Good news for all the nerdish people of the world; you are now officially cool! Well, official according to my humble opinion and it’s not my intention to watch a trend. People have the need to label the whole world and lately everything is a trend. It’s a trend on itself. The point is that for most of us life is a struggle to be part of the group of cool guys. We don’t want to be called ‘dork’, ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’. But lately it seems to be pretty ok when they ask you if you are the son of Bill Gates.
The revenge of the nerds started already in 1984 with the movie The Revenge of the Nerds. The nerd is also coming back in the American Pie movies, even that you might argue whether they are really portrayed as hipsters. The American bands Weezer, The Barenaked Ladies and Wheatus are known to make geek rock. In 2006 the band Hellogoodbye released the music video for ‘In Your Arms’ in which the nerdy band members are very successful in their love lifes.
In 2007 CBS started broadcasting The Big Bang Theory starring two equally geeky main characters. In Spain they celebrate the Nerd Pride Day (Dia del Orgullo Friki) on May 25th since 2006 claiming the right for every person to be a geek.
But my conclusion that the nerd has become the new cool is based on the first Dutch Nerdcore Event organized in Amsterdam on February 26th of this year. According to the website Nerdcore is “a subgenre of hip hop music characterized by themes and subjects considered to be nerdy. In the past geeks and nerds were the exception to the rule, but today most people under 40 have at least one ‘geeky’ hobby or interest. Nerdcore rappers rhyme about anything, but there are some hot Nerdcore Favorites: video games, Star Wars, science, cult films, anime, comic books, computers and ofcourse the internet.” On the event famous Nerdcore rappers like Mc Lars, YtCracker and Beefy will rap about gangsters, bitches and homies, but also about programming, hardware and video games. The Nercore-event is organized by Dutch internet company Enrise probably to find those fine cool geeks and offer them a job. Pretty smart if you ask me.
The question is whether all of this is really good news for the nerds. How long will the concept of the nerd exist if the nerd is the new cool? Are they finally defeated after a history of being the outcast? Did the cool guys win at the end? Or are the cool guys actually super uncool?
Probably the real nerd doesn’t care about all of this and THAT is really cool!