Nerdnerd

   Continuing on the trail of thought of my "Hipsternerd" series from a couple of months ago, now- I abandoned the thread as I grew dissatisfied with the imprecision of the terminology, especially with "nerd," and so I'd like to pick that up again briefly here.

   There are still separate stereotypes within nerddom, but it would take intense levels of boldness to claim, say, every ComicCon attendee dresses up in elaborate outfits-- even then, though, we have those who hold all furries are fursuiters (...aand Blogger's spellcheck just recognized both "fursuiter" and "furry" (n.) as legitimate words, even though it continues to be incapable of recognizing the word "spellcheck." Wait, there it is.) Nerds that do do some types of nerdish things don't necessarily do all the other types of stereotypically nerdish things, and, gosh, I guess it's less of a continuum of intensity so much as, patches, or something. Clusters.

   Originally I'd been going to have a total definition of each kind of nerd based on fervency and everything, before I realized it would be impossibly ambitious on its own without the fact that traits aren't awarded on a scale-- maybe a nerd both LARPs and pens-and-papers, for example, and the intensity of fandom has nothing to do with the activities of fandom he or she is into.

   Like I said, exactly what a "nerd" is is something difficult to pin down- with the "non-continuum continuum" of properties (and not even necessarily cerebral ones) that a "nerd" can be defined by, I rather think that the idea of a "nerd" of anything dwells not in the space of the property that is "fanned," but the intensity of the fandom. Analyzing it, it'd be difficult to find any property nowadays without some cultish aspect to its fandom, and nerddom has always been defined at least situationally from fandom.

   The sheer glut of said "properties" that one can find floating around nowadays would seem to attest to the idea that most things are at least partially obscure, and the fanbase (in order to be truly a fanbase) would have to be devoted or loyal or if none of those things at least vocal. Which seems to be the direction things are headed; away from the first two and toward the latter option (which vocality doesn't always preclude the other two, i.e. a fan can be both content and vocal, but my oh my does it seem that that's quite the rarity.)

   Thus we see, even within this continuum that nerddom is, there would be deeper smaller continua-- defined not only by intensity of emotion but what the exact emotion is, from fanboys to fans to fanatics. Continua all over- clusters, again, in other words. You see how impossible a task it would be to make blanket definitions? I'm just armchairing, here, though, by the way- I don't have any really solid crunchable data to back my ideas up, aside from a life's worth of experience with the subject. I go on about what nerds are and aren't, so much, but the only thing for certain is there's never been a more rewarding time in the history of the world to be a manchild. (Not that I'm saying that, you know, nerds are manchildren... though that would provide a good navigational tool on the difference between a nerd and a geek... I thought I was done, but maybe I'll continue on that thought one day...)