Being a rather nerdy person myself, I have acquired a collection of rather nerdy friends myself. Each person has their own circle of nerdness, outside of which they won’t tread. This is not surprising, everyone has limits. The surprising thing is that these circles are not concentric.
As some of you may know (and others may deny), Civilization V was released this week. This is pretty high on the hardcore nerd scale. A turn-based strategy game where individual matches can be measured in tens of hours is not for everyone. It requires a certain approach. My brother thinks we’re simply crazy for attempting such a game, let alone playing with the level of obsession we do.
But my brother embraces the equally nerdy Dungeon and Dragons without any qualms. The idea that it is social disregarded is not a problem for him. The nerdiness of playing a pen and paper roleplaying game is something he actually reveals in.
But I have a friend who wouldn’t be caught dead playing D&D. At the same time, he’s got his own deep nerd love: he’s a massive comic book collector. And we’re not talking some “artsy graphic novel” that a hipster would defend as cool; we’re talking classics; Spider-Man, X-men, etc. He counts his books in thousands.
These offset circles make geek culture so interesting. When you meet a new nerd, there is probably somewhere that the two of you overlap. But is is equally probably that there are areas where you do not. You can find yourself exposed to new and interesting nerd hobbies. And if there is anything nerds like, it’s new things to investigate and explore.
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