Why you need to find your fellow nerds

It’s all about sharing the love and spreading it around

Joseph Quinn as Eddie on Netflix’s show, Stranger Things … just one more show that makes my little, nerd heart go thump, thump, thump

It’s 8:23 pm on Wednesday evening as I sit down to write this. The windows are open and I can hear the crickets chirping their end-of-summer song. I love the way it sounds both like a celebration and a farewell. I wonder where those crickets go in winter.

Once again, the week is careening along like a cart pulled by a runaway horse. Fall is my favorite season, and it makes me sad to feel like it’s slipping through my fingers. How can we already be more than halfway through September?

It’s my birthday next week. I will be turning fifty-six. (Let’s not talk about the fact that I had to do the math to make sure I got that right.) I suppose it’s not an altogether bad thing to not know exactly how old you are. Maybe it indicates that you don’t really care — that age really is just a number.

I will be embracing a kind of agelessness tomorrow when my daughter and I head to Boston for the Yungblud concert. We anticipate waiting in line most of the day in an attempt to score spots at the barrier in the general admission venue. Wish us luck.

I love going to see live music. My beau and I always manage to get in a few shows each year. Having never been to a Yungblud show, I’m very curious to see what the vibe is like. Probably more than any other artist I’ve seen, Dom (Dominic Richard Harrison) seems to have a knack for building a fan community that is inclusive, welcoming, and hella fired up to express their love for this artist and his music.

That is energy I really need right now.

🖤

These are some very strange and — quite frankly — frightening days.

Just before I sat down to write this, I made the mistake of clicking on an incoming YouTube notification from Aaron Parnas. I love the guy and appreciate everything he does to bring us the news, unfiltered and in real time, but — man — I flinch each time I hear him say, “We have breaking news.” It’s never anything good.

Nor was it tonight.

I have said it before and I will say it again: I don’t want to write about politics.¹ But to have any kind of platform — even one as modest as mine — and completely ignore the reality of what’s happening at this particular moment in history seems more than a little disingenuous and privileged.

Believe me — I’d love to be able to tune out from the endless barrage of gut-punching headlines. But I just can’t bring myself to turn away or, apparently, stay silent.

Today’s news included, among other things, several developing stories that raise some very real concerns about the enduring strength of our First Amendment rights.² This is important to me because freedom of expression is important to me.

Without freedom of expression, we cannot have art. Without freedom of expression, we only have propaganda. I really like art. I like to make it and I like to experience it. Propaganda, not so much.

Over the past week, I have been shocked at the way the divisions in this country have become so much deeper, sharper, and altogether more vicious. I don’t have to explain why. You already know. Right here in my own small town, I have watched an unexpectedly large number of my neighbors storm online spaces like a mob of proverbial townspeople armed with pitchforks and torches. They are trying to get a school nurse fired for a post he made on his personal social media on his own time. The collective tone of their demands is hysterical and, I suspect, largely performative. It still, however, reeks of an assumed entitlement to control other people’s free expression — to eradicate anything that doesn’t fit their world view or narrative.

Honestly, the cognitive dissonance of this moment has me walking in circles while endlessly doom scrolling in search of any shred of insight that might help explain what the actual fuck is going on.

So far I’ve got nothing.

Despite all this chaos, I keep coming back to what I originally wanted to write about this week — the fact that, at fifty-six years old, I am finally reclaiming my inner nerd.

It’s not that I ever stopped being a nerd. It’s more that I just set it aside. I’ve always loved reading (Word nerd! Book geek! ), faeries, dragons, witches, talking animals, unicorns, and horses. In recent years, I’ve also fallen in love with — among other things — certain superhero movies, The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, Wednesday, Good Omens, and — most recently — Kpop Demon Hunters.

I also get really nerdy about wildflowers, birds, tarot decks, fantasy artists, cool notebooks, pens, and pretty rocks.

Being a nerd is mostly about being unabashedly in love with the things that make your heart sing. Sadly, life often teaches us to hide that love away so we can “fit in.” But fitting in is not the same as belonging.

🖤

We’re all looking for a place that feels like home. And sometimes home is being around people who love the same stupid things you do.

For nerds, this might be a regular D&D game, a fantasy book club, a fan convention, a ren faire, or a movie premiere. Basically anything that gets you in the same space with other people who love what you love.

The non-nerd equivalent would probably be bonding over the local sports team. I don’t get that, but I don’t judge.

In either case, nerding out together is all about shared experience — both the separate experiences of the thing you’re nerding out over and the collective experience of reliving and sharing that love. A nerd community has a shared context and language. You know all the lore and the inside jokes. You get the vibe to the point of finishing the sentences of complete strangers and then laughing together like an old married couple because you both know the punchline before either of you says it.

Nerding out together is an invitation to play. It’s a chance to be deadly serious about the completely ridiculous and brilliant creations of other nerds. It’s a chance to unleash your unbridled enthusiasm. It’s the freedom to be fully and wildly yourself — no need to justify, no shame, and no need to tone things down.

Being around your fellow nerds means you finally have someone who wants to hear about all the little details that bore other people to death. It means you don’t have to explain anything because — huzzah! — everyone already gets it. It means you can finally share all the little stories about when you first fell in love with the object of your nerdy affections, how you discovered your thing, what your favorite part is, and so on and on and on.

Getting together with other nerds is also an excellent practice ground for becoming the most authentic version of yourself. As a TikTok I saw the other day pointed out, it takes a certain amount of courage to go out in public wearing a corset and a pair of elf ears … or any other cosplay of your choice.

And like I said, nerding out doesn’t have to be related to pop culture or dressing up. Maybe your inner nerd is all about bonsai trees or traditional woodworking or chocolate or calligraphy or medieval illustrated manuscripts. The point is just to love your thing without any apologies, and then find other people who get it. That’s where the magic happens.

Earlier in his career, Yungblud’s music was much more punk. It spoke directly to the outsiders and the outcasts, building a loyal following of fellow nerds and geeks who were looking for a place to call home, a place where they would be welcomed and understood. As he matures and his musical style evolves, Dom is expressing himself in different ways, but the authenticity is still there — front and center.

He is not for everyone. I’m sure some people find him outright offensive, or stupid or ridiculous. Luckily — for now — we still live in a world where artists are mostly allowed to express themselves without censorship or persecution.

And lucky for me, I don’t give a rat’s ass what other people think. I’m all in on this nerd bandwagon. Look for me up front at the barrier, singing every lyric, screaming my head off, and probably crying.

1. I don’t want to write about politics, partly because there are other folks way more qualified to do so, including many right here on Substack such as Heather Cox Richardson, Aaron Parnas, Medias Touch, Jim Acosta, and The Contrarian.

2. First, we learned that Disney’s ABC network has pulled late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air indefinitely. Then we learned that the president has designated “antifa” as a terrorist organization. (For context, see what The Anti-Defamation League has to say about antifa.) Lastly, Attorney General Pam Bondi appears to be creating a new, unprotected category of expression in the U.S. - whatever they deem to be “hate speech.” It’s not great.