Nerds In Paradise

It is odd that the two preoccupations primarily connected with nerds by the general public should occupy opposing ends of the technological spectrum. On the one hand we have knights and wizards rescuing maidens and gold from orcs and dragons in a fantasy medieval milieu, and on the other we have bukkake. Sorry, I meant computers. Beyond mentioning this, I really don;t have anything that could be even remotely referred to as a point. I was just trying vainly to establish some sort of tenuous connection between nerds and technology. Given the amount of source material available, I did a pretty shit job. Except for the bukkake joke. I'm proud of that.

OK, let me start again. Nerds and technology. Here I go.

There is a lot of talk regarding the death of the community due to the internet. People apparently don't see each other or speak to each other so much these days, preferring to email acquaintances instead. This complaint seems to run counter to the complaint of previous years that the telephone had ruined the art of letter writing. People always want to whinge about something...

Anyway, nerds are the major beneficiary of the social opportunities afforded by the internet. In the past they would be resoundly beaten in the schoolyard, go home and...I don't know build model aeroplanes and masturbate bitterly I suppose. Then Star Trek and Dungeons and Dragons were invented, and they could talk to other nerds from the area about these topics. A great leap forward, but it resulted in small cells of nerds being formed, meeting only at Sci-Fi conventions and CanCon.

Then the internet was invented, quietly, in the dimly-lit computer rooms of selective high schools across the world. Nerds could retreat into their fetid bedrooms and communicate with other victims of forced urinal-licking from around the globe. The revolution was coming, pal, and you could forget the proletariat and his moustachioed idols. Nerds were planning a fightback, and Captain Kirk could kick Stalin's arse any day. Shit, even Picard could take out Lenin. And we'll leave Marx to Janeway.

So yeah, the nerds now had a plethora of invisible comrades with similar experiences. Goths from Chicago could post their self indulgent wank on Geocities websites so that Dragonlance Fifth Age fans could sympathise with their life experiences - for the first time, the pain of having a bucket of bleach thrown you could be expressed and shared with 14 year olds in Wollongong who were deeply depresssed over WOTC's lack of support for their favourite gameworld. Nerds were gaining a sense of community in the very place bemoaned for destroying communication and filality.

After Columbine, the nerd revolution was stymied. Goths were sent to counselling for wearing black, and kids were suspended for claiming any sort of sympathy with fucked up geeks. Bullies were encouraged to crush the spirit of any nerds who got a little too uppity, and games like Quake and Unreal Tournament quickly became contraband.

Then some more stuff happened, and the nerds have retreated underground like Skaven, into dark caverns below our major cities. Theyrefer to these caverns by names such as "Stavomuellar Beta" and "The High Clerist's Tower". Most of them have gaming rooms, a comic shop, and a number of Jolt vending machines. The caverns below Wollongong are referred to as "Yankovicia", and tunnels come from the depths of the earth into such locations as Timezone, Games Workshop and Phantom Zone, where the nerds surface periodically to buy Magic cards and trade downloaded copies of Lord of the Rings previews.

A nerd candidate for mayor has been proposed in Wollongong, and similar movements around the world have teams of experts combing search engines for material on assault weaponry, class war, and articles by Jon Katz. They are taking over the world with the programming nous and intimate knowledge of the Millenium Falcoln. I just pray that we can stop them before the world become a morass of goatse.cx references and junk food wrappers, and our international slogan becomes 'All your base are belong to us'. Fuck, that'd be shit.

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