If someone walked into your home and asked you to identify your nerd credentials, what would you do? Let’s say this person considers you one of the ‘fake geeks’ that have become a target of so much animosity. Or he (it’s probably a he) thinks you’re putting on airs, adopting a posture that has current cultural cache, like comic book fan, but he suspects in reality you don’t care at all about comics, you don’t have them lining your basement in boxes and bags surrounded by unopened collectibles. This is what nerds really do, right?
Oh. And you’re politically liberal.
This guy, we’ll call him Charles, thinks that you, like the people you admire, maybe Rachel Maddow or Melissa Harris-Perry or Bill Nye, are an insincere fraud. You are not a nerd. You’re trying to be, maybe, but you are a nerd incorrectly because you’re following the footseps of frauds. Your life is reminiscent of those you admire, “professional nerds”, adopting a posture that is “little more than a ruse… stereotypical facsimiles of the real thing. They have the patois but not the passion; the clothes but not the style; the posture but not the imprimatur.”
You want to be smart, or you want people to think you’re smart. But your just faking it. Not Charles, though. Charles is smart. Not only does he say “imprimatur” but he says you don’t have it. (Sorry Charles, but I went to graduate school at a Catholic University so I do know what imprimatur means. Credentials!).
Be prepared when Charles comes over to show him that you do have the imprimatur. You ARE a Star Trek nerd and have not only all seasons of TNG but also Deep Space 9, that’ll really show him you qualify. Because apparently being a nerd the right way means knowing that Star Trek is superior to Star Wars.
Have your credentials ready, nerds. Charles is coming.
I planned not to respond to this thing because there’s no value to The Stake in responding to political arguments presented at the National Review. That’s not really a concern for us. But Charles C.W. Cooke in his piece Smarter than Thou has embraced such an arrogant and insulting view towards popular culture as a whole that we could not let it slide. So. Mr. Cooke. You don’t like the politicization of science? Me neither. You think this is a liberal problem? I think that’s incorrect. That’s about all I can muster on the political part of this article.
It’s not lost on us that an article which purports to claim liberals adopt a smarter than thou posture is dripping with superiority and condescension; nor that it seeks to reject the exclusive definition of being a “nerd” by tightly defining what it means to NOT be a nerd (liberal, Star Wars, Mario Kart, Movies not comics). That it embraces what it considers to be the very problem it seeks to attack: the nerds that aren’t Charles C.W. Cooke nerds are fake nerds.
We need to put this idea to bed once and for all. Everyone, everywhere: there are no nerd credentials.
There are no papers to show, no litmus tests to pass. There are no gatekeepers and if you ever come across a guy (it’s probably a guy) who says you don’t meet his standards for geek culture, just know that he’s wrong, and an asshole.
To the gatekeepers: Stop insulating yourself against the world. Stop creating boundaries about what culture says is acceptably nerdy and what is not. Don’t write about how “actual science” works and then insult a Rhodes Scholar by reducing her to “wearing glasses and babbling about statistics.” Even some of us “insecure hipsters” who majored in English care about science and know how it works.
Anyway. Here are things that are popular among many people of different kinds and have been for many years:
Star Trek.
Star Wars.
The X-Men.
Movies.
Video Games.
Politics.
Conservatism.
Liberalism.
Science.
Politics in Science.
Wanting to be smart.
I’d agree that some things, like comic books and physics, are having a surge in popularity in the past decade. And as someone who loves comic books and has been interested in science for a while, I must say: THAT’S GREAT! That’s not threatening but wonderful. Those things that are most popular in our culture are popular because the people who are alive enjoy them and want to share them.
If you enjoy something and someone else that is not like you enjoys that same thing, that means it is valuable and worth sharing. Not that the other person is a fraud.
So, Mr. Cooke, please continue to criticize inconsistency in the political realm, especially when our political parties abuse science for short-term political gain. But the whole fake geek thing? Come on.
I agree that if people are getting an introduction to science and becoming more knowledgeable, then I don’t care how they got there, whether the individual saw a movie on a scientific concept that peaked their interest to check out a few books or blog posts written by “peer reviewed scientists”… or if that individual has a degree in “hard sciences” and read academic journals all day long, the thirst for learning was created equal. Knowledge and information is good, it’s even better, when a lot of people have access to it, and it’s absolutely horrible that people seeking information are being categorized as “true” and “fake”, that’s just elitist. And being elitist about learning scientific concepts, and people naturally coming from different backgrounds, is just plain stupid in my books.