Friday Link: Knowing Your Nerd

via Lifehacker (that’s right, Rachel, another Lifehacker shout-out!]:

Here comes a great essay called “The Nerd Handbook“.  Note that this is not “How To Be A Nerd” or “Nerdiness for Dummies.”  No, “The Nerd Handbook” is written for the friends, family, and romantic interests of nerds.  It’s the missing nerd manual.  If there’s a nerd in your life, this will help you understand him or her. 

One of my favorite excerpts:

Nerds are f___ing funny.  Your nerd spent a lot of his younger life being an outcast because of his strange affinity with the computer. This created a basic bitterness in his psyche that is the foundation for his humor. Now, combine this basic distrust of everything with your nerd’s other natural talents and you’ll realize that he sees humor is another game.

Humor is an intellectual puzzle, “How can this particular set of esoteric trivia be constructed to maximize hilarity as quickly as possible?” Your nerd listens hard to recognize humor potential and when he hears it, he furiously scours his mind to find relevant content from his experience so he can get the funny out as quickly as possible.

I’m pretty sure I fall somewhere between Geek and Nerd on the Popular <—> Dork spectrum.  (Exhibit 1:  the fact that I just described myself by placing myself on a spectrum).  But I am unashamed of it, if not damn proud.  Sure there are some things that I could improve on social skill-wise (see the section on “Your nerd may come off as not liking people”), but surely having an obsessive desire to completely understand something can’t be an entirely bad thing.  Right?  Am I right or am I right?  Guys?  Where’d they… aw, wait up you guys!  (*nerd trot to catch up with cool kids*)

As we head into the Valentine’s season next week, don’t forget to reach out and love a nerd/geek/dork!  Happy Friday!

(P.S.  Forgive my goofiness, but it’s just one of those days.)

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user bayat.