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Look, this topic is very near and dear to my heart, hence why I made it part of TR's mission statement. So I'll be adding much more commentary than usual, and I hope you'll forgive me. But as an appeteaser of nerdery, here are a few lines from people -- sometimes in context, often not -- that totally rocked my world. I think you'll see why:
Kaoy said:
I don't even want to think about how close I came to getting ass raped by Lieutenant Mustang.DoctorSmashy said:
On numerous occassions, I have attempted to use Godzilla knowledge to get women to like me.BobJ said:
"Man-Wolf!" I yelled back at the guy, as my wife cringed. "You might want to look it up!"christwriter said:
[He believed] when you allow the general public to watch a LARPing event, they'll realize it isn't that geeky.spokenwordsuperstar said:
I belong to the How to Train Your Dragon fandom and Hiccup/Toothless rape!fic is rampant; just the facts of life.PenelopeNerd said:
And when people asked why....I sighed and danced like the George Lucas quoting monkey I was.gnawingtreebark said:
I love my boyfriend dearly, but I wish he would stop bringing his Transformers to family functions like Christmas dinner.PathofNeedles said:
He was the king of socially awkward, and had apparently made me his socially awkward queen.And now, onto the Mentioning.
Okay, I technically have less than 30 Honorable Mentions, but so many of them are so damn long. I've broken them up into two pages and it's still long. My apologies.
bluebird said:
Time I was most ashamed to be a nerd? Had to be my birthday last summer. I had just come out as a lesbian to my grandparents the night before, and I'd asked for season one of Xena: Warrior Princess, since I heard it had lot of Greek Mythology which is one of my nerd passions (well, that and because of Lucy Lawless). Sure enough, I got it, and when I opened up the DVD case there was Callisto, dressed in skimpy BDSM-esque leather. My mom goes "Ooooh, so that's why you wanted this show!" Cue horrified looks on my grandparents' faces and nerd shame for me...Bradley547 said:
In college my friends and I played a game called KAAOS (Killing As An Organized Sport). It was much like the game played in the movies Tag and Gotcha where you would be assigned an assassination target and have to hunt and "kill" them using suction cup dart guns. Tremendous fun that would get us arrested today.RadishAttack replied to MeowSkywalker:
The humiliating incident though was one day when my "Assassin" tried to sneak up behind me in German class. The Instructor saw him and asked him what the hell he was doing, and we spent the remainder of the class session explaining to the entire class what the game was, how it was played, how it was scored, etc.
All this in front of the hot girl that I was trying desperately to get to go out with me. On the up side I did learn there really isn't a direct translation of the word Weirdo in German.
Introduced my girlfriend to my dad for the first time. What was one of the first things out of his mouth?Ooh, nerdy parents is rough. Most of us have to deal with the confusion and fear on our parents' faces when they burst in our bedroom to find us playing D&D. I can't imagine what having an awkwardly nerdy parent must be like, but I'm certain it's no picnic either. Especially when you bring home dates.
"Our family is descended from the hobbits, you know!"
Thanks dad.
LewdACHris said:
Had to pick up something from a (former)friend in Manhattan. My younger sister and girlfriend tagged along, as they both wanted to go into the city. T'was Memorial day, and at least 80-90 degrees out. Upon arrival in Union Square, I find said friend and a friend of there's completely decked out in cosplay (He was dressed up as Naruto, the friend as some visual-jrock non-sense) explaining how hardcore they were that they dressed up like this in summer. He also made sure to give out his, as well as my email information as "cosplayers are always looking for more friends!", during the 15 or so minutes it took to retrieve my shirt from his back-pack.Note to anyone who dresses in any kind of nerdy costumes in New York City when it's not Halloween -- the residents of NY do not find you "hardcore." They find you "idiotic." One year I went to the Big Apple Anime Fest; most events were in one hotel, but many people left in costume to check out nearby stores and shops. I swear to god every New Yorker who saw them wanted to mug them, just on principle.
The very awkard train ride home consisted of me telling my sister that I don't dress up like KISS on my downtime (I do cosplay, but not outside of appropiate conventions or parties), and deleting my hotmail account as it was full of spam and hate-mail. Good times.
Drunken Fist said:
Okay, I think this may be too long, but here goes anyway:mythbri said:
The first thing that pops into my mind was one night a few years ago when I was on a date with a smokin' hot co-worker. She had seen my action figures on display and a couple of boxes of comics at my place, but she had gotten to know me and didn't get weirded out by it or anything. Basically, she was a "normal" hot girl who would have thought a grown man collecting action figures was a weirdo if she hadn't already gotten to know me well by that time.
So, we had gone on a couple of dates, and things were going well. This was the night Star Wars episode II was going to start with the midnight showings, and we were in the mall because she wanted to stop by Dillard's or JC Penney's or some such store on the way back to her place.
There were several people waiting in line who were dressed up, and had toy lightsabers and such. As we walked past, I heard my name called and turned around. To my horror, I recognized a guy I barely knew-- friend of a friend of a friend-- walking toward us, decked out in full Jedi regalia. I'm not an asshole, so I said hey, and tried to get away, but the guy basically kept us there for about ten excruciating minutes, taking about how awesome the movie was going to be, and occasionally faux-attacking us with his toy lightsaber in between openly leering at my date's cleavage.
Now, like I said, I barely knew this guy, but all my claims of that seemed like backpedaling after we finally broke away and moved on. The whole scene was so uncomfortable, and it seemed to kind weird her out, as if she suspected that such a socially inept doofus could be lurking inside of me. It pretty much ruined the whole night, and things were a little awkward for a while between us after that. It did clear up before too long, though, so no permanent harm done.
