Revenge on the nerds

Okay fine. I’m not nerd, nor could I ever be. I humbly concede to all the poindexters who tried to explain over e-mail that nerddom is not a learned skill but rather something you’re born with, like being gay or finding Rose from The Golden Girls awkwardly hot. Thing is, I could never be a nerd because, as awkward as I am, I enjoy interacting with people, and while it may sound shallow, I also like to wear clothes that fit and don’t make me look like my mom still dresses me.

It’s not like I didn’t try. But after hours of watching TED lectures and astrophysics documentaries, the only thing I got was a headache and a belief that the experience would be way more fulfilling if I was really, really, really high. One time, I tried to get into that Mythbusters show but the only myth I ever saw busted was that it’s actually never okay for a grown man to wear a beret. Heck, I even tried to teach myself computer programming, but the whole experience felt like staring at a Word document after my cat walked over my keyboard. Bummer.

After pulling my hair out for several weeks, I realized it just wasn’t in me. I can’t be a nerd. But you know what? Eff it. I don’t want to be a nerd. In fact, fuck nerds. The nerds had their day. Our society has been driven by technology for quite some time. That means nerds have already been running things, and where has that gotten us? The dot-com bubble burst and left us in economic shambles. Our recent recession has also helped us realize the excessive amounts of space-age crap filling our lives that is actually pretty useless. Technology and industry has effed the environment in places like Alberta, where a team of nerds had the task of figuring out how to extract petroleum from oil sands for gas companies. Way to go smartypantses!

Okay, maybe I’m overstating it. Indeed, not all nerds are evil. In fact, some nerds are making great humanitarian leaps and benefitting the world with their nerdy inventions. But for every one designing a sustainable, low-impact water filtration device, there is another toiling away at the next ShamWow.

The brutal truth is that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, and what is going to happen when the shit hits the fan and things get all Mad Max? The world’s economic and environmental state makes Woodstock ’99 look like a Christmas fair. You think a nerd’s knowledge of black holes will save them from the roving gang of toothless motorcycle barbarians? Heck no—prepare to get your glasses smashed with a spiked mace made out of an old baseball bat, chain and welded corkscrews, nerd! The only black hole people will care about is the giant tunnel they will need to dig to get away from the radioactive rain and crusty punks riding mutant Dobermans. And who would you trust to dig those escape tunnels? Not the nerds. Sure, they might help design them, but shit, they’re not going to be ruling the underground city once that gets built (actually, Montreal already has an underground city, so I guess technically, Tremblay is the king of the mole people).

The world needs less nerds. The world needs more people who actually do real shit, more local farmers providing healthy food to their community, more people who can actually build stuff. It needs more people who live simply off the land. We need less people going to grocery stores and paying for irradiated beef at robotic check-out machines that ask you how many bags you’ll need, and more people learning to hunt, tan hides and bake their own bread.

Maybe, in the end, the geeks won’t inherit the Earth. They had their time. Maybe it’s all about the carpenters and plumbers and whatever you call the guy whose job it is to keep barbarians out.

So fine, nerds; enjoy your braniac sessions debating why Warp Speed is faster than Hyper Drive, or which Monty Python movie was the best one (Holy Grail). I don’t care how many decimals of pi you can get to or the fact that you know how a cell phone works. Let’s see how you fare when you need to put food on the table and a roof over your head when the zombie-pocalypse comes. If you want to find me, I’ll be up north trying to shoot a fawn in the face and insulating my log shit-house with twigs and my own hair. Eff you.

PS. If none of that apocalypse stuff happens, I was just kidding. Please give me a job.

RIFF-RAFF@SYMPATICO.CA