Tragic

[threemonkeys]

I got accused of being a weather nerd* today. Totally unfairly I should say. I was able to find a list of weather stations around the country because I used to work with the brother of the guy who set the list up and my google-fu did the rest.

I have to say I was a tiny bit put out. I replied that I was a science fiction nerd and weather nerds make science fiction nerds look like urbane sophisticates by comparison.

The thing is, there is a hierarchy of geekiness. Some obsessions are just more cool than others. Why for example is it just way cooler to be carried away by, say, medieval food choices (*waves innocently at gillpolack*) than it is to be obsessed by knowing all the model of train engine that ever ran in the country?

Now some of that could be to do with the degree of obsession. Some interests seem to attract the really far gone loonies and are looked down on for that reason. But I do believe there is also a hierarchy of coolness that is attached to the subject matter of the obsession. Something similar to the hierarchy of snobbery that exists between departments at universities.

So what I want to know is just what exist at the extremes of this hierarchy. What is the coolest possible type of nerd? What is the most pitied/despised?

*Nerd = geek. I know there are people who consider them quite different in meaning and equate geek with guru and nerd with social reject. But for every one of those, there is another who thinks exactly the reverse. I therefore use them interchangeably as terms for the terminally obsessed. Any mention of biting off chicken heads will get you hit with a dictionary.

Comments

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

It used to be that geek was a job, nerd was a personality thing. Now it is more complicated, because geek is also a subculture, or a type of subculture. It is now common usage for geek to be a self-identification of subcultural identity.

And the hierarchy of snobbery is almost always relative, which comes across nicely in the geek hierarchy chart -- people know there is a top and a bottom, but most people think their interest is somewhere near the top. Why one obscure interest (say, Disney merchandising, as featured today on boing boing, whch Cory Doctorow obsesses over) is cooler than another (such as the byword for nerdy, trainspotting), I have no idea, and I think there is really nothing to it other than the reputation for taste of the people who are interested in it.

For example, train spotters may be nerdy, but plane spotters (a near identical hobby) helped break the details of the CIAs illegal extraordinary rendition story, and so ended up as minor heroes in the maelstrom of world politics, and clearly seem cooler. There is no rhyme or reason to it.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

I think there is really nothing to it other than the reputation for taste of the people who are interested in it.

Thats what I was getting at - more or less. Some things are considered more "tasteful" than others. There are broad trends in this tastefulness in society that shuffling around at the detail level does not change. So, for example, to be obsessed by matters artistic is more tasteful than being obsessed by the merely material. People who are obsessed by the brushwork of 17th century paintings find jobs in academia while trainspotters get laughed at in their anoraks.

[capnoblivious.livejournal.com]

Indeed. The old high school dynamic:
- obsessed with sports - hero!
- obsessed with Star Trek - loser!

In either case, it's a bunch of people who seem fascinating from the outside, but you wouldn't want them in your living room, doing something that varies somewhat week-to-week but stays within the same basic parameters.

Not that I'm bitter.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Good example.

Thing is, I was obsessed with sports and star trek at high school. Unfortunately I was crap at sports. Consider yourself lucky that I don't talk about cricket here.

[capnoblivious.livejournal.com]

I've never really got sport.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Its probably something you pick up early. My father was pretty passionate about it and it rubbed off.