Speaking as an old school nerd, it’s my opinion that these attempts to attach chic to nerd subculture are unnecessary and a source of needless stress. Perhaps it’s sour grapes and crass elitism on my part but, I dislike these interlopers infiltrating our ranks and attempting to make us cool. Nerds ain’t in it for the cool. We like science because science is beautiful in and of itself. We like computers because they are interesting by themselves not because there’s any money in it or because they’ll somehow turn us into the hip rave DJs or something.
I find it ironic, now that some of us have made a little money doing the stuff we love, that we are suddenly interesting.
Some nerds are fairly lucky to be blessed by an interesting phenotype but a lot of us are chubby, pasty Joes and Josephines with weird hobbies and who are socially inept. This is price paid for high intelligence. If I had a choice between intelligence (and maybe a little wisdom) or beauty, you know which I’d pick. If this dichotomy gives some wannabes trouble so be it. Nerd subculture is no place for wannabes. We’ve had to accept being excluded from the in-crowd and beautiful people during our formative years for millenia so, in all fairness, we reserve the right to spill a little vitriol to keep these new parasites out.
Anyway we’re caterpillars and most of us never turn into butterflies. A lot of us learn to accept this and eventually find another gentle, devastatingly intelligent, high-strung caterpillar to settle down with and perhaps raise a few more caterpillars.
I dunno, why is it that it is the way it is?