Geek or Nerd? How about Gerd?

[Image: gerd]Until about a week ago I had no idea that there was such a widespread misunderstanding about the terms “Geek” and “Nerd.”

My sister, along with several other misguided people, seem to think that it’s better to be called a nerd than it is to be called a geek. It’s not even that they think nerdy things are cool; they’ve just reversed the definitions.

Basically, a nerd is Milton from office space. You know—pocket protector, stutter, and general inability to have social interactions. A geek is idiosyncratic, and as everyone knows, idiosyncrasies can be charming.

If “geek” carried a negative connotation, do you think Best Buy would call it the “geek squad”? I doubt it. Who would want a bunch of weak, incompetent, workers coming into your house and drawing cosines on your wall in order to compute the proper angular momentum necessary to cut the tape that opens the box on your new TV? Not I. I’ll take geeks, thank you.

Allow me to point to the Urban Dictionary (oh, so scholarly!) where the definition of Geek conveniently supports my case:

The term “geek” originally referred to the carnival performers whose act consisted of biting the heads off chickens and eating glass. Over time it came to be applied to anyone who got paid to do work considered odd or bizarre by mainstream society.

The term now enjoys a special status within the technical community, particularly among particularly knowledgable computer programmers. To identify oneself as a “geek” indicates a recognition that most people still consider programming computers to be a bizarre act, along with a certain fierce satisfaction in being very good at their inglorious profession.

That most software geeks now easily earn twice as much as the average laborer just sweetens their defiant embrace of the term.

Note: Unlike the word “nerd,” which is always pejorative, “geek” often carries a positive connotation when used by one of the group. The use of the term by outsiders is considered insulting.

But I know perfectly well that providing evidence to support my case is not going to convince anyone. So I propose that we solve this issue once and for all, by creating a new category of loser: the Gerd. I will, of course, also accept “neek” as an option.