Some Thoughts on Nerds..

I enjoy reading the blog of a local "radio personality". I thought his 7/21 entry was worth passing along:

Fatboy's Blog
July 21, 2005

The fact I'm a big nerd, dork, and a spaz shouldn't really be surprising. I don't know if this is a dirty little secret of radio or not, but a full 95% of the jocks on the air in any market anywhere are either nerds, dorks, or spazzes, or varying combinations of the 3. It's a fact. DJ's who think they're cool are deluding themselves. There's no such thing as a "Cool" DJ. It doesn't work that way. DJ is the job the people who can't dance take so they can still be involved in the party. "DJ" is what high school projectionists aspire to, when they're not dreaming of hitting the screenplay lottery. Cool people don't gravitate towards that job, because cool people don't pay attention to the music outside of who they get to grind on while it's playing, or who they're going to beat up while it's blaring out of the truck, or whatever. Only a nerd would be hanging out with friends, and go "You know what'd be super-cool? to be the cheesedick guy with the overcooked voice introducing this Sister Sledge song at 2am"

What's cool is that nerdity isn't a negative anymore. Our culture is slowly waking up and realizing we're all pretty nerdy when it comes down to it. We're just nerdy about different things. Being a dork isn't cause for stigma. Hell, if you're a big enough dork, people ENJOY hanging around your dorky ass JUST FOR being dorky. I won't say it's "trendy" because dorkdom is eternal, and is genetically encoded into most of us, but it's definitely appreciated a lot more now as our society is effectively, being run by dorks now. We're starting to get a grasp on how ridiculously overrated "cool" is.

I mean, think about it. Our president was a CHEERLEADER. Dork. The last president played in a Marching Band. Dweeb. Casey Kasem, Howard Stern? DORKS. Bill Gates owns the goddamn WORLD essentially. We're all toting around various form of electronic device that we HAVE to become geeks to even work properly--and people are realizing that superficial, sneering "cool" is mostly cliche, passe, and outdated. Sure, the cool kids are trying to adapt, infecting the dorks with a need to create geek heirarchy, replacing leather jackets and cigarettes with a thrift store fashion sense and a faux jaded, world weary sneer that matches their 30 dollar pre-weathered "Vintage" tee, but even that's not really catching.

But yet, people still cling as hard as they can to the idea that THEY'RE cool, and it's the other people that are dorks. That's retarded. We're all dorks. Geeks. Dweebs. Stop deluding yourself, and just give into it. You'll be happier that way. Trust me. Sure, you might wind up at some highly dorky convention or something at some point (just like magazines, there's a convention for EVERYTHING now) and you'll be reminded that some of your fellow geeks were born missing the "self-aware" switch that stops them from stumbling into every awkward situation they entangle themselves in, but I'd prefer that to the mind-numbing playacting that so many hipsters and condescending douchebags relegate themselves to in the fear they'll be considered anything less than "cool." I'd rather be an authentic geek telling doofy jokes on the radio than be a walking stereotype wrapped in a ready-made identity, and blister packaged and bar-coded for convienience.