereotype with which we’re
already familiar—an awareness and acknowledgment of their intelli-
gence, a desire to be “popular” or part of what is perceived as normal,
and abstract thinking about a common topic—music. Also, an appar-
ent belief in rule-following, as the nerds seem to think popularity is a
question of “turns,” an idea often used to explain sharing to young chil-
dren. The nerds think it’s their “turn,” without realizing they do not
have the social skills to be popular. Even an interview with the charac-
ters about their album—something about which these characters should
be excited—is a challenge for the radio host, Dugan, as they consistently
stray from the topic at hand.
The “Nerd Rock” skit has two more crucial elements at play that
deserve discussion: the formation of the group and the product of their
collaboration, their album. This group of nerds does not have a tradi-
tional rock “origin” story; instead they’ve been set up by Four Eyes’s
aunt so that, even in this “anti-adult” enterprise of creating rock music,
the nerds are still connected to adults. Furthermore, the final third of the
skit shows Spaz’s mother carrying in the teenagers’ coats and coaching
them through saying thank you and goodbye to the radio host. At
this point, the nerds further demonstrate that they are socially stunted
because they all answer in unison, in a childlike singsong, and there’s no
attempt to complete their interview with Dugan. They are following the
rules set out by the authority figure of the mother.17
The Nerds’ album is entitled “Trying Desperately to Be Liked” and
contains songs with titles like “Gimme Back My Algebra Homework,
Baby” and “I’ll Give You My Lunch Money,” both of which speak to
the nerd stereotype of individuals who are often bullied or used by oth-
ers for their own benefit. Furthermore, the mention of money in the
song title also speaks to the elevated economic status of the nerds. If
they had a bag lunch from home, there would be no money to “take”
and, hence, no need for the song. Additionally, the Nerds’ song titles
articulate the struggles they deal with daily. Their album title speaks to
what these characters desire most “desperately”—to be liked. This is a
common trope that we’ll see in the depiction of nerd characters from
this point forward: either an explicit or implicit desire to do whatever it
takes to be liked by those they see as “popular.” The other element of
the skit, which revolves around the album, is that the station attempts to
give away ten free copies of the Nerds’ album, but no one calls into claim
one. The message being sent here is that even bored listeners won’t
invest their time or energy in order to have something created by nerds.
Furthermore, this implies there is a stigma attached to anything labeled
“nerd,” even if it’s free.
As previously mentioned, there is one aspect of the SNL skit that
marks this depiction as different from the history of the term and its por-
trayal previously. This is the character of Four Eyes. Four Eyes is a female
nerd and, traditionally, the stereotype of a nerd or geek is of a male
outsider. Yet, one could argue that the depiction of a female nerd was
a good thing, as SNL’s first nerd skit was popular and led to more suc-
cess. In total, there were 13 nerd skits produced and broadcast between
January 1978 and March 1980. All 13 nerd skits depicted both a male
and female nerd character.
Some elements that appear in all of SNL’s nerd skits should be cata-
logued to further our understanding of the stereotype. The first is that
there is an implied potential romantic relationship between Todd and
Lisa. This is in direct contrast to the cultural stereotype that male nerds
can’t get girlfriends or attract female companionship. Importantly for the
stereotype, though, Todd doesn’t “get” Lisa, despite his attempts, so
8 K.E. Lane
the message is again sent that male nerds aren’t successful romantically/
sexually. Additionally, the interaction between the two nerds for the
majority of the skits comes across as a sort of “arrested development,”
with Todd giving Lisa “noogies” and trying to peek into her blouse.
Lisa’s reply to most of Todd’s jokes is to say “That was so funny, I for-
got to laugh.” Both characters are in the same costumes for the major-
ity of the skits. However, even when there’s a reason for these nerds to
dress up—the prom, for example18—their clothing demonstrates certain
elements of nerd iconography. For instance, Lisa is consistently shown
in glasses and with Kleenex tucked into her sleeves, while the waistband
of Todd’s pants is always higher than his waist. For most of the epi-
sodes, Todd is wearing a pocket protector. The nerd stereotype becomes
cemented with each skit.
Finally, the nerd’s socio-economic status is further defined through
the SNL nerd skits. Todd and Lisa never have to handle an afterschool
job. Their only focus is on their studies, their potential love inter-
ests, running for student body president, and Lisa’s piano lessons. This
“unvoiced” element of the nerd stereotype is that nerds have enough
economic freedom (whether their own or through their parents) to not
worry about economics.
The popularity of the nerd skits widened the cultural knowledge of
the term “nerd,” as evidenced by Beatts recounting that, a year later
(approximately 1979), a friend told her the word “nerd” was being put
into the dictionary.19 The year 1980 was the next instance of the word
“geek” being used in a publication in a way that correlated with the nerd
stereotype. In her 1980 book Runnin’ Down Some Lines: The Language
and Culture of Black Teenagers, Edith A. Folb states that “geek,” in
the black vernacular, means a “studious person.”20 Folb’s definition
aligns with the OED definition for both terms—“nerd” and “geek”—as
American culture knows the terms to be used today. As this chronology
would imply, the terms “nerd” and “geek” were being adopted widely
into the American vernacular, and these words are now loaded with
meaning derived over time.
After Folb’s book and the SNL skits, it wasn’t long before we saw a
character in the popular media who was identified as a “nerd.” The first
example, post SNL, was the iconic film Revenge of the Nerds, which pre-
miered in theaters in 1984. The movie’s success was quickly followed up
with a sequel, aptly entitled Revenge of the Nerds II, in 1987. In 1988,
the television show The Wonder Years21 premiered with a huge viewing
audience, all following the life and trials of the main character/narrator
of Kevin Arnold. Much like in the Revenge of the Nerds films, Kevin does
not initially identify as a “nerd,” but is instead labeled one by others
(notably his brother, Wayne). The more obviously nerd/geek stereotype
is seen in the character of Paul, Kevin’s childhood best friend. In The
Wonder Years, Paul is depicted as the nerd character, and his “nerdiness”
is highlighted by the contrast between him and Kevin, as well as Paul’s
relationship with the other characters on the show. Eventually, Kevin’s
acceptance of himself, and later Paul’s, comes to include an acceptance
of this labeling, which paradoxically moves him out of the “nerd” cate-
gory.22 The Wonder Years ran on ABC from 1988 until 1993, and during
this time two more Revenge films were produced and released, in 1992
and 1994 respectively. While this show was much lauded by television
critics, the nerd/geek character wasn’t as prominent in this series as it
would shortly become.
In 1989, Family Matters premiered. The show focused on the
Winslow family, an African-American working-class family in Chicago,
Illinois.23 Family Matters is of note in the development of the nerd/geek
stereotype for two reasons. First, by changing from the elaborate narra-
tive format for which The Wonder Years was so lauded to a more tradi-
tional half-hour sitcom format, Family Matters relied more on the nerd
character to provide the series’ laughs and popularity. Second, for many
television viewers at the time, the nerd/geek stereotype was embod-
ied in the character of Steven Urkel, the nerd character on the series.
Again, in both television shows and the Revenge films, the nerd/geek
stereotype was presented as unchanging and always in opposition to the
“normal” characters. In Family Matters,24 the character of “Urkel” was
most clearly positioned as the opposite of the Winslows’ athletic son,
Eddy25 and their popular daughter, Laura. For a large portion of the
1990s, the nerd character was typified by the character of Steven Urkel.
Yet, the “geek” love that seems so common currently doesn’t reflect the
nerd/geek stereotype of the 1980s and 1990s, as typified by this char-
acter. The character of Steven Urkel was always identified as a “nerd,”
not a geek, despite his ability to create computers and other technology.
It was not considered socially acceptable for the character to be as he
was; instead, the Winslows were always trying to change him to fit their
norm. This was very much an “old school” version of nerddom, in which
the nerd character needed to be transformed to “normal.”26 Both The
Wonder Years and Family Matters were mainstream hits, but the nerd/
10 K.E. Lane
geek stereotype was either phased out of the series, as in The Wonder
Years when Kevin and Paul part ways, or made the punchline of every
episode, as seen in Family Matters. These depictions had value in that
they were being broadcast, and the show’s popularity spoke to the char-
acters being relatable, but there was still a bit more evolution to come
before we reached the modern-day nerd/geek archetype.
Family Matters went off the air in 1998, with Steve Urkel having
transformed into a “normal” enough character for Laura Winslow to
agree to marry him. In 1999, a new series, entitled Freaks and Geeks,27
appeared on NBC, but was cancelled in 2000. This show was unlike
any other television show in its depiction of high-school life and being
labeled a “geek,”28 but the show’s poor ratings didn’t allow it to add
much to the nerd/geek stereotype.29–31
While these shows were playing on American television screens, the
terms “nerd” and geek” were becoming more widespread and synony-
mous. Three OED word-use entries reveal how the two words became
synonymous. The first is from Rudy Rucker’s book Mondo 2000, pub-
lished in 1993. Rucker writes, “Geek is the proud, insider term for nerd.
If you are not a dedicated techie, don’t use this word.”32 This demarca-
tion of the term “geek” as being a privileged term in the tech indus-
try is telling and may explain how “geek” became a verb in the 1990s.
With the growth of the technology industry and the predominance of
technology in most Americans’ daily lives, it’s not surprising that the
terms “nerd” and “geek” should become more common and intrinsi-
cally linked to technology in some form. Our nerd/geek stereotype is
evolving into a more concrete characterization than “glasses” and “social
awkwardness.”
In a June 2001 Independent article the terms appeared together again,
furthering the technology correlation once more: “We’re the nerds, the
geeks, the dweebs: the men and women who can spend 20 hours straight
contemplating 600 bytes of obscure, arcane, impenetrable computer
code.”33 This statement is rhetorically significant. There’s an implied
ownership and an embracing of the terms in an attempt to delineate
those so categorized by their accomplishments. What the writer is say-
ing is that if you can “spend 20 hours straight contemplating […]code,”
then you have earned the designation of nerd, geek, or dweeb. The neg-
ative title has been revised to include an almost superhuman ability to
control the inner workings of technology. It’s now a badge of honor that
denotes an ability to control technology.
Finally, the Chicago Tribune attempts to differentiate between the

