Geeks and dorks are here for payback, and their toxic behavior is only getting worse.
Geeks and dorks are here for payback, and their toxic behavior is only getting worse.
I n 1985, 42-year-old A. B. Nerdling used his small Cincinnati house as the world headquarters for a novel organization. Nerdling, who sold automotive accessories by mail and was known to friends by his given name, Bruce Chapman, charged $5 for like-minded people around the world to join a group he called the International Organization of Nerds. A subscription came with a membership card, a wallet calendar, a copy of Big Nerd News, and a sticker entitling the holder to a discount at Hertz Rent A Car.
By 1988, over 7,000 people had taken him up on his offer.
In a way, Chapman had set up the world’s first nerd networking space, before internet chat rooms and Twitter allowed nerds, dorks, and geeks to congregate. Until that point, social pariahs had to group up at school, or at the arcade, or in late-night Dungeons & Dragons sessions. But Chapman’s group was evidence there were nerds out there, and they were willing to admit their outsider status.
Chapman defined a “nerd” as someone “who does weird things, dresses funny, or has an unusual attitude.”
Of course, “nerd culture” in the 1980s bore little resemblance to today, when people proudly fly their nerd flags. Despite the intergenerational squabbles between Gen Xers, Millennials, and Zoomers, they all share one common practice: Get a group of them in a room to have a discussion, and a competition will begin among individuals to declare themselves the biggest nerd. It is now seen as gauche to have worked hard to make friends and be popular with other students in your high school — you must retrofit your persona to declare your prior geekdom.
That’s because the term “nerd” no longer means “socially awkward, bad-dressing super genius.” It now simply means “having an intense interest in a particular subject.” Nerd-dom is thus segregated — there are “music nerds,” “movie nerds,” “politics nerds,” “data nerds,” and even the previously oxymoronic “sports nerds.”
In a sense, it’s a humble-brag for popular people to claim nerd credentials. It is a way of saying, “I’m smart, and I care more about this thing than you do, but I’m not trying to boast about it.” (See: the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which was dubbed the “nerd prom,” even though its attendees were typically society’s richest and most powerful masters of the universe.)
So while America’s beautiful people cosplay as nerds, society’s real outcasts drive themselves deeper into the subculture, using the internet to congregate and cause havoc. This has created a previously inconceivable category: the “nerd bully.”
And now, whether they are willing to admit it or not, they rule the world.
The Nerd Origin Story
Prior to the 1980s, the term “nerd” wasn’t even a part of the standard American lexicon. In a 1980 column, legendary lexicographer William Safire took a crack at the cheeky new word’s etymology, guessing it was a derivative of the 1940s term “nuts” — as in “nerts to you.” Safire guessed the word then evolved to “nerd” after being influenced by “a rhyming scatological word.”
Others suspected the word derived from the word “knurd,” which is “drunk” spelled backward. As the legend goes, “drunks” were seen as social and fun-loving, and “knurds” were just the opposite — thus the flipping of the word’s spelling.
Some believe the word originated with the 1950 Dr. Seuss book If I Ran the Zoo, which featured a small, grimy character called a nerd.
Even when it was used, it was not in a loving manner. In 1980, a Kansas City woman sued a local radio station for $10,000 after a host called her a nerd. The afternoon disc jockey ran a contest in which local residents could write in and nominate a friend to be a part of his “Nerd Herd,” and the reference often wasn’t positive. (One person was nominated for being “so dumb, in medical school they only let him work on dead people.”)
Yet the most pervasive stereotype of a nerd in the early 1980s was that he had to be male. In a 1983 piece, St. Petersburg Times medical writer James DeBrosse tried to offer suggestions as to why there weren’t any female nerds, citing differing gender family expectations, reduced female interest in math, and less of a need to get revenge on the jocks who so taunted them.
“Boys have another ally on the road to math masterdom — organized athletics,” wrote DeBrosse. “I would venture to say that for every 10 preadolescent boys that are cut from a baseball, soccer, or basketball team, at least one of them says to-hell-with-all-that-sports-crap and finishes his high school career by burning through the math portion of the college entrance exam.”
“Girls don’t have that kind of revenge-as-motive advantage,” he wrote.
A year later, the perception of nerds would change forever with the release of Revenge of the Nerds, a college sex comedy that suddenly made geekdom seem appealing. (As it is 2023, it should be noted that society’s idea of hilarity in 1984 was a scene in which a nerd sexually assaults a woman in an inflatable bouncy castle while concealing his identity with a Darth Vader mask.)
Suddenly, nerd culture was a national phenomenon, with celebrities from Michael Jackson to Andy Warhol to Woody Allen to Elvis Costello to Pee-wee Herman suddenly being recognized as “sex symbols.” A Los Angeles–based group called International Bachelor Women deemed 1985 the “year of the nerd,” voting Minnesota senator and failed presidential candidate Walter Mondale the “number one nerd.”
