That's quasi-nerd, not queasy-nerd... though we understand why you might make that mistake! Welcome back Captain Influence, aka Tony, to this mad March installment of The Real Brian Show! Our classic lineup of conversations includes music, movies, gaming, and, of course, a strong shot of espresso.
The prefix quasi just means something that is almost, but not quite the thing that's being defined. Someone who is a quasi-nerd probably meets a lot of the parameters, but not all of them... or not in the classic sense of it. We've really pimped out the word "nerd" in our culture, tossing it around both as a compliment and as a dig, to the point where it has almost lost its meaning. We've glamorized the term. We use phrases like cute nerd.
Literally, of course, a nerd refers to someone who is socially inept, unstylish and unattractive. I experimented a little bit... wondering what the most popular references to nerd were out there on the internet, and I got some surprising results. In my circles of influence, I probably most commonly hear people use the word "nerd" in contexts outside its literal definition, though I know it's literal definition is still its most common usage. So naturally, I was curious.
The top hits for an image search for "nerd" in Google are facetiously-dressed people pretending to be an unstylish and unattractive social pariah, Steve Urkel and N.E.R.D. (amongst a smattering of images that could be featured next to the word in the dictionary). On Pinterest, however, I found that the search for "nerd" yielded results that were much more my sphere... cutesy, not-unattractive people wearing large glasses and holding books pretending like they hate people AND also a bunch of quotes about the superior intelligence of nerds that gives them a pass on being rude to the rest of humanity. To me, this discrepancy speaks more to the users on each of these platforms rather than the true meaning of the word... But that's just me.
So what kind of nerd are you? Can we really be a quasi-nerd? It's interesting, because a large part of the conversation in this episode centers around our surprise, and non-surprise, that opinions among friends about movies and music vary to a great degree. Tony really dislikes the JJ Abrams-produced Star Wars films, but Brian likes them. And both opinions, while being totally valid, are in direct competition with each other. It seems like, historically, nerds have risen up in areas where this direct competition lies but without the social skills that enable them to be... civil... about their differences!
And I think that's a large part of the reason we embrace the idea of being a quasi-nerd. We love the differences our community has, it's literally what keeps us going. Without the differences, we'd be super boring. But we don't want to be so foolish in our pursuits that we ignore the valid opinions of others. We don't want to be so boring in our single-minded pursuits that we forget to go out and have new experiences. So we continue to branch out! And we're so glad you want to join us in that!