two terms in their January 20, 2002 edition with the following state-
ment: “Among Silicon Valley nerds, chip engineers … are the geekiest
of all.” In this statement, a hierarchy of nerdishness34 is stated with the
most extreme cases of nerdiness being labeled as “geekiest.” What these
three instances demonstrate is that the term “geek” is replacing “nerd”
in common usage. This preference for “geek” versus “nerd” speaks to
the twentieth-century construct with its reliance on technology.35 It’s no
coincidence that Alec Hardison declares his computer prowess by declar-
ing “It’s the age of the geek, baby” in all those episodes of Leverage. An
ability to control the computers that control our lives has become some-
thing valuable, to be desired versus derided. It is here that a shift in the
stereotype is taking place. The connotations of being labeled a “geek”
are shifting from negative to positive (or at least less negative). However,
the two terms are so intrinsically linked in the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries that for one to change, there must be a similar change in the
other term also.
It’s here that we turn back to the medium that has predominated
in the formation of our cultural concept of the nerd/geek stereo-
type by originally projecting it into our homes and making it a house-
hold word—television. Two more shows contributed specifically to the
nerd/geek stereotype we see today. The first was a show with an inter-
esting past, Ugly Betty.36 Ugly Betty aired from 2006 to 2010 on ABC.
However, it was an American interpretation of a daily Spanish telenovela
entitled Yo soy Betty, la fea, which originally centered on the characters
of Betty and her boss. The Spanish telenovela was quite popular in its
market and an American version was planned for several years before the
show actually made it to the air. The American interpretation of the tel-
enovela was adapted for American television audiences and transformed
into a weekly serial show, versus a daily serial. In the American version,
Betty is most easily recognized by her dark-rimmed glasses and adult
braces; in fact, the packaging for the show’s DVD collection features a
close-up of the Betty character’s braces with a headline that reads “Ugly
Betty,” implying that the braces are what make Betty ugly and/or dis-
tinctive. Interestingly, Ugly Betty was popular with viewing audiences for
the first three seasons, and the show has continued to be popular even
after cancellation, gaining a cult following after its termination. The titu-
lar character of Betty adheres to earlier depictions of the nerd/geek ste-
reotype as the series begins. Betty wears glasses, has adult braces, wears
12 K.E. Lane
clothes that don’t match, is too naïve to understand that her co-workers
aren’t actually being nice to her without an ulterior motive, and initially
struggles with her love life. However, as this introduction has previously
discussed, Betty’s gender marks her as different from the stereotypical
nerd/geek. In previous nerd/geek stereotype depictions, when female
nerd/geeks are depicted, they are accompanied by a male nerd/geek to
balance out the pair. However, Betty is the sole nerd/geek on the show,
which may speak to more gender equality as regards the nerd/geek ste-
reotype.37 Furthermore, over time, Betty transforms outwardly to adhere
more to the “norm,” which some may contend makes Ugly Betty another
nerd transformation story.38 So, if Betty has been transformed from
nerddom to normal, what will bring the nerd/geek stereotype to the cul-
tural construct we know and recognize today?
The second show that adds to our current understanding of the nerd/
geek stereotype is The Big Bang Theory,39 which aired on CBS in 2007
and has received much critical and audience attention since its first sea-
son. The Big Bang Theory depicts a group of nerds/geeks who are drawn
together by their common interests initially. As the series starts out, four
of the main characters are male and demonstrate “nerdy” or “geeky” per-
sonality traits, with one “normal” character (for contrast) depicted in the
female character of Penny. As previously discussed, the “normal” charac-
ter is necessary to establish the nerd/geek through opposition. However,
as the series has grown more popular, The Big Bang Theory has gone in
an unprecedented direction. Early seasons of the show introduced more
“normal” characters to more clearly show the nerd/geek characters in
opposition to the norm, in terms of physical stature, intelligence, and
a sense of honor. However, as the series has grown in popularity, the
“core” group has grown to include two more potentially “geeky” char-
acters as the love interests of the male members. What marks The Big
Bang Theory as the end of the current nerd/geek stereotype’s evolution
is that the characters are not being “transformed” into “normal” people,
but instead their nerddom is being celebrated and it’s often the normal
characters who are the butt of the jokes.40 Furthermore, the stigma of
“nerddom” is being removed, as the characters posited as “normal” are
embracing parts of geek culture. In the most recent season of The Big
Bang Theory, the character of Penny (the “normal” character through-
out the series’ history) considers attending ComicCon, and the other
female characters have been shown repeatedly interacting with elements
of “nerddom” throughout the series.41 This is a reversal of the early trope

of nerd/geek stock characters in need of transformation (or extinction).
Now, the nerd/geek stereotype is accepted as is. And this is where our
tale of evolution ends… for now.42
Society’s complex relationship with the nerd or geek character in early
depictions, and especially in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries,
speaks to our complex relationship with lives dominated by technology.
The nerd/geek stereotype is a product of the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries, a modern-day archetype born out of society’s implicit reliance
on, and potential resentment of, technology. When we, as viewers, laugh
at the geek character who is unable to comprehend a basic social interac-
tion while simultaneously being able to reprogram “600 lines of arcane
[computer] code,”43 we’re allowed to acknowledge that there are parts
of our society and its functions that we don’t understand or control. By
laughing at the nerd, we’re giving ourselves permission to laugh at our-
selves without feeling threatened. After all, we’ve been conditioned to
expect that the “geek squad” will help us solve whatever the technologi-
cal problem may be. We’ve come to embrace this stereotype because, in
so doing, we embrace parts of ourselves.
Now that the evolution of the modern nerd/geek stereotype has been
established, let’s turn to this collection and its organization, which will
take us to the depiction of the nerd/geek in media at the present time.
This text is organized into four sections based upon the most predomi-
nant depictions of the nerd/geek stereotype in current American media.
The essays collected here come from scholars at varying levels and
from a variety of fields. Their approaches to research differ. The way they
refer to the nerd/geek stereotype often reflects further difference. Some
consider themselves a nerd or geek. Others do not. However, what con-
nects them all is their drive to understand the nerd/geek stereotype that
is so often positioned as Other by American society, while being so intri-
cately woven into our national consciousness.
Notes
1. Rice, “Making a Bigger Bang,” 26.
2. Bishop et al., “Why We Harass Nerds and Freaks,” 235.
3. Bishop et al., “Why We Harass Nerds and Freaks,” 235.
4. Rice, “Making a Bigger Bang,” 23.
14 K.E. Lane
5. Brian Ott writes that “Academic writing is far more indebted to the
intellectual work and resources of the past than most scholars would like
to admit” (xiii).
6. OED Online, s.v. “Nerd, n.,” accessed July 20, 2016, http://www.oed.
com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/126165.
7. The other definition of geek is “a performer at a carnival or circus whose
show consists of bizarre or grotesque acts, such as biting the head off a
live animal” (OED, “geek”). The term hasn’t been used to refer to this
sort of “geek” since the 1970s, so it is outdated and obviously doesn’t
reference the nerd/geek stereotype.
8. OED Online, s.v. “Geek.n.,” accessed July 20, 2016, http://www.oed.
com/view/Entry/77307?rskey=H4GazJ&result=1.
9. Issues of self-identification and “name-calling” will be addressed in the
first section of this text.
10. Katrin Rentzsch, Astrid Schutz, and Michela Schroder-Abe, “Being
Labeled Nerd.”
11. See David Anderegg’s Nerds.
12. Benjamin Woo, “Nerds, Geeks, Gamers, and Fans.”
13. Nugent, American Nerd, 61.
14. Beatts qtd. in Nugent, American Nerd, 62.
15. Television’s influence in politics has been widely documented since as
early as the 1960s.
16. SNL, January 28, 1978.
17. Christine Quail, “Hip to Be Square.”
18. SNL, May 20, 1978.
19. Nugent, American Nerd, 66.
20. “Geek, n.,” OED Online, June 2016, Oxford University Press, http://
www.oed.com/view/Entry/77307?rskey=H4GazJ&result=1 (accessed
July 20, 2016).
21. “The Wonder Years,” IMDb, accessed August 9, 2016, http://www.
imdb.com/title/tt0094582/?ref_=nv_sr_1.
22. Lori Kendall, “Nerd Nation.”
23. Please see the chapter by Jonathan Flowers for a more detailed discussion
of what it means to be a black nerd.
24. “Family Matters,” IMDb, accessed August 9, 2016, http://www.imdb.
com/title/tt0096579/?ref_=nv_sr_1.
25. Todd Jones, “The Dumb Jock and the Science Nerd.”
26. See Jennifer Rachel Dutch’s essay on nerd makeover films for a further
discussion of this trope in popular media.
27. “Freaks and Geeks,” IMDb, accessed August 9, 2016, http://www.imdb.
28. “A Geek Chorus.”
29. Murray Forman, “Freaks, Aliens, and the Social Other.”