To cash in, 20th Century Fox created a “Nerd Pack,” complete with pocket protector, screwdriver for fixing computers, a nerd comb that can be clipped to one’s back pocket, and a card to fill in your IQ, highest video-game score, SAT scores, and your mom’s phone number.
“What teen girl can resist this come-on: ‘Would you like to come up and see the program I’ve written?’” wrote New York Daily News reporter Bethany Kandel.
Soon, the idea that a nerd had to be a social outcast was turned on its head. As computers began dominating the land, so did the guys with large glasses and wispy mustaches who knew how they worked. Male nerds suddenly amassed fortunes, and female nerds were suddenly free to admit they liked all the same cultural touchstones the boys did. Star Wars, comic books, and dressing like sci-fi characters (later dubbed “cosplay”) all began to reach more of a gender balance.
“Nerds in Silicon Valley are like hunks in Hollywood,” wrote Sacramento Bee reporter Stephen G. Bloom in 1988. Bloom quoted a female virtual-reality specialist as saying, “Being a nerd today means you can run the world.” The next year, a group of Harvard students formed the Society of Nerds and Geeks (SONG), adopting the motto “Blessed are the nerds and geeks, for they will become trendsetters.”
Geekdom Takes a Dark Turn
But then, thanks to the tireless work of nerds, Americans began to use a thing called social media, and all hell broke loose.
Suddenly, nerds could find each other and congregate virtually. Friend groups with esoteric interests that once numbered only a few now spanned the globe. And those larger friend groups began forming hierarchies, with the most dedicated enthusiasts deciding who were the “real” fans and who were just pretenders. Deviating from the accepted opinions of the most rabid fans could earn you banishment or what later became known as doxing.
The era of “toxic fandom” exists to this day. Actor John Boyega, who is black, and actress Kelly Marie Tran, who is Asian, have both shared their stories of abuse from Star Wars fans who believe the franchise has gotten too “woke” by casting them in the movies. In 2019, the graphics in the Sonic the Hedgehog movie were completely redone after fans on Twitter slammed the film’s visual aesthetic. D.C. Comics fans were so nonplussed by the 2017 version of the movie Justice League that original director Zack Snyder (who left the movie after the death of his daughter) re-edited the film and released it on a streaming service.
In 2017, fans of the cartoon Rick and Morty threatened McDonald’s employees when the franchise ran out of Szechuan sauce, a short-lived delicacy their restaurants had once offered and was referenced as a joke in a prior episode. McDonald’s agreed to offer the sauce on one day to placate fans, but police were called in several locations when the restaurants ran out and fans began abusing employees.
“There’s been a shift from simply being a fan of something to somehow assuming ownership of it,” wrote Rick and Morty fan Stuart McGurk in GQ. “The combination of Reddit boards and social media means internet die-hards begun viewing their roles not as passive viewers, but as active policers.”
The outcasts wanted the world to know they are now the ones in charge. And the nerd bullies didn’t stop with the world of entertainment.
The toxic stew of condescension and bullying has now spilled into politics, where extremists fully invested in the myth that they are oppressed are now using all the same tactics to get their payback.
For instance, while its members might not adopt the label, what is QAnon other than a group of theatrically aggrieved nerds who believe that only they know the secrets the government is hiding? Who abuse and banish those who don’t buy into their conspiracies? Who are willing to charge the U.S. Capitol as if Donald Trump’s reelection was as valuable as Szechuan sauce?
The same phenomenon exists in equal measures on the left. Members of the “woke” movement believe they are the ones who have truly been ostracized, and it is time for payback. Their mission to make Americans use trigger warnings, to force everyone into equity workshops, and to ban the use of gas stoves isn’t because doing any of these things will actually help a single person. These people feel they have been persecuted, and they now want to show everyone what they can make us all do. Perhaps they are nerd bullies not in name, but they certainly are in deed.
Even Congress has seen more of its members use the trolling tactics of the modern nerd. Whether it is Democratic California congresswoman Katie Porter playing to C-SPAN cameras by reading a profane book on the floor of the House of Representatives or Republican Matt Gaetz of Florida donning a gas mask to mock people worried about a virus that would go on to kill over a million Americans, elected officials are now mirroring the worst impulses of the dork army.
It used to be said that politics was Hollywood for ugly people. Now, politics is simply nerd payback.
The days of the lovable, unpopular nerd are now long gone. Popular people, hoping faux oppression grants them more cultural currency, are now the most willing to call themselves nerds. But it is the actual geeks and dorks among us who have transmogrified their tribes into a new kind of muscular nerdery that now dominates public discourse. And their quest for payback isn’t close to being complete.
(Author’s note: If you know what “transmogrified” means, you might be a total word nerd.)