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Geeks vs. Nerds
alanh writes "Last week, the News and Observer from the RTP area of NC had this article about the modern usage of the words "Geek" and "Nerd." " Typical piece about the ascendancy of "geeks" and "nerds". However, an interesting question: How do you view the difference between the two words? Or do they mean the same thing?
Nerds post second & think they're first...
"You can't have a geek without a "EE" (Electrical Engineering degree)
There's power in co-opting a negatively-tainted word and turning it into a positive word. Queer and Nigger are both words that are, in the appropriate peer group, used as power words.
Unfortunately, I can't think of other examples. If you can, contribute some; it'll be interesting and maybe enlightening.
My own resume uses "Professional Geek" as one heading. I take pride in the knowledge I have. I think all geeks should.
First thing we need is a slogan as powerful and funny as the "We're queer, we're here and we're going shopping!" one...
"We're geeks, we're..." ??
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Or a dweeb...
The most important differences are as follows:
Geek: Thinks Milli Vanilli were pretty cool, scandal or not.
Nerd: Did the spectral analysis on their voices to determine lip-synching well before the press announcement.
Geek: Has 3 friends and trouble meeting new people.
Nerd: Has 3 friends, but recyles through the use of role playing games and secret code names, bringing the total to 27.
Geek: Will be at home come the new millenium.
Nerd: Did the math to figure out the new millenium starts 2001, will be at home for both.
Hotnutz.com
Strange. I've always placed "geek" as being better than "nerd"...
In my interpretation:
Geeks have broad general knowledge... just enough to be dangerous in almost anything, and enough to actually be quite competent in many areas.
Nerds have deep, specific knowledge... enough to do anything that can be done in their specialty, and not particularly capable of applying that knowledge in other fields.
Geeks obsess over everything techie.
Nerds obsess over one thing to the exclusion of everything else.
You can be a photography geek, an audio geek, a computer geek, a bike geek. A geek that's geeky about one thing is probably geeky about half a dozen completely unrelated other things.
You can be a photography nerd, but it's probably more at the print development stage than the picking a lense stage. You can be an audio nerd, but it's probably more at the building the amp than creating the best sound environment level. You can be a computer nerd, but it's probably more at the writing a one-off specialized integrated database level than the system tweaking level.
Is your interpretation different? Howso?
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Let's call the whole thing off.
Honestly, what's in a name. Weather a moniker intimates respect or contempt has little to do with the word, and more to do with the associated stereotype. For example if you called someone discriminating today, it would probably be a negative comment. Fifty years ago it would have been a compliment. The deal is that people who are part of that steroetype are suddenly suceeding in buisness, and clearly are controling the means of communication for the next years.
Like in the whole Littletown media debacle, or many others, terms like Nerd, Geek, Hacker, Cracker, Phreaker, or Goth are used by people who don't have any idea of what they are describing. Perhaps the issue here is that noone can agree on what a nerd is or weather nerd or geek is preferable is up in the air.
To put this in perspective, I'm a foreigner in the us, and in my few years here I've observed the transition from handicapped to disabled as a "euphemism" for people with physical difficulties. Now, I suppose they were originally referred to as Cripples which is now considerd a relatively ugly word, but cripple and cripple are still acceptable.
What is true however, is that the term is considered a perjorative by those who are distant from the issues, the ones that don't know who or what is going on. I don't think that Nigger originally referred to black er african american persons, but something along the lines of greedy, selfish, lazy, self-serving persons.
The terms nerd and geek are used by the same sort of people who associated the littletown incident with goths, but instead of people who wear black, they usually refer to people who are intelectually inclined, and may have poor grooming habits.
A geek, at least last time I thought about these things is a freaky person, someone who might bite heads off chickens, someone who sticks out of social situations in a big way. The term geek has been applied to people who aren't interested in computers, or smart enought o piss a whole in the snow if someone else helps them aim. Nerds on the other hand are people who are poorly groomed, socially simpleminded, and academically inclined.