30. “The Oral History of Freaks and Geeks,” Vanity Fair, 2013, http://
www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2013/01/freaks-and-geeks-oral-history
(accessed August 9, 2016).
31. The show Freaks and Geeks has since become a “cult classic,” turning out
a number of “household name” actors, but the show’s popularity while it
was actually airing was limited at best.
July 20, 2016).
July 20, 2016).
34. According to the OED, the condition or quality of being a nerd.
35. Due to the similarity between the two words and their meanings, I will
use the two terms interchangeably throughout this introduction and
from here on.
36. “Ugly Betty,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805669/?ref_=rvi_tt
(accessed August 9, 2016).
37. See Alissa Burger’s essay, “Growing Up Geeky,” in this collection for a
discussion of female geekdom.
38. See Jennifer Rachel Dutch’s essay on nerd makeover films for a discussion
of this trope in modern media.
39. “The Big Bang Theory-CBS.com,” CBS, http://www.cbs.com/shows/
big_bang_theory/ (accessed August 9, 2016).
40. Monika Bednarek, “Constructing ‘Nerdiness’: Characterisation in The Big
Bang Theory.”
41. Consider that the female characters actively engage in playing that “bas-
tion” of nerddom—Dungeons and Dragons—in some episodes.
42. As the series is still actively producing new seasons, one cannot predict
what is to come. However, after nine seasons, there have been some
changes, but the physical and emotional markers of nerd/geek are still
present in the core characters.
43. OED, “nerd.”
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Woo, Benjamin. “Alpha Nerds: Cultural Intermediaries in a Subcultural Scene.”
European Journal of Cultural Studies 15, no. 5 (2012): 659–676. doi:
10.1177/1367549412445758.
———.“Nerds, Geeks, Gamers, and Fans: Doing Subculture on the Edge of
Mainstream” in Borders of Subculture: Resistance and the Media, ed. Alexander
Dhoest, Steven Maillet, Barbara Segaert, and Jacques Haers. 17–36. New
York: Routledge, 2015.
PART I
What Did You Call Me?: Defining Geekdom
The first part of the book focuses on identity and nerddom/geekdom.

The articles in this part will look at how and why someone becomes
labeled or self-identifies as a nerd/geek. Historically, most individuals
who self-identify as a “nerd” or “geek” as adults were either labeled as
such as a child, or, perhaps, hid their “nerdiness” successfully into adult-
hood. Once independent of societal expectations, these individuals were
able to be their “true selves” and let their “geek flag fly.”1 For many
scholars, this is known as the “lived experience” versus (traditionally)
purely theoretical research. This part offers a bridge between the “lived”
experience and the nerd/geek characters so often depicted in popular
media. In her essay entitled “A Nerd, a Geek, and a Hipster Walk into
a Bar…,” Jessica Bodner presents an auto-ethnographic essay exploring
her attempt to create an ease in the strained communications between
the outside world and those she identifies as her “people: geeks and
nerds.” In addition, Bodner examines the image and status of the “hip-
ster” in relation to the nerd/geek communities in which she participates.
She utilizes a variety of media to ground her study, including YouTube
and personal interviews.
1 The play on the common phrase “let your freak flag fly” is intentional here.
Considering the connection between the early definitions of geeks as including the term
“circus freak” and the idea embodied in the phrase to fully embrace one’s identity, the revi-
sion seemed appropriate.
20 What Did You Call Me?: Defining Geekdom
Authors Steven S. Vrooman, Christopher Bollinger, Tiffiny Sia, and

Michael Czuchry present “Mediagasms, Ironic Nerds, and Mainstream
Geeks: A Multimethodological Ideographic Cluster Analysis of <Nerd>
and <Geek> on Twitter.” In this essay, the authors have completed
a long-term study on Twitter and the usage of the terms “geek” and
“nerd.” Vrooman, Bollinger, Sia, and Czuchry utilize their data to ana-
lyze how people actually use these terms on social media and the impli-
cations of that for our culture today. Tweets demonstrate that there is
much slippage across this recently reified definitional gulf, especially
when it comes to media consumption and fandom.
The part on identity and geekdom closes with Kathleen M. Earnest
and her essay “Changing Faces: Exploring Depictions of Geeks in
Various Texts.” Earnest’s essay offers an attempt to move our under-
standing of the geek between two types of popular literature: a case study
and television characterizations. Utilizing the real-life account of two
self-identified geeks, Earnest draws connections to current media depic-
tions of the geek character.
CHAPTER 2
A Nerd, a Geek, and a Hipster

Walk into a Bar
Jessica Bodner
As with all things in the human experience, life offers up various paths
and obstacles that allow some of us to be what we want and require
some of us to be what we are not, or otherwise hide what we are. This is
true in almost all matters of identity and orientation, which is the heart
of trying to understand, accept, verbalize, and communicate ourselves
to the world. When this true self is rejected, many try to hide by don-
ning costumes that are accepted or stand a better chance of not being
rejected.
Nerds and geeks have been simultaneously celebrated and scourged by
society, especially in this age where technology is pocket-sized and very
infrequently out of reach. It’s a confusing place to be, especially when
there are not adequate words to communicate identity. This autoeth-
nographic piece explores my attempt to create an ease in the strained
communications between the outside world and my people: geeks and
nerds. That we are different, both from those outside of our subculture
and from each other, is obvious. What is not obvious is the delineation
between nerd and geek and the socially accepted hipster.
J. Bodner (*)
Independent Scholar, Bristow, VA, USA
© The Author(s) 2018 21

K.E. Lane (ed.), Age of the Geek,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65744-8_2
22 J. Bodner
I Am a Nerd (Just Not That Kind?)

I openly and wholeheartedly proclaim myself to be a nerd! It has taken
many years to not only come to this conclusion but fully embrace it.
According to people who have known me for decades, I used to refer to
myself as a geek. I do not remember this. I’ve seen the notes: they are
in my handwriting, and folded ever so precisely. I cannot deny them. I
can see myself in middle school, clinging to that last shred of hope that
I could be cool, and maybe at that point in my life, geek seemed less
socially suicidal than nerd, and so it makes sense that I would claim it.
Spotting the geek or nerd in a group is not a challenging task.
Stereotypically we are pasty, pimply, poorly dressed, socially awkward, get
overly excited about esoteric topics, wear glasses, and are not popular with
the opposite gender.1–4 According to Nugent, this image has been floating
in the ephemera of popular culture since the 1920s, though the words geek
and nerd have not always been associated with this particular imagery.5
I am not this kind of nerd, maybe.
I am pasty, but this is because I’m very aware of sunburns and

skin cancer and how easily I get them, not because my hobbies are
“indoorsy.” I have great skin, but that’s because I take care of it and per-
sonal hygiene is part of my daily life and not a superfluous habit that gets
in the way of obsessing. On a regular basis, I do not dress up, though I
do have a rather impressive collection of fandom-based T-shirts. I wear
reading glasses. I am not socially awkward all the time, especially not
with the opposite gender. I actually prefer the company of males, be they
nerds, normals, jocks, etc. I am, embarrassingly enough, most socially
awkward around other women. I just do not know how to relate to or
read their social cues.
Yet, superficially fitting the stereotype is still not what makes me a nerd.
The D4
There are several necessary components that I believe are necessary to
making a nerd or a geek:
• High or at least above average intelligence; otherwise we could not

do what we do
2 A NERD, A GEEK, AND A HIPSTER WALK INTO A BAR 23
• Elitism, or the belief that, while someone is always going to be

better, it’s our job to hold them and ourselves to a higher standard
• Obsession—the ultimate love for esoteric knowledge which is the
basis of our social currency
• Fandoms, the objects of our undying affection, manifestations of
which include TV shows, books, computers, actors, movies, science,
space—anything as long as it’s complex
It’s fairly simple. All of these elements intertwine and, without one, all of
the pieces suffer.
The beauty of this description is that it does not include commentary
on appearance or necessarily mean we’re social outcasts. Though these
traits can and do feed into making the stereotypes seem true.
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
According to Hollingworth’s research, there is a social sweet spot for

children with high IQs.6 At the point someone has an IQ of 155 or
greater (normed and standardized to the Stanford-Binet tests of the
1930s), they have a tendency to not be able to relate to others. At 155,
asynchronous development of intellect over emotion or physicality rules.
In childhood, the difference between someone’s biological age and their
intellectual one often challenges their ability to understand and interact
with others, and unless they make a concerted effort to learn social skills,
this pattern is destined to repeat.
You Say That, Like It’s a Bad Thing

What, more often than not, does us in socially, is the elitism. Less than
2% of the population of the world has an IQ of 130 and above.7 We
are smart. We have abilities most others do not. Unfortunately, we know
it. We obsess over things that are purposefully complex. We strive for
elegance in function and simplicity of use. Elegance and simplicity are
not easy to come by, so we spend inordinate amounts of time obsessing.
The problem is that we’re cognizant of this as well. We’re protective of
our knowledge about our fandoms, and before we allow others to claim
they are just as smart or have the acumen, we’re going to test that claim.
If someone does not measure up or surpass us, we’re going to inform
them of this and seem like pompous, elitist jerks. Pompous elitist jerks,
24 J. Bodner
in general, make others feel poorly about themselves and their abilities,
whether we intend it or not.8
6F6273657373696F6E0D0A (Obsession)
It is the obsessive love of knowledge of esoteric topics that drives us,
because information is social currency. I relish the smallest details of the
things that I love and will participate and study them even to my social
detriment. In my circles, if a person is not knowledgeable enough, is
unwilling to learn, claims to be an expert in an area in which they are
actually ignorant, or, worse still, is just unapologetically wrong, their
nerd credibility goes into the red. Being able to prove we not only know
things but can access that information at the right time is how we decide
who our ruling class is. Benjamin Nugent is a prime example of los-
ing “nerd cred.” In his book American Nerd: The Story of My People he
confuses the characters of “Booger” and “Poindexter” from the iconic
Revenge of the Nerds movies.9 Before this, I was thoroughly enjoying his
book. This simple error changed the way I viewed all his work, to the
point that I found it very challenging to finish his book and am hesitant
to quote his other pieces. However, I am doing so, because, even though
he showed weakness in not being able to tell the difference between
Curtis Armstrong and Timothy Busfield, he shows strength everywhere
else.
Studying Never Stops…

