I’m a nerd, a geek, a dork, whatever you want to label me. I am proud of this fact. it is what has shaped the person I am today. It has brought me many friends, short and long term. It has given me countless hours of fun and happiness. I have seen a lot of love and helping hands come from this wonderful community that I am a part of.
However, it also brings me a great deal of frustration and even anger at times. While the nerd segment of the population grows and becomes more accepted, we are still a niche group. While I don’t expect to be BFF’s with every other geek I meet, I don’t see why some people seem to insist on taking a niche group like we are and dividing it even further. I don’t see why some people have to try and prove that they are “King of the Nerds”, a kind of “I’m more knowledgeable about anime/Star Trek/D&D/Star Wars/comic books/whatever than you are”. I call it Arrogant Nerdism, a seeming need to put other geeks down by proving one’s own, often mistaken, superiority.
It is this kind of behavior that divides us, and it also makes us look bad to people outside our little niche family. I think it is fine that some people can recite the guys who operated the boom mic in every Star Trek movie. Good for them. What I don’t like is when these folks find a need to correct and even reprimand other people on their chosen subject of fandom. If I am talking about Star Wars and I refer to Vader as the Dark Lord, don’t butt in an add “of the Sith, Dark Lord of the Sith”, or if I am talking about an episode of Star Trek, don’t jump in with the episode number and original air date. It isn’t necessary and it makes you seem like one of those grammar police that is just waiting to yell at someone “My friend and I, not me and my friend.” People don’t like being corrected, especially when they didn’t really do anything that needs correction.
I think the thing that bugs me the most about many of these Arrogant Nerdists is that they lure you into folly with their ramblings. Here is where I get a bit arrogant I suppose. I have found on many occasions that these Masters of all Things Geek have so much info stuffed into their heads that they get more things wrong than us pitiful pretenders to the dork throne. When I am at work, which is a haven for our kind, and I hear someone going on about something nerdy I can’t help but listen in. Nerd things interest me. And, it really grinds my gears when someone tries to be all arrogant and knowledgeable and gets things wrong. It makes me want to jump in and correct them, and sometimes I fall into the trap and do just that, later realizing that I acted like a complete tool.
Now, I’m not saying that if someone has their facts wrong that you always have to bite your tongue and let them blather on. Before jumping in, ask yourself, “Is this worth it?” Seriously, is what you have to add or correct, or insert worth it. Does your input really impact the conversation positively? Sometimes it does, and then by all means, have a go. But if it does nothing more than stroke your own Nerd ego, let it slide. There will be plenty of opportunities for you to use your vast data banks on furries without being a prick about it.
Keep in mind, continued behavior in such a dickish fashion disrupts our happy family, breaks it apart into splinter groups. We are a minority, and there are minorities in our minority. Why make these even smaller? There are gaming groups I have played with once and will never go back because of how one or more of the people act. Having an 18 year old kid say more than a dozen times that he is an expert in World War II history, and then proceed to get names of generals wrong, dates of the war wrong, and even countries wrong, and his friends just sit there and let him talk with this snooty attitude that everything in the game is wrong because he’s such an expert. Don’t get me wrong here, everyone says something at some point where they will be wrong. It happens, I have done it too, and sometimes even foolishly clung to my improper belief. Making a mistake is not arrogance. and conversely, you can be 100 percent correct and still be an arrogant ass.
I am kind of at a loss as to what to do. I can ignore a great deal of these people, as much as what some of them say bothers me. But sometimes I want to just reach out and smack them upside their heads. I want to scream at them to just shut the fuck up. I want to correct them when they insist that Siouxsie and the Banshees are just stealing ideas from Nine Inch Nails, or when they insist that D&D came out in 1984. But, often I seethe quietly as they fill the room with noise pollution. I guess I have more than a bit of the arrogant nerd in me too, though I try to keep it in check. I do love it when they go out of their way to engage me when they are wrong, because then I feel I free reign to come out swinging. Problem is, they won’t agree with you. I have even shown interwebs evidence that they are wrong and they then conclude that IMDB, Wikipedia, Google, and Yahoo are all wrong, and that in fact James Earl Jones played Darth Vader, not just the voice, but the actual guy in the suit.
Maybe it’s just me, and maybe my ramblings here make no sense. I still feel that I had to say something. I love that people wholly embrace their nerd lifestyle. I encourage it. I praise it. But, please, remember, that we share a common love. Don’t make me have to hate you.
