I want to rant too much today as it’s a holiday weekend and it’s all sunshine, apfelsaftschorle and pretzels but I need to rant a little bit.
Anyone with too much focus on the esoterica of life; the nerds, the dorks, the dweebs and the outcasts, has some baggage. I never felt particularly uncool as a kid because I moved around enough that I didn’t have a lot of past embarrassments to hold me back.
But I’ve met plenty of genius in my time and a lot of them carry deep hurt from how they were treated as kids. The trauma isn’t always healed. And hurt people hurt people.
We used to expect an even trade from our nerds. You’ve got righteous technical skills and understand how those changing tools will affect the culture of the world. You see a future and hack at it because you’ve seen the rules of the game. We need those rule breakers because they keep us honest. But we’ve got to keep them honest too. Life is a team effort and it takes all kinds of skills to pull off something great.
But if you are playing on easy mode, and the nerds have been on easy mode since we needed whiz kid scientists to fight the Nazis, then you don’t handle rejection too well. Everyone thinks they are owed something on the internet for being barely above a midwit. And they are probably right as we are living Idiocracy out there right now.
But you’ve got to have boundaries. Nowhere is that truer than with someone with a deep hurt. Probably why we have company politics and project managers and deeply angry women in startups who spend their whole ass lives managing the feelings of man-babies. It ain’t great for moral.
I don’t know why nerds are such children. Sometimes. Maine you had someone to clean up the hurt for you. Mommy mostly. Sometimes the head of NASA or maybe a spook. I don’t know where the bodies are buried in this land but I know they are somewhere. I know I enjoyed being a spoiled bitch more when I didn’t realize the enormous cost. Rationalize and reconcile what you can.
I don’t mind when nerds deliver us energy and weapons and the stars and whole new ways of self organizing. I’ve sided with them my whole life and nerds are my ancestral people. Witches and rocket scientists and trailer trashy.
But if a nerd pretends the consequences of living with others don’t apply to them you better be skeptical. But sometimes you do in fact need to punch a bully. Punching Nazi nerds in particular. The nerd bullies may need it the most. Remember it’s dweebs with delusions of grandeur who commit genocide and raise army for fascists. Banality of evil and all that. Happy Memorial Day.