When I am around others, I usually have a notebook on hand or a note
open on my phone. Even while setting up Dungeons and Dragons I note
particular rituals that help players decide which dice set to use or their
ticks and tells during various challenges. I started being mindfully obser-
vant when learning to mimic girls in middle school. I started writing
things down when I began working on case studies for a psychology class
in high school. This escalated and became verbally invasive when examin-
ing how Dungeon Masters create their worlds, so when I did something
similar for a study, I understood the process. After the study concluded,
I continued the written habit in my real life to try to understand more
deeply how people think and problem-solve.
In taking the notes and debriefing, I tried to use the information to
understand my friends better and hopefully be less awkward. However,
while my being a better friend helped, my taking notes made my friends

uncomfortable. I have had to learn to be more covert about it, again.
Oversharing
The coping mechanisms that were created for dealing with my own asyn-
chronous development reappear and look a lot like a social detriment.
I love days spent sitting around repeatedly binge-watching Sherlock,10
while writing or crafting a piece for my latest cosplay project. I would
much rather be doing these things than participating in unwanted social
interaction, even with the people I love the most. Not because I do
not love them, but because doing these things give me a sense of pur-
pose. Fulfilling what I perceive to be my purpose at any particular time
is going to give me greater satisfaction than hanging out with people
engaging in small talk. Partially because participating in small talk often
displays my asynchronicity.
During public social functions, I have panic attacks. I do not react
this way because I’m misanthropic or have social anxiety disorder—on
the contrary, I love people. I also know I am an acquired taste. Possibly,
because I do not know when to stop talking until it is too late and I have
overshared or inadvertently displayed elitism. I never mean to be or to
do this. I hate that it comes across this way. Knowing I have behaved this
way causes a physical pain in my chest and stomach that I cannot ade-
quately describe. It’s like heartburn, sadness, and a Goliath pressing down
so hard that I swear I am an inch shorter. Genuinely, I’m just overly
excited about being able to share what I know with someone. Somewhere
in my psyche is the notion that my knowledge has value. It is so dear
to me that my sharing knowledge is sharing a piece of me. I am vulner-
able, open, almost free when I’m presenting, writing, or oversharing (like
I currently am), hoping that this will incite others to share. When I finally
read the cues that I have overshared, I am embarrassed and then desire
nothing more than to hide with Sherlock and grommet pliers.11
Mimicry
This obsessive love and social awkwardness are not to say that I do
not also have an aspect of myself, like most people do, that allows for
interaction with those who do not enjoy my fandoms or who are not
nerds. Once upon a time, I became really good at mimicking personality
26 J. Bodner
archetypes (probably explains my love of Dungeons and Dragons).

The one that was most socially acceptable was that of the “airhead.”
I played dumb. I practiced coquetry. I learned to play the role of the
social butterfly. Much like Clark Kent, I can take off my glasses and
themed T-shirt, put on a different outfit, and, with that act, put on a dif-
ferent persona. I have no problem wearing a hockey sweater, going out
to a bar, eating hot wings, drinking beer, and screaming at the screen
with the best of them. Or, I put on make-up, jewelry, and something
that accentuates my feminine figure and pretend I have a clue about fash-
ion or celebrities or whatever it is that normal women talk about.
I try to walk the line between both worlds: normal and nerd. I can
play the role of normal, though not very well and not for very long, but
the effort is there. The interesting aspect of these identities is that they
are often just as comfortable as slipping into my tabletop gear to play
Dungeons and Dragons. The problem is that I know I am just role-
playing. I could never permanently live in any other identity—even when
I try blending them.
The clearest manifestation of this was when I started trying to get
into shape. I got a trainer. I chose him not just because he came highly
recommended, or because he insisted on performing scientific tests to
determine what my actual health situation was and what my goals should
be. The deciding factor was that he had a Ph.D. in Exercise Science. It
crystalized for me then that even the most jock, least nerdy thing I do
still has a soft and pasty nerdy underbelly.
The Spectrum
In the realm of social situations, there is a spectrum of popularity. In
high school, as in life, there is a definite hierarchy to how the social sys-
tem functions. In general, jocks, cheerleaders, and rich kids are at the
top. Normals fall into the middle. The bottom rung consists of various
types of people who are beleaguered by the notion of lacking cool, the
geeks and nerds. Then, like social nomads, among the various strata, the
hipsters are allowed to roam.
Hipsters seem to have an easier time working themselves into the vari-
ous realms of social acceptance. One would believe that, because they
look like nerds, they should be cast with us; however, they possess a
seemingly magical ability not to be. They are often accepted in places
where nerds are not.
Geek vs Nerd (Round 1)

The difference between the nerd and the geek is hotly debated. Those
outside of the subculture of nerds and geeks use the words indiscrimi-
nately and as insults, but to those inside the culture, we often claim that
we are completely different species.
“Cohen the Barbarian,” a self-identified geek, who has one of those
interesting jobs where no one can know what he really does, claims that
“geeks make the gadgets and toys that nerds merely play with.”12 While
“Airwolf,” a nerd with a very similar job, claims the opposite.13
The academic literature about the cultures is no help in forming a
delineation. Most authors work with the theory of the stereotype lump-
ing geeks and nerds together. For other authors, geeks seem to be more
technologically adept.14–16 Though even this is still countered with the
notion that geeks are serious fans, nerds are academics, and those who
care about the difference are dorks. (Am I actually a dork?)
I cannot espouse the academic literature. I believe the bulk of it,
at this point in cultural time, has overlooked the concept that there is
really a difference. What I am certain of is that, until the research is no
longer being conducted by scholars like Kinney, etc., who believe that
people like me should have the goal of being normal, as if we need to
change because there is something inherently wrong with us, these titles
and subcultures are going to remain largely amalgamated, and subject to
socially accepted bullying.17
For the record, I do not want to be normal. I want to be myself. I do
not want to have to fear running the risk of personal and professional
mockery because I want to share and display what I am most passionate
about.
Geek vs Nerd (Round 2)

As the academy has failed to give a solid understanding, perhaps pop cul-
ture can help.
John Green, the author of A Fault in Our Stars and founder of
Nerdfighteria states:
…nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about

stuff… Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-
chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. …When people call people nerds,
28 J. Bodner
mostly what they’re saying is “you like stuff.” Which is just not a good
insult at all. Like, “you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human
consciousness.”18
Simon Pegg (2013), an actor/writer/producer/director, states:
Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being
afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool
about how much you like something…19
Wil Wheaton (Ortiz 2014), another actor/writer/producer/director,

muddies the waters further with:
I use “nerd“ and “geek“ interchangeably—I don’t make a distinction. I’ve

said that being a nerd is not about what you love, it’s about the way that
you love it
… Someone who I would describe as a “geek“ or “nerd” is a person who

loves something to its greatest extent, and then looks for other people who
love it the same way, so they can celebrate loving it together.20
And therein remains my problem with crafting definitions that draw the
line. All that can be surmised is that nerds and geeks love.
The version of this discussion that rings truest to me, and comes close
to drawing a firm and comprehensible line, comes from the depths of
YouTube. Rhett and Link (Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal), with their
lovingly acerbic video for their song “Epic Rap Battle: Nerd vs Geek,”
describe the differences between the two breeds as being not about tech-
nical skill, interests, or even topics of obsession.21 Rather, according to
Rhett and Link’s lyrics, it’s more about the ability to be social and inter-
act with people, especially the opposite gender.
The main difference, according to the “Epic Rap Battle,” is in the
respective social skills of the geek and the nerd. In several lines, the
“geek,” played by McLaughlin, insults the “nerd” about his physical
appearance, yet it is the line “There’re some things you can’t learn in
a class/Or else I’d sign you up for ‘Intro to How Not to Be a Social
Outcast’,” speaks directly to the possible difference between these two
breeds: the ability to socially interact with others.22
If sociability is really the difference between the geek and nerd, where
does it come from? Why are geeks able to interact, while nerds seem to
have a difficult time of it? Perhaps it is a matter of self-interpretation.
Social Lubrication and Niche Populations

