The Nerd Generation

Our generation has been called a number of things: Millennials, Generation Y, the "Me" Generation.  But honestly, none of those terms really capture who we are as a generation, do they?  If the Millennials could be personified as a individual and contrasted with previous generations, who would that person be?  

In my opinion: a nerd.  

Being a nerd has never been SO cool.  Almost all the big blockbuster movies these days are comic book adaptations, sci-fi, and fantasy.  Who can count the number of Marvel and DC comic book movies that have come out in the past few years?  They've revived the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises (with huge financial success), and Peter Jackson took The Lord of the Rings and turned it from a rather esoteric, cult-hit series of fantasy books, and made them into some of the highest-grossing, most epic films of all time.  Not to mention Harry Potter, the Hunger Games, the Matrix, Avatar, The Hobbit, Ender's Game and most of the Pixar/Dreamworks movies.  Even mainstream, teen romances are moving more and more into the sci-fi/fantasy realm.  Twilight, anyone?  I think most of Twilight's fan-base would not consider themselves to be nerds, and yet they worship characters and a story that exist in what would normally be considered a nerd/geek universe.  It combines things geeks love (vampires, super-powers) with things that teenage girls love (romance and sparkles!).  The other day my friend saw a section in the Barnes and Noble labeled "Paranormal Teen Romance."  Things are definitely changing. 

Also, need I mention that it was my generation that made anime popular in the West?  What young person these days doesn't at least know the name Miyazaki?  Over the course of my lifetime, I have seen the birth of the Anime & Manga section in bookstores--not only that, but literally every time I go back to Barnes & Noble I swear that section gets bigger.  My generation grew up watching Transformers and Power Rangers, and when we got older we were delighted to discover a wealth of awesome anime-mecha series to geek out over, in addition to all those adorably kooky, bizarre anime romances, and intense, surreal dramas, thrillers, and horror flicks.  
 

 East to West - Japan's influence on the Nerd Generation

(clockwise from top left: The Power Rangers, Evangelion, Pacific Rim)







To catch up with this frenzy of nerdom, conventions and groups have been springing up all over the country where people who love these things can meet, mingle, and just generally geek out.  Comic-Con is one of the most famous, with annual conventions popping up in cities all over the US, and in other countries as well.  San Diego was the first city to kick off its annual Comic-Con in 1970, followed by Chicago in 1976--but the Comic-Cons really took off during our youth when Pittsburgh, Detroit (1994), New York (1996) and ten other cities (in the 2000's) started their own annual Comic-Cons.  The biggest anime conventions in the US are Anime Expo (first held in 1992), Otakon (1994), Anime Central (1998), and many more have proliferated since then.  The nerd wave may have really started with Generation X, but Generation Y has carried it on with gusto and made it their own.  

New York Comic Con

Need I also add that there are now countless comedy troups, singers, bands, indie film-makers, artists, and even bars and clubs that all specialize in geek-stuff.  Not to mention youtube sensations like the Vlog Brothers, Geek and Sundry, and PBS's Idea Channel, and more geeky webcomics than you could count. 

Of course, the people who go to conventions and immerse themselves in this stuff are still a small minority of the population. 
But even young people who aren't nerdy enough to go to conventions--even the people who think that those "nerd things" are just plain weird or even freaky--are still familiar with a lot of the nerd culture and terminology that most people were ignorant of a few decades ago.  Everyone knows who Frodo is now, and Dr. Who; everyone knows what Dungeons & Dragons is and what a 20-sided die is for.  The Avengers was the highest-grossing film of 2012 and the third highest grossing film of all time.  In fact, the top 7 highest-grossing films of all time (with the exception of Titanic) are all pretty nerdy films and they all came out in the last ten years.  The things that were previously considered geeky (and not cool) are blending more and more with the mainstream--often in a very good way.  Christopher Nolan took the Batman franchise and proved that comics could make serious, thought-provoking films.  An entire generation raised on the Harry Potter books grew up imagining what it would be like to go to wizard school, drink butter beer, and play Quidditch.  We love to imagine. 

What's more, some celebrities who's careers have nothing to do with nerd things are flamboyantly unabashed nerds themselves.  Anyone remember how excited Stephen Colbert was about the Lord of the Rings movies?  Or that time when he wore hobbit feet and decorated the whole studio like Hobbiton?  Or that time that Jon Stewart looked up at the camera and yelled, "KHAAAAAAN!" and then with a little impish grin, said, "I've wanted to do that for a very long time."  These are the people that my generation gets most of their news from.  The Stewart and Colbert shows are not specifically tailored for nerds--but they make nerd references galore and we love them for it. 

Another reason why we are the nerd generation: we are all addicted to technology.  We all grew up with computers, and we're glued to to our phones and the internet.  You remember when the stereotypical computer geek used to look like this?

 

Now, as often as not, they look like this:

My generation loves to obsess: over books, movies, TV shows, celebrities, ourselves, lolcats...you name it.  Obsession itself is often associated with nerdom.  As Mike Rugnetta pointed out in Is There an Introvert Craze Because of Technology?, the word "nerd" is now being used more broadly (and less negatively) than ever before.  "Nerd" can describe anyone who is really, really into...pretty much anything.  You can be nerd for beer, football, history, motorcycles, books, videogames, etc., etc.    The word itself is becoming less negative, and many young people now wear it as a badge of pride. 

Speaking of obsessions and the introvert craze, there seems to be a rising popular fascination with introversion--another quality often associated with nerds.  There have been an abundance of books published lately with titles like Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength and Quiet Influence: The Introvert's Guide to Making a Difference, plus the seemingly endless internet memes explaining or vaunting the virtues of introversion.  What's fascinating is that so often these things are centered around empowering introverts and making them understood in this "extrovert's world."   Introverts are really depicted as a kind of repressed minority, just as nerds have been similarly characterized in the past.  But as Mike Rugnetta and Whitney Erin Boesel point out, the internet has become venue of expression and empowerment for introverts and nerds alike.  For people who find social interaction to be either tiring or difficult, the internet is a God-send.  You can take your time, gather your thoughts, and express yourself as much and as often as you want.  It's easier to seek out and find people who have similar interests and ideas, and you can interact with those people in as limited or as expansive a way as you wish.  Extroverts have an easier time meeting people and forming new social groups since they draw energy from doing exactly that.  However, for people who find it tiring to go out and meet new people, it can be hard to find others who share your interests and lifestyle.  On the internet, the ability to be selective about who you interact with, how, and when really is empowering.  It allows both nerds and introverts (which, let's be clear, are not the same thing) to network and band together in ways that they never could before.   

It could be that I'm overstating the case for my peers being the nerd generation--after all, my views are colored by the people I spend time with and the things I like to do, both of which tend to be nerdy--but I think it would be hard to refute the argument that nerdom has become way more influential and mainstream than ever before.  Like homosexuals, they have risen out of the woodwork and are making their presence known.  They're integrating into society and pop culture in a very positive way.  Nerd culture has become an essential part of the fabric of my generation and sets us apart from the generations before us.  

Sources of inspiration for this post:

List of highest-grossing films - Wikipedia
Is There an Introvert Craze Because of Technology? - PBS Idea Channel
The Introvert Fetish - by Whitney Erin Boesel
Who Is Hollywood's Hottest Nerd? - SodaHead