A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning in general. It is someone that is interested in more abstract and academic pursuits. These interests may or may not be technical. They may, or may not, be obscure. They are more likely to know quite a lot about quite a lot but not necessarily to the huge depth of the geek.

A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular subject or subjects. Often these will be technical or obscure. They will tend to know their subjects in incredible depth and detail, far more than a normal person could bear.

A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations and interactions. They may, or may not, be a geek or a nerd. They may have perfectly normal interests and knowledge but just find people “difficult.”

Where the confusion comes is that often these are mixed. Many nerds also have particular subjects they are geeky (expert) about. Many geeks also have a general interest in subjects outside their area of expertise (nerdy).  Due to their introspective nature, many geeks and nerds also have trouble with common social interactions (dorks).

To sum up: Some nerds are also geeks. Some geeks are also nerds. Not every nerd is also a geek. Not every geek is also a nerd. Geeks and nerds can also be dorks but not every dork is a geek or a nerd. Geeks and nerds are not always dorks.

I hope that has cleared things up.

Ostensibly the aim of StuffWhitePeopleLike is to inform a non-White person how to ingratiate themselves with the white majority. Of course this is not what it is really about. The blog brilliantly satirizes a certain segment of the population. It is the same small part of the population that David Brooks would call BoBos and some refer to as whiterpeople. This, almost entirely white, group define themselves more by attitudes than possessions. And of course those attitudes have to be “correct.”

The Swipples are the result of a prosperous society.  In a prosperous society it becomes more and more difficult to achieve status through stuff. In a wealthy society you do not really increase your status by having 5,000 square feet instead of 4,000. you do not really increase your status by having a 50 inch plasma instead of a 40 inch LCD television¹. I mean, which has more status, a late model BMW or a late model Lexus?

Moving status markers from things to attitudes gives the whiterperson many opportunities to one-up their neighbors. Purchasing a new car is trouble and costly. Installing a new kitchen will disrupt the household. But new attitudes can be adopted for free and with little disruption to your lifestyle. Talking about “economic injustice” does not require you to move out of your gated community. Praising multi-culturism can entail nothing more arduous than hiring a Mexican gardener or Filipino maid. Pontificating on the importance of “public education” does not mean you have to send you children to government schools².

You do not even have to give up buying stuff, you can engage in conspicuous non-consumption. The perfect Swipple non-consumption item is the Prius. This is 25 thousand dollars of non-consumption. It is three thousand pounds of metal, glass, and plastic shipped thousands of miles so you can save the environment. The Prius would likely not have sold as well if it were stylish and less “obvious” because then that non-consumption would be harder to spot. If you bought a Ford Escape Hybrid you had to make do with a little leaf logo and a small “hybrid” badge. The Prius made your moral virtue obvious to the world.

The thing to remember about the Swipples is that, despite their protests, they are all about status seeking. It is about showing that you are a “better” person than those other unenlightened souls.
I like my status symbols to be useful or fun. So despite being able to tick some of the SWPL boxes, I will never be part of the club. Guess I will have to make do with a 50 … no make that 80-inch plasma screen.

Notes
¹  Indeed not owning a TV is popular amongst the SWPLers.
²  A blogger by the name of Gotham Girl praised the diversity of public schools yet sends her own children to a 30 thousand dollar a year private school. [link] [Google cache]

Far worse, from a nerd hero perspective, you would imagine are romance novels. You know those books whose cover features longhaired beauties falling into the arms of buff heroes. If cinema will not feature geeky heroes what hope is there for romance novels?

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that not only is there a romance novel with a nerd hero but an entire series. Yes, an entire series. It is called, surprisingly enough, “The Nerd Series” by Vicki Lewis Thompson. Obviously you would not believe me unless I provided a link.

Of course, reading the small print (if not the novels themselves) reveals that the heroes are not particularly nerdy. In one novel the computer programmer is able to land a pilotless plane because of his flight simulator and gaming experience. As far as representing nerdish/geeky types as heroes, it is start.

But nerdy reader, do not get carried away with fantasies of falling into favor with the babes. One Amazon reviewer had this to say:

…And MAYBE that all might have been acceptable if Charlie had been a much more interesting hero. But it seems like VLT set out to make Charlie as normal and as nerdy as could be. He’s reserved, repressed, only slightly funny, and an overall nice, fairly handsome guy.
link

In other words, he would be a great nerd hero if only he was not such a nerd. I mean he is only slightly funny.

Nerd heroes? As the say, truth is stranger than fiction even heroic nerd fiction.

Here is a stereotype for you: A guy with a blog is a geek while a girl with a blog is cool. As often happens, the stereotype has some truth. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

I recently discovered an interesting new web tool called Typealyzer.  Give Typealyzer the address of the blog and it returns the Myers-Briggs temperament type for that blogger.

By using my bookmarks, following links, and some random searching I found blogs where I could determine if the blogger was male or female. I then asked Typealyzer to render its opinion.

I found that the most common type for women was ESFP. In other words they were extroverted, friendly people that were less likely to be analytical or intellectual. If I had to pick a description for an ESFP it would be party-girl (or boy). A less popular type for female bloggers was ISFP. If I had to pick a description it would be “artsy” type (or maybe a quiet party girl).

For the male bloggers the majority (almost exclusively) were introverted thinking types. Indeed large numbers came back as introverted iNtuitors (e.g., INTP, INTJ). Given that iNtuitors are only 25 percent of the population (and introverted iNtuitors perhaps eight percent) that result is surprising. If I had to pick a description for INTx it would involve the words geek or nerd. [As a Philosopher Geek I sometimes must speak painful truths]

What stood out was that there were very few extroverted male bloggers, and that most male bloggers were intellectual types. The women, on the other hand, appeared to be mostly extroverted social types.  I should make clear that I did not rely solely on Typealyzer rendering its opinion; the content of the blogs tended to match the type given.

So it seems that some stereotypes are true. Male bloggers are geeky guys and female bloggers are party-girls. Hmmm! Maybe I should start attending blogging conventions; there might be some party-girls there.

Notes

Typealyzer does not (at the time of writing) have this blog correct. Indeed as I added entries it changed its opinion radically. It still has not settled on a verdict.

Typealyzer will sometimes change its opinion on a blog over time. But on many blogs is stable and (judging by the blog content) probably correct.

I did find some introverted thinking female and some extroverted feeling male bloggers (I think Typealyzer has a thing for ESFPs). They were a minority though.

We live in a world that is ever more electronically connected yet personally disconnected. A world where we make deals over the telephone or by e-mail. A world where we may be no more than a price on a screen. A world where people increasingly come together for a single project and then disband to the far corners of the earth.

In such a world does that thing called character still count?  If you can get the job done, does it matter how? If you are only going to be together until this project completes, who cares? I would like to think that not only does character still count, but it counts even more.

In the majority of professional situations it is given that your colleagues are competent (mostly, although not always, true in my experience). But what happens when problems arise, when the schedule is blown, when a major product flaw is discovered? It is at that point that we realize that our colleagues are more than a set of competencies, more than a price on the screen, more than a contact on our e-mail list. It is at that point we realize the importance of character. Some projects succeed and projects fail, that is life. What counts is the manner of their success or failure.  We do not remember Enron because it failed; we remember it because of what happened before it failed. The intellectual brilliance of the characters involved is lost to the utter lack of character of those involved.

In a world of deals by phone and fax news travels faster than ever. So does reputation. Does character still count? I believe that the answer is yes. I hope you do too.