The bars at the heart of this exploration of cultures and identities are
vastly different, both in how the populations interact and how they cre-
ate communities.
Green
“Green” is not an interesting place, on purpose. The concept behind it is
simple: food and alcohol. It’s designed to be a local hangout, but it still
has a niche crowd it’s striving for. According to the menu and napkins,
Green is a “sports bar”—that only has one piece of sports memorabilia.
What it does have is televisions stuck on the walls, and more in the win-
dows facing the patio, so the patrons outside can watch whatever sport
the season has to offer. The patio of Green is integral to its business as
most of the patrons smoke or have smokers in their parties, and thus, at
some point, almost everyone ends up outside. Green relies almost exclu-
sively on the company patrons keep to build the patron’s experience.
Honestly, if patrons do not bring their own fun, they’re probably not
going to have much.
The doorman, “Galahad,” is stone-faced while working. Women in
their early 20s will run up to this 40-something and flirt, but most of
the time he rolls his eyes, claiming they’re only paying attention to him
to “work out their daddy issues.”23 Galahad’s job is vastly different from
that of the doorman at 10 Forward. At Green, he has to break up fist
fights and forcefully remove both male and female patrons for various
reasons. Again, it’s the patrons that build the experience, and different
ratios of people create diverse atmospheres at Green almost every time
the doors open.
10 Forward
“10 Forward,” on the other hand, is a rather interesting place. It prides
itself on being a geek and gamer pub, as is poorly scrawled across their
front windows in what could be shoe polish. 10 Forward hosts cosplay
events and seems to specialize in overly complicated drinks with geeky/
nerdy themes that all taste precisely like Robitussin. At 10 Forward,
socialization occurs around the center set of tables, which is flanked by
walls of TVs available for video gaming. At the beginning of the night,
these tables are split up so a set of four can sit around and play a card
30 J. Bodner
or board game. By the end of the evening, the tables are frequently slid
together so that larger and larger groups can play the same game, or
engage in conversation.
The “Shaman” and the “Imp” run 10 Forward, from behind the bar
and at the door. The Imp collects the cover charge, though once the sta-
tus of regular is earned, female patrons should expect to hug him in lieu
of paying the cover. The Shaman is the mastermind behind the place,
yet after beholding his glorious waist-length beard and Birkenstocks, one
would assume he was a hippie, not a geek.
These bars may as well exist in two different worlds due to their styles
of approaching the same types of people. Green practically forces patrons
to interact, but never welcomes it when they do, whereas 10 Forward will
not force interaction, its décor actually creating invisibly cordoned sections
for video games, card games, talking, and even reading that can be imag-
ined as social study carrels. When the bar is busy, the carrels act as a secure
base from which people are able to explore what is going on around them,
without having to take any additional social risk if they are not ready for it.
This design, though unintentionally created, is precisely what most of the
patrons need in order to find ways to become more social.
Socially Awkward, Party of One

When meeting new people, the inevitable question about employment
always pops up. I start off quite obviously by saying something to the
effect of “Oh, um, I’m a professor.” I am almost embarrassed to say
it. I play off the value of what I do and give a self-effacing description.
“I, uh, just teach the intro teacher prep classes. You know, it’s like teach-
ing future teachers why they don’t want to teach.” At 10 Forward,
depending on the direction the conversation would take, I might hand
over a business card, suggesting they get back into or start college, and
saying I would be happy to point them to the right person, or even dis-
cuss ways to collaborate on projects. Occasionally this would become
awkward if Big Red was present, as I would be accused of being “pre-
tentious.” I found this really hurtful, mainly because she was my friend
outside of the bar and knew I was being self-effacing in order to network
while not seeming elitist. I tried not to allow Big Red’s commentary to
affect my strategy of handing out cards to perfect strangers; however, it
still does, and that’s part of what makes me a nerd. Big Red’s reaction,
while atypical at 10 Forward, was a common reaction at Green.
My first night at Green, I was greeted by Galahad. We had known

each other in high school and I decided to set up camp near him. Being
at a bar where alcohol and sports are the only social lubricants, I had to
do the awkward thing—eavesdrop and walk up to random people whose
conversations I felt I knew something about and ease myself into the
group. Being a nerd, I’m not very good at this. However, I had my nor-
mal persona on that day, and a drink in front of me, so, ham-fisted as the
initial encounters were, I was able to engage and interact.
When the game I was watching went to commercial, typical conversa-
tion topics came up and I had to once again discuss my job. “Oh, um,
I’m a professor” came out of my mouth again, and once again I was
self-effacing about what I teach, even completely avoiding my topics of
research. I would never come out and say “I’m a professor. I research
the application of ludic pedagogy in learning environments on non-tradi-
tional learns and nerds. I’m so lucky because I get to spend all day think-
ing about video games and the human brain!” I am proud of my work.
However, I know that most people will not understand it or see its value.
Other professors have even used my work as an opportunity to pick on
me. (Yes, other Ph.D.s mock my nerdiness, to my face.)
In this first encounter at the bar, the reaction to my title alone actu-
ally caused a physical change in the cluster. The group of guys I had
been talking to minutes earlier about bad calls and player stats, who were
buying me drinks and making room for me by the television, crossed
their arms, rounded off their shoulders, and took steps back. Sensing
I had screwed up, I excused myself and finished my beer chatting with
Galahad.
Obviously, it was not my study of nerds or video games, or even being
a nerd, that made these guys uneasy. What made this patch of patrons at
Green uncomfortable was the notion that I was both educated and an
educator. According to Galahad, I made them feel stupid and inferior,
like I was going to judge them because I had this degree and this title.24
It was as if the very fact of my being a professor, in spite of being self-
effacing and modest about who I was and what I did, was performing an
emasculating act. I apparently damaged the barrier of heteronormative
masculinity by acting as if I never could.
Being what I am and knowing I make the normals feel this way, the
next time I was up at Green, I had Galahad introduce me to people.
This time, when the topic came up, I said I was a teacher, pulling up my
middle-school teacher personality. “I teach English at so-and-so middle
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“You mean a goof?” I queried, wondering how she could have
penetrated the unhappy man’s secret.
“No, a goop. A goop is a man who’s in love with a girl and won’t
tell her so. I am as certain as I am of anything that Ferdinand is fond
of me.”
“Your instinct is unerring. He has just been confiding in me on that
very point.”
“Well, why doesn’t he confide in me, the poor fish?” cried the high-
spirited girl, petulantly flicking a pebble at a passing grasshopper. “I
can’t be expected to fling myself into his arms unless he gives some
sort of a hint that he’s ready to catch me.”
“Would it help if I were to repeat to him the substance of this
conversation of ours?”
“If you breathe a word of it, I’ll never speak to you again,” she
cried. “I’d rather die an awful death than have any man think I
wanted him so badly that I had to send relays of messengers
begging him to marry me.”
I saw her point.
“Then I fear,” I said, gravely, “that there is nothing to be done. One
can only wait and hope. It may be that in the years to come
Ferdinand Dibble will acquire a nice lissom, wristy swing, with the
head kept rigid and the right leg firmly braced and—”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was toying with the hope that some sunny day Ferdinand Dibble
would cease to be a goof.”
“You mean a goop?”
“No, a goof. A goof is a man who—” And I went on to explain the
peculiar psychological difficulties which lay in the way of any
declaration of affection on Ferdinand’s part.
“But I never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life,” she
ejaculated. “Do you mean to say that he is waiting till he is good at
golf before he asks me to marry him?”
“It is not quite so simple as that,” I said sadly. “Many bad golfers
marry, feeling that a wife’s loving solicitude may improve their game.
But they are rugged, thick-skinned men, not sensitive and
introspective, like Ferdinand. Ferdinand has allowed himself to
become morbid. It is one of the chief merits of golf that non-success
at the game induces a certain amount of decent humility, which
keeps a man from pluming himself too much on any petty triumphs
he may achieve in other walks of life; but in all things there is a
happy mean, and with Ferdinand this humility has gone too far. It has
taken all the spirit out of him. He feels crushed and worthless. He is
grateful to caddies when they accept a tip instead of drawing
themselves up to their full height and flinging the money in his face.”
“Then do you mean that things have got to go on like this for
ever?”
I thought for a moment.
“It is a pity,” I said, “that you could not have induced Ferdinand to
go to Marvis Bay for a month or two.”
“Why?”
“Because it seems to me, thinking the thing over, that it is just
possible that Marvis Bay might cure him. At the hotel there he would
find collected a mob of golfers—I used the term in its broadest
sense, to embrace the paralytics and the men who play left-handed
—whom even he would be able to beat. When I was last at Marvis
Bay, the hotel links were a sort of Sargasso Sea into which had
drifted all the pitiful flotsam and jetsam of golf. I have seen things
done on that course at which I shuddered and averted my eyes—
and I am not a weak man. If Ferdinand can polish up his game so as
to go round in a fairly steady hundred and five, I fancy there is hope.
But I understand he is not going to Marvis Bay.”
“Oh yes, he is,” said the girl.
“Indeed! He did not tell me that when we were talking just now.”
“He didn’t know it then. He will when I have had a few words with
him.”
And she walked with firm steps back into the club-house.
It has been well said that there are many kinds of golf, beginning
at the top with the golf of professionals and the best amateurs and
working down through the golf of ossified men to that of Scotch
University professors. Until recently this last was looked upon as the
lowest possible depth; but nowadays, with the growing popularity of
summer hotels, we are able to add a brand still lower, the golf you
find at places like Marvis Bay.
To Ferdinand Dibble, coming from a club where the standard of
play was rather unusually high, Marvis Bay was a revelation, and for
some days after his arrival there he went about dazed, like a man
who cannot believe it is really true. To go out on the links at this
summer resort was like entering a new world. The hotel was full of
stout, middle-aged men, who, after a misspent youth devoted to
making money, had taken to a game at which real proficiency can
only be acquired by those who start playing in their cradles and keep
their weight down. Out on the course each morning you could see
representatives of every nightmare style that was ever invented.
There was the man who seemed to be attempting to deceive his ball
and lull it into a false security by looking away from it and then
making a lightning slash in the apparent hope of catching it off its
guard. There was the man who wielded his mid-iron like one killing
snakes. There was the man who addressed his ball as if he were
stroking a cat, the man who drove as if he were cracking a whip, the
man who brooded over each shot like one whose heart is bowed
down by bad news from home, and the man who scooped with his
mashie as if he were ladling soup. By the end of the first week
Ferdinand Dibble was the acknowledged champion of the place. He
had gone through the entire menagerie like a bullet through a cream
puff.
First, scarcely daring to consider the possibility of success, he had
taken on the man who tried to catch his ball off its guard and had
beaten him five up and four to play. Then, with gradually growing
confidence, he tackled in turn the Cat-Stroker, the Whip-Cracker, the
Heart Bowed Down, and the Soup-Scooper, and walked all over their
faces with spiked shoes. And as these were the leading local
amateurs, whose prowess the octogenarians and the men who went
round in bath-chairs vainly strove to emulate, Ferdinand Dibble was
faced on the eighth morning of his visit by the startling fact that he
had no more worlds to conquer. He was monarch of all he surveyed,
and, what is more, had won his first trophy, the prize in the great
medal-play handicap tournament, in which he had nosed in ahead of
the field by two strokes, edging out his nearest rival, a venerable old
gentleman, by means of a brilliant and unexpected four on the last
hole. The prize was a handsome pewter mug, about the size of the
old oaken bucket, and Ferdinand used to go to his room immediately
after dinner to croon over it like a mother over her child.
You are wondering, no doubt, why, in these circumstances, he did
not take advantage of the new spirit of exhilarated pride which had
replaced his old humility and instantly propose to Barbara Medway. I
will tell you. He did not propose to Barbara because Barbara was not
there. At the last moment she had been detained at home to nurse a
sick parent and had been compelled to postpone her visit for a
couple of weeks. He could, no doubt, have proposed in one of the
daily letters which he wrote to her, but somehow, once he started
writing, he found that he used up so much space describing his best
shots on the links that day that it was difficult to squeeze in a
declaration of undying passion. After all, you can hardly cram that
sort of thing into a postscript.
He decided, therefore, to wait till she arrived, and meanwhile
pursued his conquering course. The longer he waited the better, in
one way, for every morning and afternoon that passed was adding
new layers to his self-esteem. Day by day in every way he grew
chestier and chestier.
Meanwhile, however, dark clouds were gathering. Sullen

