The Awesome Power of Nerds

13 Aug

As a geek/nerd (who really cares which I claim or am?), I enjoy following other like minded people on their sites, blogs, facebook and twitter pages, and getting links or just hearing what they are up to. The power of the internet has done so much to bring people together. In the last couple of weeks, there have been a couple pieces that I want to chat about-

The first is my own little squee moment- Dean Devlin, brilliant creator, shared the link to my recent Leverage post. The obvious upside is that his followers then get linked to my little baby site and we get a huge run of new visitors. I was in class- prepping for a final- when I saw his post. I may have squeee’d out loud. Alright, yeah, I totally did. (This was as cool as James Gunn sharing our little NerdLush interview…)

And later, I got a chance to see that those new visitors who came for one post- read others. Which is amazing. And I thank Dean for the share and everyone who popped by. I’ve responded to each comment here and to those I find elsewhere online. The fans that I’ve spoken with- good people! And this is one of the beautiful things that the internet gave fandoms- connection. (Which I should also touch on… maybe)

Another awesome thing that happened recently is that Wil Wheaton turned 40. Now you may ask yourself why this is important to me and it really isn’t. I mean, this is the only person that I ever sent a fan letter to– and that’s important- but other than a quick convo at a W00tstock a few years ago, we have no connection. What I want to mention is that his wife threw a surprise party for him and through the wonders of Twitter and the fact that 99% of the guests were nerds… those followers at home got to enjoy the party too. Though… some cake would’ve been nice. 😉

But again, Wil’s birthday isn’t the key thing- what’s really important is that, as Phil Plait said, “If an asteroid impacted this party it would set back nerddom a hundred years“. Through twitter, blogging, cons, etc Wil and other nerds have gotten together and become friends. In real life. I mean… think about it- tons of nerds still have the “basement dweller” stigma, i.e. people still think that if you are a comic book reading adult, play video or board games, you probably live at home in your mothers basement and have never had sex. But reality doesn’t look like that anymore.

Wonders of technology and amazing creative talent have brought nerds into the mainstream. And we are here to stay.

Though… I still would’ve enjoyed some cake.

I’ve seen the changes in my own lifetime and watch my nieces/nephew and all the kids in my life accept their own nerdiness and share it with others- without shame. That’s awesome! (I can remember a time when it wasn’t cool to be a nerd! I was extra uncool- I was a scifi nerd and I didn’t have one of those stupid Espirit/Guess bags.)

I should go back to my mention about the connections built in nerddom- my best friend and I probably wouldn’t know each other without Buffy and its fandom. Let alone a good chunk of friends that I have around the world! And technology- the internet, blogs, facebook, myspace, chat rooms, forums, etc- were the base for most of those relationships. So, you know what? Power to the geeks! We shall inherit! And that’s probably enough rambling from me today.