Nerdin' it up!

I adore puzzles.  I spend a bunch of my free time doing crosswords, sudoku puzzles, kakuro puzzles, hanjie... pretty much any type of puzzle is cool with me.  When I was studying for the LSAT, I actually really enjoyed doing the Logic Games sections (questions like "6 people have to sit around a table, A can't be next to B, C has to be by E, etc.).

I really like math.  Since I'm not actually studying it in university I don't get to do very much interesting math any more, which makes me sad, but when I was in high school I was in the Math League, and it was so much fun, no joke.  We just had the best time.  Plus, my team made it to Provincials!

I think puns are hilarious, and we all know that puns are the nerdiest type of joke.  I'm not particularly good at coming up with them, but I always feel like I laugh way more than is appropriate whenever someone else makes one.  I also tend to catch unintentional puns even when no one else notices them at all.

I like to learn about really obscure/bizarre history.  For example, I've read a ton of Wikipedia articles about historical elephants, cryptids, feral children, conjoined twins, and sideshow performers, amongst other things.

I read some pretty nerdy fantasy novels.  Aside from the standard ones like The Lord of the Rings or Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, I have read a ton of Dragonlance books, as well as many from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series.  Possibly my most obscure fantasy novel obsession is Robert Holdstock's Ryhope Wood series, which I read most of when I was in high school, and was always upset that my local library didn't have all the books in the series.  Since then, they have gotten rid of some of them, rather than acquiring the missing ones, and it upsets me that I can no longer even re-read them, let alone finish the series.  I realize this is probably for a good reason like they were lost or stolen or damaged or something, but still.  Still.

Also I am a huge nerd about board games.  I love board games!  Some of my favourites are Ticket to Ride, Scattergories, and Identity Crisis.  This past summer I played a bunch of retro games from the 70s that one of my friends borrowed from his grandfather, and they were fantastic.  Stop Thief was especially good, it has an 'electronic crime scanner' and it is just endlessly amusing.

I have two nerdy pursuits where I am definitely out-nerded, but I really enjoy them and would like to become better at them: Dungeons & Dragons, and Magic: The Gathering.  I played DnD a little bit in my first year of university, but my group was kind of disorganized and awful, so it wasn't that great, but this past Christmas one of my friends from back home put together a game for a few of us, and it was a lot of fun.  The same friend also has gotten really into Magic lately, and he's been teaching the rest of us how to play, and I've enjoyed it so much that it has made me want my very own deck!

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

This is an interesting post for me because I use nerd and geek almost interchangeably. Usually the word I use varies by context - if I'm around a Nerdfighter, I tend to use nerd more frequently, and if I'm around someone who aggressively dislikes one of the words, I'll use the word they prefer (i.e. I have a friend who actively rallies against the label of geek, so I use nerd around him).

I agree with the definition of nerd as someone with varied interests and geek as someone with a passion for one subject, with it being possible to be both; under this definition I'd be a nerd, but also a Doctor Who geek.

The funny thing is, that definition is not how I actually use the words. In everyday usage, I completely swap the nerd definition for the geek one, with it being common for nerd to be used in more language focused or mainstream/more accepted areas (i.e. book nerd, Firefly nerd, politics nerd). I tend to use geek in the situations that, even if accepted now, used to be the hallmark of a social outcast or were deemed weird - for instance a Dungeons and Dragons geek, a model painting geek, or a video game geek.

Did any of that make sense? So I say that a nerd is someone with varied interests who probably is more well-read and pursues intelligence, and a geek is someone with a passion. But what I usually end up meaning is that a nerd has a couple of passions but is more accepted for them, while a geek can have one or many hobbies but they're a little more off-the-wall and might get some weird looks for them.

Nerdspotting

My method of differentiating between geeks and nerds is actually very similar to what Sarah wrote yesterday.

Nerds, in my definition, have a wide range of interests.  Nerds are nerds about everything (or a lot of things, at any rate).

Geeks, on the other hand, tend to be more narrowly focused on a certain subject.  Geeks are geeks about specific things.

There is one other criterion that I would like to add.  I associate both nerds and geeks as being, in general, on average, not in every case but fairly often, more introverted as well as more intelligent than non-nerd/geeks.  I would say the introversion applies slightly more to geeks and the intelligence slightly more to nerds.  So, both nerds and geeks have above-average levels of introversion and intelligence, but I think it would be more likely to find an extroverted nerd than an extroverted geek, and more likely to find an average-intelligence geek than an average-intelligence nerd.  Of course, these are clearly blanket statements and not hard and fast rules, but I feel like that is the way it is, in general.

It is possible to be both a nerd and a geek.  You can be a nerd in general, but have specific things that you geek about.

Personally, I am a nerd, but I don't think I'm geek about anything any more (I used to be a geek about both Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, and a really long time ago, about Pokémon, but I've lost my geek-level of interest in any of those things).

Nerds vs. Geeks

So this week we're discussing the differences between nerds and geeks. Personally, I think they're similar but not the same. You can be one, the other or both, it's pretty flexible.

Nerds

To me a nerd has always just been a person who likes to like things. A nerd has a wide variety of interests and isn't bothered to admit it or increase their knowledge, they also wouldn't mind being introduced to anything new.

Geeks

Geeks in my definition are similar to nerds but without the wide variety of interest. When someone is classified as a geek, to me it's that they have a specialized interest. A geek has a subject that they excel in, something they favor more with their enthusiasm.

While I'm a nerd for all sorts of things, especially books (book geeks are also possible), I consider myself a Harry Potter geek because those are honestly my favorite books and I have a habit of trying to see how many small details about the wizarding world I can memorize. I figure geeks also can just go to a certain genre, you can be a sci-fi geek, a mystery geek.

Summary
In summary, nerds are people who like a lot of stuff, like to learn about stuff and are not ashamed of it. Geeks are nerds with specialized interests.

This was short, I'm bothered by how short my nerd paragraph is to my geek paragraph.