When Did Geek Become Cool?

I'm serious. When did it happen?

When I was in high school, the cool kids didn't play video games. Well, not the games I was playing. The jocks had their Madden NFL, NBA 2kwhatever, and the girls...wait. The cool girls didn't play video games. Ever. They were the ones in the hall griping about "My boyfriend just wants to sit and play games with his friends, and I want him to take me shopping. Blah blah." Oh, and don't get me started about the entire physics class that blamed me for them all getting Cs on a test. I wrote two formulas for linear velocity of something traveling in a circle. Both are correct. One is for if you have the time of a SINGLE, FULL rotation, the other if you have the time for a partial rotation or for multiple rotations. But, I digress.

Now, it's almost like geek is chic. An etsy search for "geek" done as I write this resulted in 24,226 results. The same kind of search for "nerd", 6,615. Wow. I can also walk up to a random stranger and ask them "What is Halo?" and get a response of "A video game" from at least 3 of every 10. And that's if I'm wearing my street, non-geeky clothes. Shoes, jeans, basic or decent looking shirt. Nothing that screams "I play video games!"

OK, I get it. It's cool to be seen around town in those geek chic sunglasses, or sporting a Star Trek shirt. And I know everyone uses emoticons now, not just those of us who spent most of our high school careers sequestered in the computer room, hiding from the sun behind a CRT monitor and a forum handle. And I understand that if I say to you "I can has?", if you're under the age of 30, you probably know it's a lolcat thing. But, somewhere along the line, we went from having the video games section crammed in a spot at Target and Wal-Mart somewhere between the music/movies and the edge of the universe to Target having an Assassin's Creed II t-shirt as the third item (top row, center) when you click "Men's Apparel" and go to Graphic Tees.


And, we computer geeks have started to notice too. I was in the grocery store, and I hear a guy ask "mom, can I get $100 in allowance advances so that I can buy a new video card for my computer? It won't play Starcraft II without it. I've got half the money saved in my money jar." I took a peek at the kid, and he's all of 14, wearing his football jersey. No, not a pro-replica jersey. His actual high school football jersey.

Science and math geeks are even getting love. There's a certain prime time Friday night crime drama that involves a mathematician solving crime (here's a hint: they even spelled it in 1337 (leet) speak). And Abby Sciuto on NCIS? Yeah, she's the most popular character. She's also a goth science geek. And then there's Tim McGee, also on NCIS: computer geek extraordinaire, who happens to also be a bibliophile, audiophile, accomplished author, and gamer, and has written an iPhone app that will unlock a car (one with the remote unlocking/locking system) by entering the VIN. Yeah, he's cool like that.

So, I guess it means that "geek" no longer has a purely negative connotation. But, for some reason, "nerd" still kinda does. I wonder why.

Well, I should figure that out sometime. In the meantime, I'll be reading XKCD, ctrl-alt-del, and Penny Arcade, pondering what, in fact, the difference between "nerd" and "geek" really is. And why "nerd" just ain't chic.