Nerdy is now mainstream

The great enigma of the 2010s is how everything nerdy 20 years ago became pop culture. Few born during martial law mentioned comic books in high-school-soiree small talk. Today, girls openly debate Thor versus Loki. I recently asked one where she stood to break the ice. She answered she is firmly Team Tom Hiddleston and named her favorite “Thor: The Dark World” scene, but likes “Iron Man” more. One really has to Google “nerd chic” and “fake geek girl.”

My great interest in this enigma flows from my overwhelming number of nerd indicia. Still reads “Star Wars” novels where Han Solo is in his 60s? Check. Listens to both classical and heavy metal? Check. Has a “Magic: the Gathering” collection worth more than his car? Check. Loves musicals and “Glee”? Check. Has watched “Macross” in the original Japanese? Check. Sometimes skips parties to write essays (or just randomly wakes up in the middle of the night)? Check!

Money is the cop-out explanation. “Nerd” 20 years ago was a stereotype for a socially awkward, unhygienic and overly intellectual person. Today, this means the young Steve Jobs, down to his belief that vegetarianism is better than deodorant. “Revenge of the Nerds” of 1984 has been supplanted by “The Social Network” of 2010. And a girl who sat behind me in law school told me the ultimate crush of her life was Bill Gates.

Perhaps many nerds are introverts or simply shy, and social media have given these people a less tiring or intimidating way of expressing themselves. Remember that Huffington Post article “23 Signs You’re Secretly An Introvert” that got over 100,000 Facebook likes in a day? The problem is, nerdiness, introversion and shyness are three different things, none of which explains why exactly dressing up in Hogwarts robes and standing in a long line outside a bookstore at midnight became socially embraceable.

Nerdiness is no more than a great interest in an obscure subject, regardless of one’s personality. The stereotype arose because nerdy subjects were seen as unpopular and socially deviant. The reversal arose because more people proved interested in these than movie caricatures implied. In the Internet’s earliest days, newsgroups and bulletin boards revealed a greater than perceived following for countless guilty pleasures. “Magic: the Gathering” gained popularity shortly after the Internet came into common use and early players complained that it ruined the game because winning strategies were instantly copied across the world.

With the advent of “The Avengers,” “Game of Thrones” and “Glee,” one might question perceptions of popularity. Perhaps the nerds were the mainstream all along and the stereotypical jocks were the deviants.

The old-fashioned lesson is to never judge and to simply do what makes one happy. There is no right or wrong interest in life and even less point in wondering if one is weird. Jobs, for example, recalled that one of the most wonderful classes he sat in after dropping out of college was one on typefaces. He thought the class had no practical value, yet computers today would not have beautiful font libraries had he not pursued that class.

One of the most fascinating lawyers I ever met is Dale Cendali, now one of America’s leading intellectual property litigators. She met her husband in the Harvard Law School Drama Society and knew every comic book character from the 1960s onward by heart. It proved invaluable in infringement lawsuits to be facing boring old lawyers who had never opened a comic book in their lives and be able to cite five older characters similar to the one those lawyers claim was stolen. Her clients soon ranged from Marvel to the “X-Files.” Eventually, J.K. Rowling hired her and she defeated a copycat by having a professor of typefaces testify that the font used did not exist at the time he claimed he wrote “Larry Potter” (supposedly well before Harry). And she has been to J.K.’s house to see the original manuscript and sketches.

Friends have enriched my life with the minutiae of rather nerdy, not necessarily practical obsessions. One loves board and card games, met his lovely wife at a pub quiz night and still sets game-night dates. Another was so appalled by Manila’s subwoofer selection that he ended up selling the audiophile brand SVS from his house, and gave me a most impressive demo and physics lecture on low-frequency sound waves. Another regularly updates me on acupuncture, papal encyclicals and Japanese animé voice actors.

Endless layout proofs cluttered the house when I edited college publications, and my brother was editor-in-chief of our high school paper. Fortunately, writing proved crucial in law school. My constitutional law professors (retired justice Vicente V. Mendoza and deans Pacifico Agabin and Raul Pangalangan) were my favorites, so I pursued the philosophical, extremely nerdy field abroad. It is of course highly unlikely that someone would publish essays on this abstract field with no practical value in a Philippine newspaper, and even less likely that nonlawyers might enjoy them.

People are so diverse that there is little point to drawing arbitrary baselines and labels instead of simply reveling in each other’s uniqueness. Richard Florida’s “The Rise of the Creative Class” posits that successful cities are now those that attract a diversity of young professionals, bohemians and nerds. We have advanced to the point where every pet obsession is legitimate—even Loki pickup lines, and especially ones that work.

Oscar Franklin Tan (@oscarfbtan, facebook.com/OscarFranklinTan) co-chairs the Philippine Bar Association committee on constitutional law and teaches at the University of the East.