mutterings were to be heard in corners of the hotel lounge, and the
spirit of revolt was abroad. For Ferdinand’s chestiness had not
escaped the notice of his defeated rivals. There is nobody so chesty
as a normally unchesty man who suddenly becomes chesty, and I
am sorry to say that the chestiness which had come to Ferdinand
was the aggressive type of chestiness which breeds enemies. He
had developed a habit of holding the game up in order to give his
opponent advice. The Whip-Cracker had not forgiven, and never
would forgive, his well-meant but galling criticism of his back-swing.
The Scooper, who had always scooped since the day when, at the
age of sixty-four, he subscribed to the Correspondence Course
which was to teach him golf in twelve lessons by mail, resented
being told by a snip of a boy that the mashie-stroke should be a
smooth, unhurried swing. The Snake-Killer—But I need not weary
you with a detailed recital of these men’s grievances; it is enough to
say that they all had it in for Ferdinand, and one night, after dinner,
they met in the lounge to decide what was to be done about it.
A nasty spirit was displayed by all.
“A mere lad telling me how to use my mashie!” growled the
Scooper. “Smooth and unhurried my left eyeball! I get it up, don’t I?
Well, what more do you want?”
“I keep telling him that mine is the old, full St. Andrew swing,”
muttered the Whip-Cracker, between set teeth, “but he won’t listen to
me.”
“He ought to be taken down a peg or two,” hissed the Snake-Killer.
It is not easy to hiss a sentence without a single “s” in it, and the fact
that he succeeded in doing so shows to what a pitch of emotion the
man had been goaded by Ferdinand’s maddening air of superiority.
“Yes, but what can we do?” queried an octogenarian, when this
last remark had been passed on to him down his ear-trumpet.
“That’s the trouble,” sighed the Scooper. “What can we do?” And
there was a sorrowful shaking of heads.
“I know!” exclaimed the Cat-Stroker, who had not hitherto spoken.
He was a lawyer, and a man of subtle and sinister mind. “I have it!
There’s a boy in my office—young Parsloe—who could beat this man
Dibble hollow. I’ll wire him to come down here and we’ll spring him
on this fellow and knock some of the conceit out of him.”
There was a chorus of approval.
“But are you sure he can beat him?” asked the Snake-Killer,
anxiously. “It would never do to make a mistake.”
“Of course I’m sure,” said the Cat-Stroker. “George Parsloe once
went round in ninety-four.”
“Many changes there have been since ninety-four,” said the
octogenarian, nodding sagely. “Ah, many, many changes. None of
these motor-cars then, tearing about and killing—”
Kindly hands led him off to have an egg-and-milk, and the
remaining conspirators returned to the point at issue with bent
brows.
“Ninety-four?” said the Scooper, incredulously. “Do you mean
counting every stroke?”
“Counting every stroke.”
“Not conceding himself any putts?”
“Not one.”
“Wire him to come at once,” said the meeting with one voice.
That night the Cat-Stroker approached Ferdinand, smooth, subtle,
lawyer-like.
“Oh, Dibble,” he said, “just the man I wanted to see. Dibble, there’s
a young friend of mine coming down here who goes in for golf a little.
George Parsloe is his name. I was wondering if you could spare time
to give him a game. He is just a novice, you know.”
“I shall be delighted to play a round with him,” said Ferdinand,
kindly.
“He might pick up a pointer or two from watching you,” said the
Cat-Stroker.
“True, true,” said Ferdinand.
“Then I’ll introduce you when he shows up.”
“Delighted,” said Ferdinand.
He was in excellent humour that night, for he had had a letter from
Barbara saying that she was arriving on the next day but one.
It was Ferdinand’s healthy custom of a morning to get up in good

