The Day I Joined the Nerds

Image: weheartit.com

Hi Mum, guess what! I’ve got a friend! No, not like the last one. No, not on the internet. No mum, she really is a girl this time.
                                                                                              — Skins, “Pandora”

The day I joined the nerds wasn’t really a day, to be honest. I’d been too much of a nerd already to even realise I was one. However, the day I officially joined the nerds was the day I enrolled for computer science classes. I was almost twelve when my old (Catholic boarding) school introduced extra-curricular activities such as computer sciences (conservative educational ideals had finally caught up with the 21^st century). A few of my classmates and I were the first ones to be taught how to use computer programmes beyond the stuff we knew from home. We were the only ones allowed in the computer lab. Back then, we were the cool kids.

After a few weeks, those who weren’t among the cool kids (got jealous, obviously, and) decided that computer science wasn’t that great of a subject after all. Since it was quite unusual for a girl to show interest in sciences and technology (I also took shop class), my friends soon found a definition for my condition: I was diagnosed a nerd. I didn’t mind though, because I was too nerdy to realise the term’s pejorative connotations. Although most of the boys got away with their YouTube-skills, I wasn’t so lucky.

While the boys enjoyed their adventures to the dark side of the internet – violent video games, pictures of dead bodies, audio-taped prank calls – I discovered the real fun: book clubs, forums, Wikipedia. I swallowed up what thousands upon thousands of nerds had to say about my favourite books, heeded their recommendations, and indulged in the fantasy worlds of J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, Cornelia Funke, and Christopher Paolini. The company of fellow nerdy people made me feel less weird, less of an outsider, less lonely.

So I created a secret identity and joined the fun. For the first time in my life, I was able to escape my family’s conservative mind-set. I participated in discussions on authors, fictional characters, movie heroes, philosophy even. I got acquainted with world views entirely different to what I’d been familiar with so far. My parents, “our” community, my school – all of what they’d taught me was suddenly obsolete. I was narrow-minded, biased, homophobic. I realised they’d made me a moron. I started to hate my environment.

The more my family tried to convince me of their lifestyle, the more I despised it. I started questioning religious authority as well as my family’s values. With all of what I’d discovered on the internet, I decided to leave that first phase of my life behind. True, taking that step took me longer than I now care to admit. Still, I did it: I got rid of my hypocritical bible-thumper friends, decided to not attend another service, and decided not to be a moron.

Of all the friends I’d left behind, I didn’t miss a single one. I still don’t. In 2006, when I first joined literature and movie platforms, I met people who I still consider friends today. Actually, I met one of my best friends online.

In retrospect, I owe everything to those people diagnosing me as a nerd back in 2001. If they hadn’t pointed out to me that I was different and therefore not one of them, thank GOD, I’d probably be married to a preacher today, a practicing housewife who lives to take care of her two children named Adam and Eve (who I would love very much, I suppose). If it weren’t for the internet and the friends I made there, I would have never questioned the system I was born into. Without my friends’ help, I wouldn’t have left my conservative and bigoted environment; I’d still be a biased, hateful moron. The innumerable hours I’d spent discussing and researching ideas with strangers did pay off. I can now say that the internet and its content made me a better person. It fuelled my interest in culture and helped me find out everything I’ve ever wanted to know about myself.

Being called a nerd taught me one thing: it’s not a pejorative term. It’s a compliment. It means you question universally accepted “truths” and take nothing for granted. It means you’re interested in something. It means you care to find out more. It means you’re smart enough to realise being different isn’t bad at all.

Dear classmates of 2001, thank you for making me me.