The Geeky Saga

This post is meant to clarify any and all future potential confusion regarding the terms “nerd” and “geek” – and by extension, what I actually mean when I use them.

Two things to note: English is my second language, and while I do fancy myself rather proficient – I may veer into uncharted territory at times regarding the etymology and semantics of given words. Also; I grew up in the time before The Internet was a thing, so I might have a slightly different (hot?) take on these terms than those who grow up today.

With the disclaimers out of the way, let’s get into it. When I use the terms “geek” and “nerd” I assign specific meaning to each of them, and I rarely – if ever – use them interchangeably, like many do. To me, they represent two different concepts, but there are sometimes bits of either that overlap the other – I’ll get to that.

Exhibit A – The Nerd
When I describe myself as ‘a nerd’ I mean that in the academic sense of the word. Book-smart, one of them readers, did well in school, and so on. Upon encountering the word “nerd” in the wild, I tend to picture a person who excels in their specific field of academic pursuit, e.g. the “#LanguageNerd” in the title of this post. In other words, someone who have an above average interest and/or knack for a given academic subject, and who will dive head-first into the nitty-gritty bits of said subject with reckless abandon.

Exhibit B – The Geek
While I for the most part reserve the term “nerd” for academia, I use the term “geek” for nearly everything else: Hardcore fans of a franchise approach their interest with similar reckless abandon as the nerds, but the interest itself is more based in pop-culture than “nerd-culture”, e.g. “Star Trek rules!” A geek would, however, be above average interested in ~the thing~ thus setting the geek apart from Muggles* in that sense.

Not everyone who watched Game of Thrones is a geek, and not all geeks watched Game of Thrones, for that matter (though I suspect most of us did).

You can, of course, be both a geek and a nerd about the same thing – it’s only a matter of how deep you delve into the thing; taking a very academic approach to a pop-culture phenomenon (such as Game of Thrones) would be a distinctly nerdy thing to do, even if the phenomenon itself sits firmly in what I consider to be geeky territory. The question in that setting then becomes; is the nerdy approach to something like a widely popular geeky TV-show nerdy based on the show itself or the approach as such? An in-depth linguistic analysis of the Dothraki language in Game of Thrones would be a nerdy thing to do to a distinctly geeky pop-culture phenomenon; but are you then a Dothraki-nerd or a Game of Thrones-geek? My (simple) answer is both.

This is an example of where the terms “nerd” and “geek” stay distinct or conflate depending on how you look at the whole: A #LanguageNerd’s approach to Game of Thrones‘ Dothraki language is an academic (and therefore nerdy) approach to a pop-culture ~thing~, but the #LanguageNerd can just as easily be considered a geek for choosing the pop-culture ~thing~ to write their linguistics paper on, as the ~thing~ is well within geeky territory, being based on a Fantasy book-series. There are several examples like this, so for simplicity’s sake – I’ll stick to my nerdy=academic and geeky=pop-culture idea. That way you’ll hopefully be a bit less confused when I categorize and tag future blog posts with the terms.

Make no mistake – I consider myself to be both a ‘nerd’ and a ‘geek’. My interests span far and wide, and include both academic subjects (such as Language and Science), and pop-culture things like movies and TV-shows based in geeky origins (like Game of Thrones). I’ve always been interested in geeky things, and I have been the class nerd throughout my academic life.

This blog is a celebration of that; the weird and quirky things I love: The geeky, the nerdy, and altogether awesome.

*Muggles: Term made popular through the Harry Potter books, and later movies, to describe non-magical people. See also: “normies”