Nerd chic

Sometimes I find it hard to gauge how much nerdiness is cool and how much is just nerdy. In my mind it’s all cool except figurine collecting and cosplay, but I forget that broad consensus on the issue can hardly be assumed. I caught up with a friend for a drink yesterday and brought the conversation round to a couple of our mutual friends with the segue: “Speaking of nerd stuff…” My friend pointed out that this was mean, drawing my attention to one such different of opinion. I hadn’t meant the comment to be disparaging towards our mutual friends. On the contrary, I respect them as pretty much the most hardcore nerds I know. The whole point had come up because I’d brought along to the pub my set of Dominion and its two expansions as I was planning to go around to my brother Tom’s place afterwards to hang out for the evening. Dominion, you ask? I won’t go into too much detail, but it’s basically a board/card game that I got into over Christmas in the Netherlands with my also respectfully nerdy cousin Geert. Try it, it’s great.

And this is hardly my most nerdy indulgence—over the past couple of years I’ve embraced it, and in the last twenty-four hours alone I’ve read X-Men comics, I’ve ventured into a dungeon with my Dark Elf character in the video game Oblivion and I’ve relaxed with a smattering of songs from one of the many Final Fantasy soundtracks I keep tucked away in my music collection, somewhere behind all the cool stuff. Perhaps I should be more concerned about my image, but for the moment I remain convinced that if I stick at it long enough I’ll be able to convince the world that actually nerd stuff has always been cool. And I liked it before you.

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