time and take a dip in the sea before breakfast. On the morning of
the day of Barbara’s arrival, he arose, as usual, donned his flannels,
took a good look at the cup, and started out. It was a fine, fresh
morning, and he glowed both externally and internally. As he crossed
the links, for the nearest route to the water was through the fairway
of the seventh, he was whistling happily and rehearsing in his mind
the opening sentences of his proposal. For it was his firm resolve
that night after dinner to ask Barbara to marry him. He was
proceeding over the smooth turf without a care in the world, when
there was a sudden cry of “Fore!” and the next moment a golf ball,
missing him by inches, sailed up the fairway and came to a rest fifty
yards from where he stood. He looked round and observed a figure
coming towards him from the tee.
The distance from the tee was fully a hundred and thirty yards.
Add fifty to that, and you have a hundred and eighty yards. No such
drive had been made on the Marvis Bay links since their foundation,
and such is the generous spirit of the true golfer that Ferdinand’s first
emotion, after the not inexcusable spasm of panic caused by the
hum of the ball past his ear, was one of cordial admiration. By some
kindly miracle, he supposed, one of his hotel acquaintances had
been permitted for once in his life to time a drive right. It was only
when the other man came up that there began to steal over him a
sickening apprehension. The faces of all those who hewed divots on
the hotel course were familiar to him, and the fact that this fellow was
a stranger seemed to point with dreadful certainty to his being the
man he had agreed to play.
“Sorry,” said the man. He was a tall, strikingly handsome youth,
with brown eyes and a dark moustache.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Ferdinand. “Er—do you always drive like
that?”
“Well, I generally get a bit longer ball, but I’m off my drive this
morning. It’s lucky I came out and got this practice. I’m playing a
match to-morrow with a fellow named Dibble, who’s a local
champion, or something.”
“Me,” said Ferdinand, humbly.
“Eh? Oh, you?” Mr. Parsloe eyed him appraisingly. “Well, may the
best man win.”
As this was precisely what Ferdinand was afraid was going to
happen, he nodded in a sickly manner and tottered off to his bathe.
The magic had gone out of the morning. The sun still shone, but in a
silly, feeble way; and a cold and depressing wind had sprung up. For
Ferdinand’s inferiority complex, which had seemed cured for ever,
was back again, doing business at the old stand.
How sad it is in this life that the moment to which we have looked
forward with the most glowing anticipation so often turns out on
arrival, flat, cold, and disappointing. For ten days Barbara Medway
had been living for that meeting with Ferdinand, when, getting out of
the train, she would see him popping about on the horizon with the
love-light sparkling in his eyes and words of devotion trembling on
his lips. The poor girl never doubted for an instant that he would
unleash his pent-up emotions inside the first five minutes, and her
only worry was lest he should give an embarrassing publicity to the
sacred scene by falling on his knees on the station platform.
“Well, here I am at last,” she cried gaily.
“Hullo!” said Ferdinand, with a twisted smile.
The girl looked at him, chilled. How could she know that his
peculiar manner was due entirely to the severe attack of cold feet
resultant upon his meeting with George Parsloe that morning? The
interpretation which she placed upon it was that he was not glad to
see her. If he had behaved like this before, she would, of course,
have put it down to ingrowing goofery, but now she had his written
statements to prove that for the last ten days his golf had been one
long series of triumphs.
“I got your letters,” she said, persevering bravely.
“I thought you would,” said Ferdinand, absently.
“You seem to have been doing wonders.”
“Yes.”
There was a silence.
“Have a nice journey?” said Ferdinand.
“Very,” said Barbara.
She spoke coldly, for she was madder than a wet hen. She saw it
all now. In the ten days since they had parted, his love, she realised,
had waned. Some other girl, met in the romantic surroundings of this
picturesque resort, had supplanted her in his affections. She knew
how quickly Cupid gets off the mark at a summer hotel, and for an
instant she blamed herself for ever having been so ivory-skulled as
to let him come to this place alone. Then regret was swallowed up in
wrath, and she became so glacial that Ferdinand, who had been on
the point of telling her the secret of his gloom, retired into his shell
and conversation during the drive to the hotel never soared above a
certain level. Ferdinand said the sunshine was nice and Barbara said
yes, it was nice, and Ferdinand said it looked pretty on the water,
and Barbara said yes, it did look pretty on the water, and Ferdinand
said he hoped it was not going to rain, and Barbara said yes, it would
be a pity if it rained. And then there was another lengthy silence.
“How is my uncle?” asked Barbara at last.
I omitted to mention that the individual to whom I have referred as
the Cat-Stroker was Barbara’s mother’s brother, and her host at
Marvis Bay.
“Your uncle?”
“His name is Tuttle. Have you met him?”
“Oh yes. I’ve seen a good deal of him. He has got a friend staying
with him,” said Ferdinand, his mind returning to the matter nearest
his heart. “A fellow named Parsloe.”
“Oh, is George Parsloe here? How jolly!”
“Do you know him?” barked Ferdinand, hollowly. He would not
have supposed that anything could have added to his existing
depression, but he was conscious now of having slipped a few rungs
farther down the ladder of gloom. There had been a horribly joyful
ring in her voice. Ah, well, he reflected morosely, how like life it all
was! We never know what the morrow may bring forth. We strike a
good patch and are beginning to think pretty well of ourselves, and
along comes a George Parsloe.
“Of course I do,” said Barbara. “Why, there he is.”
The cab had drawn up at the door of the hotel, and on the porch
George Parsloe was airing his graceful person. To Ferdinand’s
fevered eye he looked like a Greek god, and his inferiority complex
began to exhibit symptoms of elephantiasis. How could he compete
at love or golf with a fellow who looked as if he had stepped out of
the movies and considered himself off his drive when he did a
hundred and eighty yards?
“Geor-gee!” cried Barbara, blithely. “Hullo, George!”
“Why, hullo, Barbara!”
They fell into pleasant conversation, while Ferdinand hung
miserably about in the offing. And presently, feeling that his society
was not essential to their happiness, he slunk away.
George Parsloe dined at the Cat-Stroker’s table that night, and it
was with George Parsloe that Barbara roamed in the moonlight after
dinner. Ferdinand, after a profitless hour at the billiard-table, went
early to his room. But not even the rays of the moon, glinting on his
cup, could soothe the fever in his soul. He practised putting sombrely
into his tooth-glass for a while; then, going to bed, fell at last into a
troubled sleep.
Barbara slept late the next morning and breakfasted in her room.
Coming down towards noon, she found a strange emptiness in the
hotel. It was her experience of summer hotels that a really fine day
like this one was the cue for half the inhabitants to collect in the
lounge, shut all the windows, and talk about conditions in the jute
industry. To her surprise, though the sun was streaming down from a
cloudless sky, the only occupant of the lounge was the octogenarian
with the ear-trumpet. She observed that he was chuckling to himself
in a senile manner.
“Good morning,” she said, politely, for she had made his
acquaintance on the previous evening.
“Hey?” said the octogenarian, suspending his chuckling and
getting his trumpet into position.
“I said ‘Good morning!’” roared Barbara into the receiver.
“Hey?”
“Good morning!”
“Ah! Yes, it’s a very fine morning, a very fine morning. If it wasn’t
for missing my bun and glass of milk at twelve sharp,” said the
octogenarian, “I’d be down on the links. That’s where I’d be, down on
the links. If it wasn’t for missing my bun and glass of milk.”
This refreshment arriving at this moment he dismantled the radio
outfit and began to restore his tissues.
“Watching the match,” he explained, pausing for a moment in his
bun-mangling.
“What match?”
The octogenarian sipped his milk.
“What match?” repeated Barbara.
“Hey?”
“What match?”
The octogenarian began to chuckle again and nearly swallowed a
crumb the wrong way.
“Take some of the conceit out of him,” he gurgled.
“Out of who?” asked Barbara, knowing perfectly well that she
should have said “whom.”
“Yes,” said the octogenarian.
“Who is conceited?”
“Ah! This young fellow, Dibble. Very conceited. I saw it in his eye
from the first, but nobody would listen to me. Mark my words, I said,
that boy needs taking down a peg or two. Well, he’s going to be this
morning. Your uncle wired to young Parsloe to come down, and he’s
arranged a match between them. Dibble—” Here the octogenarian
choked again and had to rinse himself out with milk, “Dibble doesn’t
know that Parsloe once went round in ninety-four!”
“What?”
Everything seemed to go black to Barbara. Through a murky mist
she appeared to be looking at a negro octogenarian, sipping ink.
Then her eyes cleared, and she found herself clutching for support at
the back of the chair. She understood now. She realised why
Ferdinand had been so distrait, and her whole heart went out to him
in a spasm of maternal pity. How she had wronged him!
“Take some of the conceit out of him,” the octogenarian was
mumbling, and Barbara felt a sudden sharp loathing for the old man.
For two pins she could have dropped a beetle in his milk. Then the
need for action roused her. What action? She did not know. All she
knew was that she must act.
“Oh!” she cried.
“Hey?” said the octogenarian, bringing his trumpet to the ready.
But Barbara had gone.
It was not far to the links, and Barbara covered the distance on
flying feet. She reached the club-house, but the course was empty
except for the Scooper, who was preparing to drive off the first tee. In
spite of the fact that something seemed to tell her subconsciously
that this was one of the sights she ought not to miss, the girl did not
wait to watch. Assuming that the match had started soon after
breakfast, it must by now have reached one of the holes on the
second nine. She ran down the hill, looking to left and right, and was
presently aware of a group of spectators clustered about a green in
the distance. As she hurried towards them they moved away, and
now she could see Ferdinand advancing to the next tee. With a thrill
that shook her whole body she realised that he had the honour. So
he must have won one hole, at any rate. Then she saw her uncle.
“How are they?” she gasped.
Mr. Tuttle seemed moody. It was apparent that things were not
going altogether to his liking.
“All square at the fifteenth,” he replied, gloomily.
“All square!”
“Yes. Young Parsloe,” said Mr. Tuttle with a sour look in the
direction of that lissom athlete, “doesn’t seem to be able to do a thing
right on the greens. He has been putting like a sheep with the botts.”
From the foregoing remark of Mr. Tuttle you will, no doubt, have
gleaned at least a clue to the mystery of how Ferdinand Dibble had
managed to hold his long-driving adversary up to the fifteenth green,
but for all that you will probably consider that some further
explanation of this amazing state of affairs is required. Mere bad
putting on the part of George Parsloe is not, you feel, sufficient to
cover the matter entirely. You are right. There was another very
important factor in the situation—to wit, that by some extraordinary
chance Ferdinand Dibble had started right off from the first tee,
playing the game of a lifetime. Never had he made such drives,
never chipped his chip so shrewdly.
About Ferdinand’s driving there was as a general thing a fatal
stiffness and over-caution which prevented success. And with his
chip-shots he rarely achieved accuracy owing to his habit of rearing
his head like the lion of the jungle just before the club struck the ball.
But to-day he had been swinging with a careless freedom, and his
chips had been true and clean. The thing had puzzled him all the
way round. It had not elated him, for, owing to Barbara’s aloofness
and the way in which she had gambolled about George Parsloe like
a young lamb in the springtime, he was in too deep a state of
dejection to be elated by anything. And now, suddenly, in a flash of
clear vision, he perceived the reason why he had been playing so
well to-day. It was just because he was not elated. It was simply
because he was so profoundly miserable.
That was what Ferdinand told himself as he stepped off the
sixteenth, after hitting a screamer down the centre of the fairway,
and I am convinced that he was right. Like so many indifferent
golfers, Ferdinand Dibble had always made the game hard for
himself by thinking too much. He was a deep student of the works of
the masters, and whenever he prepared to play a stroke he had a
complete mental list of all the mistakes which it was possible to
make. He would remember how Taylor had warned against dipping
the right shoulder, how Vardon had inveighed against any movement
of the head; he would recall how Ray had mentioned the tendency to
snatch back the club, how Braid had spoken sadly of those who sin
against their better selves by stiffening the muscles and heaving.
The consequence was that when, after waggling in a frozen
manner till mere shame urged him to take some definite course of
action, he eventually swung, he invariably proceeded to dip his right
shoulder, stiffen his muscles, heave, and snatch back the club, at the
same time raising his head sharply as in the illustrated plate (“Some
Frequent Faults of Beginners—No. 3—Lifting the Bean”) facing page
thirty-four of James Braid’s Golf Without Tears. To-day he had been
so preoccupied with his broken heart that he had made his shots
absently, almost carelessly, with the result that at least one in every
three had been a lallapaloosa.
Meanwhile, George Parsloe had driven off and the match was
progressing. George was feeling a little flustered by now. He had
been given to understand that this bird Dibble was a hundred-at-his-
best man, and all the way round the fellow had been reeling off fives
in great profusion, and had once actually got a four. True, there had
been an occasional six, and even a seven, but that did not alter the
main fact that the man was making the dickens of a game of it. With
the haughty spirit of one who had once done a ninety-four, George
Parsloe had anticipated being at least three up at the turn. Instead of
which he had been two down, and had to fight strenuously to draw
level.
Nevertheless, he drove steadily and well, and would certainly have
won the hole had it not been for his weak and sinful putting. The
same defect caused him to halve the seventeenth, after being on in
two, with Ferdinand wandering in the desert and only reaching the
green with his fourth. Then, however, Ferdinand holed out from a
distance of seven yards, getting a five; which George’s three putts
just enabled him to equal.
Barbara had watched the proceedings with a beating heart. At first
she had looked on from afar; but now, drawn as by a magnet, she
approached the tee. Ferdinand was driving off. She held her breath.
Ferdinand held his breath. And all around one could see their
respective breaths being held by George Parsloe, Mr. Tuttle, and the
enthralled crowd of spectators. It was a moment of the acutest
tension, and it was broken by the crack of Ferdinand’s driver as it
met the ball and sent it hopping along the ground for a mere thirty
yards. At this supreme crisis in the match Ferdinand Dibble had
topped.
George Parsloe teed up his ball. There was a smile of quiet
satisfaction on his face. He snuggled the driver in his hands, and
gave it a preliminary swish. This, felt George Parsloe, was where the
happy ending came. He could drive as he had never driven before.
He would so drive that it would take his opponent at least three shots
to catch up with him. He drew back his club with infinite caution,
poised it at the top of the swing—
“I always wonder—” said a clear, girlish voice, ripping the silence
like the explosion of a bomb.
George Parsloe started. His club wobbled. It descended. The ball
trickled into the long grass in front of the tee. There was a grim
pause.
“You were saying, Miss Medway—” said George Parsloe, in a
small, flat voice.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Barbara. “I’m afraid I put you off.”
“A little, perhaps. Possibly the merest trifle. But you were saying
you wondered about something. Can I be of any assistance?”
“I was only saying,” said Barbara, “that I always wonder why tees
are called tees.”
George Parsloe swallowed once or twice. He also blinked a little
feverishly. His eyes had a dazed, staring expression.
“I’m afraid I cannot tell you off-hand,” he said, “but I will make a
point of consulting some good encyclopædia at the earliest
opportunity.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Not at all. It will be a pleasure. In case you were thinking of
inquiring at the moment when I am putting why greens are called
greens, may I venture the suggestion now that it is because they are
green?”
And, so saying, George Parsloe stalked to his ball and found it
nestling in the heart of some shrub of which, not being a botanist, I
cannot give you the name. It was a close-knit, adhesive shrub, and it
twined its tentacles so loving around George Parsloe’s niblick that he
missed his first shot altogether. His second made the ball rock, and
his third dislodged it. Playing a full swing with his brassie and being
by now a mere cauldron of seething emotions he missed his fourth.
His fifth came to within a few inches of Ferdinand’s drive, and he
picked it up and hurled it from him into the rough as if it had been
something venomous.
“Your hole and match,” said George Parsloe, thinly.
Ferdinand Dibble sat beside the glittering ocean. He had hurried

