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With the diffusion of hobbies and entertainment, and the fact that it's cool to be smart now, maybe the word "nerd" doesn't really mean anything useful anymore. It was hard enough to get people to agree on what it meant before -- was it mainly about the rejection? Did you have to be smart? Which hobbies counted? -- but now it's even less clear.





Nerds don't even dress like nerds these days. Someone dressed like this would be a hipster.

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Maybe it's time to drop the word and focus separately on each of the "nerd" traits we happen to have. Traits that include so many people that if we called them all nerds, there would be more "nerds" than non-nerds. So instead of calling our own set of traits "nerd things" and arguing with other nerds about why traits outside of our set aren't "real" nerd things, why not just say there's no definitive standard for nerdiness and let us all be the individual things that make us up?

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Be smart. Be socially awkward. Be a Joss Whedon or Dr. Who or Bleach fan. Be an Angry Birds player or a JRPG gamer or a hardcore FPS killer. Hate everyone who isn't. Or do all of the above.

And I'm not going to call you a nerd for it. I'm just going to call you someone with really bad taste.

For more from Christina, check out 6 Groups Who Don't Work as Movie Bad Guys Anymore and 5 Reasons The War Between Dog and Cat People Needs to Stop.