Feature

We're All Nerds Now

(Photo: Todd Selby)

Nerds aren’t just noisy; they’re desirable, thanks to concrete changes in the way entertainment’s marketed and sold. The old movie model, for example, was to produce a film that would appeal, more or less, to as many people as possible, eventually enjoying a long run in theaters. Video, and now DVDs, has changed that, so the current goal is to create an “event” film: Release it wide, draw huge crowds, and claim the top box-office spot. How better to accomplish this than to mount a film that comes prepackaged with a large, fanatical audience—in other words, with nerds? A Green Lantern film, say, isn’t guaranteed to be a hit, but it’s a good bet to draw every Green Lantern fan in the universe out for opening night—especially if they’re happy with the casting, which they’ve no doubt been debating online for months. Heck, they’ll probably even line up in advance. For months. In costumes.

This shift doesn’t just favor nerd-oriented movies but any product that can cash in on DVD sales (of deluxe editions, collector’s editions, two-disc anniversary boxed sets). TV networks are no longer solely interested in shows that appeal, even weakly, to a large mass audience. Now there’s money to be made by series like Alias and 24 that draw a relatively small but intense following—one that’s devoted enough to jabber about the show online, then shell out 30 bucks for each new season’s worth of discs.

Of course, the Lord of the Rings movies didn’t clear $1.9 billion solely on the spindly backs of Tolkien completists. There are obvious overlaps between traditional nerd passions—explosions, superheroes, impossibly buxom women—and the enthusiasms of the populace at large. What’s really infiltrated the culture isn’t a nerd aesthetic but a nerd ethos. The Internet explosion of the nineties loosed a barrage of knee-jerk REVENGE OF THE NERDS headlines, all of which evinced an outsider’s wrongheaded view of nerddom: If it wears glasses, and it works with a computer, then it must be a nerd. But as every nerd knows, there are several different, and non-overlapping, nerd variants. Comic-book nerds are very different from sword-and-sorcery nerds, who are different from sci-fi nerds. Even Trekkers and Star Wars geeks barely mix, shunning each other like the Jets and the Sharks.

For nerds, irony was never part of the equation. No one’s ever worn Spock ears with a smirk.

But one trait unites these various nerd fiefdoms, like a flag flying over the whole kingdom: Nerds are entirely, essentially, and inherently earnest. No one’s ever worn Spock ears with a smirk. For nerds, irony was never part of the equation. They, with each thrum of their pure nerd hearts, are unabashed, unapologetic fans: of science, of lore, of alternate worlds, of space-chicks with trembling racks. If the rest of the culture’s come round to nerd thinking, then what does that tell us? Perhaps people are buying into the delights of earnest, giddy enjoyment—the joy of being a nerd. And then suddenly you realize that, in the end, everyone’s a nerd, not just those of us with Han Solo key chains. Did you preorder the next season of Sex and the City on DVD as soon as it was announced? Then you, my friend, are a nerd. Do you faithfully trudge out to each new Jude Law film, hypnotized by that rakish grin? Hello, Jude Law nerd. Do you hotly debate Broadway debuts, haunt the newest eateries, track obsessively the ups-and-downs of your favorite team? One might call you an aficionado, a foodie, or a sports nut. Or more succinctly: a nerd, a nerd, and a nerd.

In short, we’re all nerds now. If you have an earnest passion of any kind, you carry a dormant nerd gene. And if you’re still ironically rocking a mullet or dressing like Pat Benatar, well, the culture is leaving you behind. Nerdism, as it turns out, isn’t a defect reserved for oddballs but an antidote to irony for all. And what we’re experiencing now is simply a mass inoculation.