off the course with swift strides the moment George Parsloe had
spoken those bitter words. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts.
They were mixed thoughts. For a moment joy at the reflection that
he had won a tough match came irresistibly to the surface, only to
sink again as he remembered that life, whatever its triumphs, could
hold nothing for him now that Barbara Medway loved another.
“Mr. Dibble!”
He looked up. She was standing at his side. He gulped and rose to
his feet.
“Yes?”
There was a silence.
“Doesn’t the sun look pretty on the water?” said Barbara.
Ferdinand groaned. This was too much.
“Leave me,” he said, hollowly. “Go back to your Parsloe, the man
with whom you walked in the moonlight beside this same water.”
“Well, why shouldn’t I walk with Mr. Parsloe in the moonlight
beside this same water?” demanded Barbara, with spirit.
“I never said,” replied Ferdinand, for he was a fair man at heart,
“that you shouldn’t walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same water. I
simply said you did walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same water.”
“I’ve a perfect right to walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same
water,” persisted Barbara. “He and I are old friends.”
Ferdinand groaned again.
“Exactly! There you are! As I suspected. Old friends. Played
together as children, and what not, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“No, we didn’t. I’ve only known him five years. But he is engaged
to be married to my greatest chum, so that draws us together.”
Ferdinand uttered a strangled cry.
“Parsloe engaged to be married!”
“Yes. The wedding takes place next month.”
“But look here.” Ferdinand’s forehead was wrinkled. He was
thinking tensely. “Look here,” said Ferdinand, a close reasoner. “If
Parsloe’s engaged to your greatest chum, he can’t be in love with
you.”
“No.”
“And you aren’t in love with him?”
“No.”
“Then, by gad,” said Ferdinand, “how about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Will you marry me?” bellowed Ferdinand.
“Yes.”
“You will?”
“Of course I will.”
“Darling!” cried Ferdinand.
“There is only one thing that bothers me a bit,” said Ferdinand,

thoughtfully, as they strolled together over the scented meadows,
while in the trees above them a thousand birds trilled Mendelssohn’s
Wedding March.
“What is that?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Ferdinand. “The fact is, I’ve just discovered
the great secret of golf. You can’t play a really hot game unless
you’re so miserable that you don’t worry over your shots. Take the
case of a chip-shot, for instance. If you’re really wretched, you don’t
care where the ball is going and so you don’t raise your head to see.
Grief automatically prevents pressing and over-swinging. Look at the
top-notchers. Have you ever seen a happy pro?”
“No. I don’t think I have.”
“Well, then!”
“But pros are all Scotchmen,” argued Barbara.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure I’m right. And the darned thing is that
I’m going to be so infernally happy all the rest of my life that I
suppose my handicap will go up to thirty or something.”
Barbara squeezed his hand lovingly.
“Don’t worry, precious,” she said, soothingly. “It will be all right. I
am a woman, and, once we are married, I shall be able to think of at
least a hundred ways of snootering you to such an extent that you’ll
be fit to win the Amateur Championship.”
“You will?” said Ferdinand, anxiously. “You’re sure?”
“Quite, quite sure, dearest,” said Barbara.
“My angel!” said Ferdinand.
He folded her in his arms, using the interlocking grip.
CHAPTER II
HIGH STAKES
The summer day was drawing to a close. Over the terrace outside
the club-house the chestnut trees threw long shadows, and such
bees as still lingered in the flower-beds had the air of tired business
men who are about ready to shut up the office and go off to dinner
and a musical comedy. The Oldest Member, stirring in his favourite
chair, glanced at his watch and yawned.
As he did so, from the neighbourhood of the eighteenth green,
hidden from his view by the slope of the ground, there came
suddenly a medley of shrill animal cries, and he deduced that some
belated match must just have reached a finish. His surmise was
correct. The babble of voices drew nearer, and over the brow of the
hill came a little group of men. Two, who appeared to be the
ringleaders in the affair, were short and stout. One was cheerful and
the other dejected. The rest of the company consisted of friends and
adherents; and one of these, a young man who seemed to be
amused, strolled to where the Oldest Member sat.
“What,” inquired the Sage, “was all the shouting for?”
The young man sank into a chair and lighted a cigarette.
“Perkins and Broster,” he said, “were all square at the
seventeenth, and they raised the stakes to fifty pounds. They were
both on the green in seven, and Perkins had a two-foot putt to halve
the match. He missed it by six inches. They play pretty high, those
two.”
“It is a curious thing,” said the Oldest Member, “that men whose
golf is of a kind that makes hardened caddies wince always do. The
more competent a player, the smaller the stake that contents him. It
is only when you get down into the submerged tenth of the golfing
world that you find the big gambling. However, I would not call fifty

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Age of the Geek: Depictions of Nerds

and Geeks in Popular Media 1st Edition

Age of the Geek

ISBN 978-3-319-65743-1 ISBN 978-3-319-65744-8 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950699

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover illustration © Oleksandr Rupeta/Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

This book developed out of a “special topics” area of the Southwest

Alva, USA Kathryn E. Lane

1 How Was the Nerd or Geek Born? 1

Part I What Did You Call Me?: Defining Geekdom

2 A Nerd, a Geek, and a Hipster Walk into a Bar 21

3 Mediagasms, Ironic Nerds, and Mainstream Geeks:

4 Changing Faces: Exploring Depictions of Geeks

Part II In or Out?: Defending Nerddom

5 Geek Metafiction: Nerds, Footnotes, and Intertextuality 91

6 Ich Bin Ein Nerd!: Geek Identity in Insider

7 Geek Is the New Jock: The Relationship Between Geek

8 Geeking Out and Hulking Out: Toward an

Part III I Saw It on TV: Depictions of “Other”

9 How Is It Okay to Be a Black Nerd? 169

11 Modern Nerd: Alex Dunphy and Growing Up Geeky

Part IV I Am A Nerd!: Depictions of the Nerd/Geek

12 From Zero to Hero and Back Again: Nerd Nobodies,

13 The Geek as Rake: Roving Masculinity

14 The Horror of the Geek: The Geek Archetype

15 Survival of the Smartest? 285

About the Editor

Kathryn E. Lane is an Associate Professor of English and Department

Jessica Bodner is enamored of the miracle of human consciousness. In

studies, language and social interaction, identity politics, ethnographic

Jessica Stanley Neterer is an adjunct instructor at John Tyler

and popular culture. He has been researching Internet communica-

How Was the Nerd or Geek Born?

K.E. Lane (*)

© The Author(s) 2018 1

Finally, the Chicago Tribune attempts to differentiate between the

of “nerddom” throughout the series.41 This is a reversal of the early trope

29. Murray Forman, “Freaks, Aliens, and the Social Other.”

Bednarek, Monika. “Constructing ‘Nerdiness’: Characterisation in The Big Bang

What Did You Call Me?: Defining Geekdom

The first part of the book focuses on identity and nerddom/geekdom.

Authors Steven S. Vrooman, Christopher Bollinger, Tiffiny Sia, and

A Nerd, a Geek, and a Hipster

© The Author(s) 2018 21

I Am a Nerd (Just Not That Kind?)

I am not this kind of nerd, maybe.

I am pasty, but this is because I’m very aware of sunburns and

• High or at least above average intelligence; otherwise we could not

• Elitism, or the belief that, while someone is always going to be

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

According to Hollingworth’s research, there is a social sweet spot for

You Say That, Like It’s a Bad Thing

Studying Never Stops…

while my being a better friend helped, my taking notes made my friends

archetypes (probably explains my love of Dungeons and Dragons).

Geek vs Nerd (Round 1)

Geek vs Nerd (Round 2)

…nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about

Simon Pegg (2013), an actor/writer/producer/director, states:

Wil Wheaton (Ortiz 2014), another actor/writer/producer/director,

Alva, USA Kathryn E. Lane

Part III I Saw It on TV: Depictions of “Other”

Part IV I Am A Nerd!: Depictions of the Nerd/Geek

29. Murray Forman, “Freaks, Aliens, and the Social Other.”

Social Lubrication and Niche Populations