I've been awfully quiet of late, I realize, but a) I've been writing a good deal (a collection of short stories about Afghanistan and Iraq) and b) I've been dealing with more than a little flare up of depressive funk having to do with my return. The funk was not unexpected, to be sure. In fact, in 2005, when I got out of the army (and out of Iraq), one of the reasons that I didn't immediately try to go to school and took a year off instead was to give myself time to re-acclimate. At any rate, I seriously misjudged how long it would take to bridge. I'd figured a month or three at best and yet here I am, four months in, and still dealing with it. It's nothing to be overly concerned with. It just is what it is and these things simply take time, no matter how much I'd love, right now, to be laughing and playing with puppies in a fresh mountain meadow of dandelions on a cool summer morning while unicorns graze in the idyllic distance.
I like mocking people. I just do. It's not the best personality trait of mine, but it is what it is. As I've been doing it for a very long time, I feel I'm an expert on the subject. When you also take into consideration my years of being mocked as a small child, boy, young man, and now man, I think I know mockery from all angles. Thus it is that I feel it is my duty to clear up what, to me, has become an inexcusable conflation of three of our dearest pejoratives. Now, you may think that Nerd, Geek, and Dork are interchangeable, but you are wrong.
I, however, am not wrong. Ever. I do have entirely too much free time and so consider things that others would consider not worth consideration. Fret not, my loyal readers. I shall make this very simple. I'll give the basic definitions and examples so that you may venture forth and rest assured you're not making inadvertent fools of yourselves.
You're welcome.
1. Nerd- The defining characteristic of nerds is, as we all know, intelligence. However, nerdery requires a specific kind of intelligence, namely educational/intellectual. Nerds did very well in school. They read all the assignments and, even more so, read things that weren't even on the syllabus just to lord it over the rest to show just how advanced they were. They are intellectuals. They're the people who read Russian literature or Nietzsche in high school. They do not outwardly show their nerdery in the way that geeks or dorks will. What I mean by this is, whereas a geek will dress up as a red shirt and go to a Star Trek convention or a dork will dress up as Obi-Wan, a nerd will not dress up as Baudelaire, unless it's Halloween.*
*One area of blending that's difficult to determine is historical reenactors. While amazingly dorky, if the reenactor is historically obsessive, the research and attention to detail thus are very nerdlike. I leave it to you to choose whether they are dorks or nerds. I can't explain it, but medieval reenactors seem dorky, but Civil War reenactors seem nerdy.
Utility of Nerdery- While nerds also memorized the quadratic formula and the periodic table of elements, scientific excellence is incidental to true nerds because the key to nerdery is that the intelligence has to be completely impractical. Understanding Raskolnikov's parental issues and how they allude to Dostoevsky's resentment towards his father is all well and good, but it in no way, shape, or form produces anything that remotely contributes physically to society. Sure, it's smart, but it's pretty useless if a nerd is stranded on a desert island.
Example of Nerds- people who read and discuss the merits of Jane Austen.
2. Geeks- Geeks are similar to nerds. They, too, are intelligent, but in a very specific way. They are intelligent about technology. The guys writing code, the guys who insist on building their own computers, the guys who hack their cell phones to get the most out of them, those are all geeks. They are unlike the nerds in that they might very well have not done well in school at all. They didn't care. They like gadgets, dammit, and they like trying to one-up their fellow geeks with the newest hardware or by developing the most innovative way to maximize performance of the gear they have. Where their geekiness does truly shine, though, is in their love of science fiction. Geeks will take the ideas of sci-fi books, magazines, and TV shows and devote a phenomenal amount of time to expounding on what was simply a plot device for the writer(s) and adding a startling degree of pseudo-religious fervor.
Utility of Geekiness- Sadly, geekiness can be very practical. Advancing technology by pushing it to its limits is actually quite handy, but where they go off the rails is their cultish devotion to sci-fi. Spending one's time determining the mass, velocity, hull composition, and shield strength of a ship that was on an episode of Star Trek Voyager for fourteen seconds is a phenomenal waste of one's time.
Example of Geekiness- Star Trek.
Dorks- Dorks' intelligence is incidental. If there's something intelligent about dorkhood, it's completely by accident. Dorks like magic and fantasy and become just as cultish about it as the geeks do about sci-fi. The Dungeons and Dragons kids? Dorks. The Myst kids? Dorks. Though magic and fantasy are involved, a key component is that dorks have to go overboard with the object of their obsession.
Utility of Dorkhood- None, per se. It's fine to like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. It's not fine to dress as Gandalf and insist that you be called the Grey Wizard.
Example of Dorkhood-people who go overboard for vampires and zombies. Goths, despite their predilection for depressing poetry, are a subset of dorks. Emo kids are neither Nerds, Geeks, nor Dorks. They are simply a blight on humanity.
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Okay, I feel that's all pretty understandable. Where the true confusion seems to be is when Nerds, Geeks, and Dorks blend. The key to being correct is that one must identify the combination to determine the predominant trait and not simply and inaccurately mislabel based on first appearance. I shall thus give these differences to help you with classification. The real difficulty isn't in separating nerds and geeks from each other, since the technology/sci-fi distinction is obvious enough (nerds read books; geeks read manuals), but in separating dorks from nerds and geeks. As all their knowledge is ultimately trivial, trivia helps to separate them. Nerds know general and historical trivia; a geek knows Matrix trivia; a dork knows Twilight trivia.
Dorks vs. Nerds
A dork obsesses over Lord of the Rings. A nerd likes those fine but has read Tolkein's Book of Lost Tales. A dork likes The Chronicals of Narnia. A nerd likes The Screwtape Letters. A dork loves the various Romero Zombie movies. A dorky nerd loves Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It's important to note that if literature becomes involved, then nerdy becomes the dominant trait.
Dorks vs. Geeks
Star Wars is mostly dorky, with a slight tinge of geek, but mostly it's more about the Force, which is magic and thus dorky, as opposed to the space ships and light sabers, which are geeky. It definitely makes no pretentions towards scientific plausibility. Well, it tried with that cockamamie Midi-chlorians debacle, but I'm pretty sure everyone with sense decided not to admit the prequels existed. A Dork makes his official religion The Force. A Geek tries to build a light saber. If you're still not getting it, check this out: http://stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/FiveMinutes.html
That guy is a dorky geek.
To end, I shall give a personal example. I consider myself a nerd (though without the usual scholastic excellence). I casually and pretentiously reference Ancient Greek literature (though if it were only mythology, as that might be considered magical, it could therefore be considered dorky). I like Star Trek and Star Wars just fine but only "just fine." I've read the unabridged Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and know the accurate title is really The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Lastly, I spend thousands of words drawing distinctions between words that no one else cares about. Thus I'm an occasionally dorky or geeky nerd.
