Sunday, March 25, 2012

You Got Me Spinning Like A Mercy-Go-Round

Something I've always found really odd/incredibly annoying is everybody's need to out-do somebody else when they're telling a story or saying something about themselves. The most logical conclusion I can come to about this matter is that it forces everybody listening to listen to them and I guess (or hopefully) complement them in some way. I try to stop myself from doing this too much, but I know I'm guilty of it, as you probably are as well.

For example, my friends and I had an acquaintance in first year of university who was the fucking worst for this. We would be telling a story, for example my skate bail story, and about 2/3 of the way through (Isn't it convenient that this always happens before you can finish/get to the best part?) she would interrupt to say something like "Well, one time I fell off a swing and broke my arm and it was GUSHING blood and my mom was freaking out and we rushed to the hospital!" It was a pretty big piss off, for the following reasons.

Firstly, don't fucking interrupt people in the middle of a story. It's fucking rude. If you do apologize for it.

Secondly, your story sucks. I mean I realize that my skate bail wasn't the worst injury. It was a few deep cuts and a lot of road rash. But the story and context that go along with it make it pretty funny/interesting (At least in my mind they do.). While a broken arm is clearly much more serious than what happened to me, the way it happened is very typical and uninteresting.

Third thing: If your story sucks don't try to enhance it like she did by adding "GUSHING" or my mom was freaking out to make it seem more interesting. Everyone that you are talking to realizes that you adding fictional elements in the places where it won't affect the story later on. It makes you seem very stupid.

Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because this always happens when people are discussing "nerddom". Being a nerd used to suck, but then Adam Brody's character on The OC happened and a lot of guys realized that if you aren't a nerd, but fake like you are, it has a chance of making you more endearing towards girls. Same goes the other way as well. This whole idea of faking being nerdy in order to outnerd other people and seem cool is very odd to me. Because people say something like "Lol, I'm such a nerd." all the time, but when I say that I still have a subscription to The Uncanny X-Men as a 22-year-old I get weird looks.

Case-in-point (and reason I bring this all up in the first place) is a remark a former co-worker of mine made on twitter the other day. She says that people often tease her for being a hipster. She countered by saying that in terms of her style of dress, she's just trying to stay current. Whatever no problem there, it's perfectly normal for someone to try and stay up to date with trendy clothing. Then she said she's always been a nerd and the example she gave was "In grade 6 I did my speech on FAIRIES. What's more nerdy than fairies?" which made absolutely no sense to me. I could be wrong, but it isn't that uncommon for 11-year-old girls to like fairies is it? Tinkerbell? She seems pretty popular. Also, do you still love fairies? I'm pretty sure you don't.

Anyways, I guess I'm about to epitomize everything I just wrote an entire blog entry against, but here are things I do that are more nerdy than someone writing a speech on fairies in sixth grade:
  • Buy so many comics that the employees at the store know me by name. When I enter they have my comics ready for me at the desk without me having said a single word.
  • Buy an almost 20 year-old VHS box set because it has no CGI in it.
  • Watch anime based on a 16th century Chinese novel in Japanese with very badly translated subtitles.
  • Realize that most of The Big Bang Theory's jokes aren't actually nerdy and are just broad generalizations about things that fans of the show don't fully understand.
But I guess my saving grace is that I'm aware that there are people who are much, much nerdier than I am.

Comics are serious business, you guys.

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