I suppose that all has changed a whole lot in the last five years. Any sort of choice that you make isn;t going to affect the people around you a whole lot, since they have either made a distinction themselves already, or have no idea what the difference is.
A geek is someone that not only knows the theory and facts of a subject, but can USE them effectively to do something that has meaning in the real world.
Geek is a term I call someone I respect in a given field. Nerd is generally a term for someone who is smart, but lacks that needed clue. Nerds are smart but annoying to geeks, but can be turned into geeks with enough self-improvement.
Trivia buffs are nerds, Edison and Einstein were geeks.
A college degree seems to have the highest chances of turning a nerd into a geek. This is especially true of those who live away from home and on campus, where socialization with people in other fields can take place - something nerds lack.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
nerd n.
1. [mainstream slang] Pejorative applied to anyone with an above-average IQ and
few gifts at small talk and ordinary social rituals. 2. [jargon] Term of praise applied
(in conscious ironic reference to sense 1) to someone who knows what's really
important and interesting and doesn't care to be distracted by trivial chatter and silly
status games. Compare the two senses of computer geek.
The word itself appears to derive from the lines "And then, just to show them, I'll
sail to Ka-Troo / And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, / A Nerkle, a
Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!" in the Dr. Seuss book "If I Ran the Zoo" (1950).
(The spellings `nurd' and `gnurd' also used to be current at MIT.) How it developed
its mainstream meaning is unclear, but sense 1 seems to have entered mass culture
in the early 1970s (there are reports that in the mid-1960s it meant roughly
"annoying misfit" without the connotation of intelligence).
An IEEE Spectrum article (4/95, page 16) once derived `nerd' in its variant form
`knurd' from the word `drunk' backwards, but this bears all the hallmarks of a
bogus folk etymology.
Hackers developed sense 2 in self-defense perhaps ten years later, and some actually
wear "Nerd Pride" buttons, only half as a joke. At MIT one can find not only
buttons but (what else?) pocket protectors bearing the slogan and the MIT seal.
computer geek n.
1. One who eats (computer) bugs for a living. One who fulfills all the dreariest
negative stereotypes about hackers: an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced
monomaniac with all the personality of a cheese grater. Cannot be used by outsiders
without implied insult to all hackers; compare black-on-black vs. white-on-black
usage of `nigger'. A computer geek may be either a fundamentally clueless
individual or a proto-hacker in larval stage. Also called `turbo nerd', `turbo geek'.
See also propeller head, clustergeeking, geek out, wannabee, terminal junkie,
spod, weenie. 2. Some self-described computer geeks use this term in a positive
sense and protest sense 1 (this seems to have been a post-1990 development). For
one such argument, see http://samsara.circus.com/~omni/geek.html. See also geek
code.
Why do feel like that in a year or two they'll be GAP commercials where iterchangeable people will be running around in jeans and untucked t-shirts, Palm IX's in hand, to the tune of bland industrial music?
Come on people. These identity debates are fun, but realize this is nothing but marketting. The same people who scorned us because we don't give a flying fuck about their social games and status symbols are now trying to cash in on our new-found power in the current economy.
If you think it's now cool to be a geek, you don't get it. You're letting other people have power in how you define yourself.
When I was growing up in those pre-IBM PC days both words were a nasty insult used by those who could only measure their own worth by trying to destroy or demean others. I cring when I see others call themselves geeks or nerds because, to me, it means the assholes have won. :(
I guess there is a generational divide even among those of us with the hacker (classic meaning) mentality. To call oneself a geek or a nerd except as a broad joke, is a sure sign of a luser or a hip-wannabee to those of my generation.
I guess if it makes you happy to call yourself either of these two words, more power to you, but please understand that some of us despise those words with a passion.
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
I had one when I was a kid back in the 1970s, but I haven't seen one (outside of movies) in about 20 years.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood