Nerd

Culture and perception

Stereotype

Intellect and alleged nerdiness

Because of the nerd stereotype, many intelligent people are often thought of as nerdy. This belief can be harmful, as it can cause high school students to "switch off their lights" out of fear of being branded as a nerd, and cause otherwise appealing people to be considered nerdy simply for their intellect.

It has been argued that intellectuals are automatically nerdy because they were secretly envied, arrogant, or out of touch. However, Paul Graham stated in his essay, "Why Nerds are Unpopular", that intellect is neutral, meaning that many high school students neither admire nor deride classmates for intelligence itself. He also states that it is only the correlation that makes smart teens automatically seem nerdy, and personally defines a nerd as someone deemed not socially adept enough. Additionally, he says that the reason why many smart kids are unpopular is that they "don't have time for the activities required for popularity," since they instead prioritize intellectual, solitary pursuits, at the cost of being branded as "nerds." He also goes on to criticize suburbia and the public education system for enabling a popularity contest.

Stereotypical "nerd" appearance and fashion

Stereotypical nerd appearance, often lampooned in caricatures, can include very large glasses, dental braces, buck teeth, a weak chin, severe acne and pants worn high at the waist. Following suit of popular use in emoticons, Unicode released in 2015 a "nerd face" (U+1F913 🤓 NERD FACE), rendered in most fonts with glasses and, though less often today, buck teeth. In the media, many nerds are males, portrayed as being physically unfit, either overweight or skinny due to lack of physical exercise.

The stereotype across race and gender

It has been suggested by some, such as linguist Mary Bucholtz, that being a nerd may be a state of being "hyperwhite" and rejecting African-American culture and slang that "cool" white children use. However, after the Revenge of the Nerds movie franchise (with multicultural nerds), and the introduction of the Steve Urkel character on the television series Family Matters, nerds have been seen in all races and colors as well as more recently being a frequent young East Asian or Indian male stereotype in North America. Portrayals of "nerd girls" in films such as She's Out of Control, Welcome to the Dollhouse and She's All That imply that smart but nerdy women might suffer later in life if they do not focus on improving their physical attractiveness.

In the United States, a 2010 study published in the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication indicated that Asian Americans are perceived as most likely to be nerds, followed by White Americans, while non-White Hispanics and African Americans were perceived as least likely to be nerds. These stereotypes stem from concepts of Orientalism and Primitivism, as discussed in Ron Eglash's essay "Race, Sex, and Nerds: From Black Geeks to Asian American Hipsters".

Psychosocial conditions

Some of the stereotypical behaviors associated with the "nerd" stereotype have correlations with the traits of Asperger syndrome or other autism spectrum conditions.

Pride

Some measures of "nerdiness" are now considered desirable by many commentators. To some, "nerd" suggests a person who is intelligent, respectful, interesting, dedicated, individualistic, and able to earn a large salary doing what they love. Stereotypical nerd qualities are evolving, going from awkwardness and social ostracism to an allegedly more widespread acceptance and sometimes even celebration of their differences. Many so-called "nerdy people" have accumulated large fortunes, and many are able to find their niche in the American computer industry, concentrated in California's Silicon Valley, the Greater Seattle area (working for companies like Amazon or Microsoft), and the Silicon Slopes. These engineers and programmers have influenced popular culture in many ways, caught the attention of the media, and effectively designed a new category of everyday objects.

Being adept with computers, often considered a "nerdy" interest, is now widespread and even an expectation in professional and academic spaces. Many celebrities in the first decade of the 2000s publicly expressed interest in smartphones and other handheld devices. Similarly, many stereotypical "nerdy" interests, such as video games, tabletop RPGs, comic book franchises, and fantasy and science fiction works, are now international popular culture hits.

Johannes Grenzfurthner, researcher, self-proclaimed nerd and director of nerd documentary Traceroute, reflects on the emergence of nerds and nerd culture:

I think that the figure of the nerd provides a beautiful template for analyzing the transformation of the disciplinary society into the control society. The nerd, in his cliché form, first stepped out upon the world stage in the mid-1970s, when we were beginning to hear the first rumblings of what would become the Cambrian explosion of the information society. The nerd must serve as comic relief for the future-anxieties of Western society. ...The germ cell of burgeoning nerdism is difference. The yearning to be understood, to find opportunities to share experiences, to not be left alone with one's bizarre interest. At the same time one derives an almost perverse pleasure from wallowing in this deficit. Nerds love deficiency: that of the other, but also their own. Nerds are eager explorers, who enjoy measuring themselves against one another and also compete aggressively. And yet the nerd's existence also comprises an element of the occult, of mystery. The way in which this power is expressed or focused is very important.

— Johannes Grenzfurthner, interviewed by Thomas Kaestle, Boing Boing, 14 April 2016

In the 1984 film Revenge of the Nerds, Robert Carradine worked to embody the nerd stereotype; in doing so, he helped create a definitive image of nerds. Additionally, the storyline presaged, and may have helped inspire, the "nerd pride" that emerged in the late 1990s. American Splendor regular Toby Radloff claims this was the movie that inspired him to become "The Genuine Nerd from Cleveland, Ohio". In the American Splendor film, Toby's friend, American Splendor author Harvey Pekar, was less receptive to the movie, believing it to be hopelessly idealistic, explaining that Toby, an adult low-income file clerk, had nothing in common with the middle-class kids in the film who would eventually attain college degrees, success, and cease being perceived as nerds. Many, however, seem to share Radloff's view, as "nerd pride" has become more widespread in the years since. MIT professor Gerald Sussman, for example, seeks to instill pride in nerds:

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

— Gerald Sussman, quoted by Katie Hafner, The New York Times, 29 August 1993

Bullying

Individuals who are labeled as "nerds" are often the target of bullying due to a range of reasons that may include physical appearance or social background. Paul Graham has suggested that the reason nerds are frequently singled out for bullying is their indifference to popularity or social context, in the face of a youth culture that views popularity as paramount. However, research findings suggest that bullies are often as socially inept as their academically better-performing victims, and that popularity fails to confer protection from bullying. Other commentators have pointed out that pervasive harassment of intellectually-oriented youth began only in the mid-twentieth century.

In popular culture

• "White & Nerdy" by "Weird Al" Yankovic, a parody of the song "Ridin'" by Chamillionaire ft. Krayzie Bone, prominently features and celebrates aspects of nerd culture.
• Slashdot uses the tagline "News for nerds. Stuff that matters."
• Charles J. Sykes wrote "Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them." This quotation, as well as the passage it was taken from, has been popularized on the Internet in the 2000s. It has occasionally been incorrectly attributed to Bill Gates.
• In Spain, Nerd Pride Day has been observed on 25 May since 2006, the same day as Towel Day, another somewhat nerdy holiday. The date was picked as it is the anniversary of the release of Star Wars.
• Australian events such as Oz Comic-Con (a large comic book and cosplay convention, similar to San Diego Comic-Con) and Supernova, are incredibly popular events among the culture of people who identify themselves as nerds. In 2016, Oz Comic-Con in Perth saw almost 20,000 cosplayers and comic book fans meet to celebrate the event, hence being named a "professionally organised Woodstock for geeks".
• Fans of the Vlogbrothers (a YouTube channel starring John and Hank Green) call themselves "nerdfighters" and refer to the fan base as a whole as "Nerdfighteria".