Being a life-long nerd, I've always understood the necessity of "toning it down" in order to fit in with the normals, especially when I was at school. At this time, a friend of mine had recommended the Wheel of Time series to me (calm down, Rob. I only read to Book 8 and never touched them again). She and I were pretty nerdy about it, discussing the books during breaks, etc. She wanted to be an Aes Sedai more than anything, however, to the point of almost constantly wearing blue (like Moiraine) and using WoT jargon in everyday conversations. Well, one of the popular jocks overheard her, and proceeded to make fun of us. As embarassing and terrible as that was, she started cursing him thusly: "I hope Shai'Tan drags you to the Pit of Doom!", etc. And then her face got even redder, and I realized that she was actually trying to summon the power of saidin to cast a spell on him.I have NEVER understood why people take phrases from nerdy properties and use them in everyday conversation. Maybe with other nerds is can be a nerdy sign you appreciate a certain series, and maybe BSG hit the mainstream enough that you could say "Frak" once in public -- once -- and get away with it. But Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time? NO. What on god's green earth was that girl hoping to accomplish?
She's a big part of the reason I stopped reading the books.
PossibleMisnomer said:
I was at Nintendo's GameCube release press conference @ E3. Knowing they were the underdog, I hoped they were going to try and make a strong comeback.This hurts me so, so bad. Having been to many anime conventions, I've seen this happen dozens of times and it's always painful for all involved. I don't know why it's so endemic to anime fandom, but no one wants to hear you speak Japanese. Even if you speak fluently, you still sound like an asshole. And 98% you're not nearly as fluent as you think.
After hearing a Nintendo rep rail against sequels for the first 15 minutes, he trumpets "the Nintendo Difference" and proceeds to show a video montage of 7 or 8 different sequels. Metroid Prime, Mario Kart, Star Fox, Zelda, etc. Instead of being angry at Nintendo's baldfaced hypocrisy, the crowd of "journalists" roars with approval.
In Q&A some idiot from Nintendojo goes up, and poses a question for "Miyamoto-san". He proceeds to try and read off a question in utterly horrible Japanese. The crowd groans. Miyamoto's interpreter says that he couldn't understand, and the guy ACTUALLY STARTS TO TRY AGAIN. The crowd groans louder and someone on stage cuts him off and tells him to ask the question in English.
After that, someone from a bigger news organization like CNet or something asks how Nintendo could bash sequels for 15 minutes and show basically nothing but sequels. This crowd of so-called journalists starts BOOING. This person's trying to, you know, DO THEIR JOB, and the unwashed fanboy press starts booing.
Most embarrassing nerd moment of mine by far.
Nick said:
I have a cousin who is in a word a dork. Since he was little he becomes obsessed with the popular movie of the summer, so I have seen him wear a rat tail like Anakin, Rorschach's mask and Harry Potter glasses. This already embarrasses me enough, but now he is taking it too far. He is 18yrs. Old and he wants to me to become a fan on Facebook of him becoming the next Peter Parker in the Spider-man movie. He is also making a website and is planning on going to the Sony lot to show what he can do. As a comic book fan this makes me embarrassed. When regular people think they can do something like this it just confuses me. I hope when he gets to the Sony lot a couple of bums find him and ride a train on him as he is dressed like Spider-Man.Ah. Starting a petition is bad enough, but when it involves inserting yourself into the object of your fandom? Pure fucking insanity. It's massively entertaining to the rest of us, but if you know the guy, I can easily see why he makes your skin crawl.
"Starman" Matt Morrison said:
After over a decade in professional fandom and three years working at a comic store, I have way too many of these stories. So I'm going to limit it to a recent one from a year or two ago.Excellent point. Some people thought this contest was a little cruel, but I hope it's actually helpful. I'll be the first admit I've shamed myself in many of the ways listed above and below, to various degrees. But I learned from it. If this thread helps someone do the same, then I'm a goddamn hero.
A friend and I were at a sci-fi Con and were checking out the flyer table for anything that looked cool. We wound up joking, rather loudly, about someone's flyer for a Yahoo Group devoted to bringing about a change in the management of The Sci-Fi Channel, back before it became SyFy, by boycotting the network.
Now, I know what you're thinking? What's wrong with that? All right-minded nerds hated the Sci-Fi channel for various reasons even before the name change and before they started airing pro-wrestling. The reason we were laughing was not the idea of boycotting the Sci-Fi Channel but because of the reasons why this particular group wanted to do so. Among a list of their demands for new Sci-Fi channel management were...
* Put Farscape back on the air.
* Cancel BSG.
* Create a new, TRUE, Battle Star Galactica revamp TV series with Hatch and Bennett in the roles they created.
As we were making our sarcastic comments, a man came up behind us and asked what was so funny. I shut up, sensing where this was going a little bit faster than my friend, who declared that we were laughing at "this dumbass Yahoo group".
Naturally, the man was the founder of said dumbass Yahoo group and he proceded to launch into a spirited speech about how Farscape was the greatest Sci-Fi show of all time and how it was totally screwed over by the network...
... and I realized that his arguments regarding Farscape were no different than my arguments regarding Firefly.
So... yeah. Let he who is without sin, fanboys.
BadNflu3nce said:
Back when I was in High School there was an entire table of fat wapanese that all ate lunch together. Wapanese are, "much like wiggers, painfully clueless honkies trying to fill a perceived cultural void by pretending not to be white -- in this case, by humping the giant Godzilla leg of the Land of the Rising Shit in hopes of being assimilated into its culture." (Thanks ED!). Anyway, they all ate lunch at a table not too far from where I ate, which was another nerd table, yes, but we were more sci-fi/fantasy nerds, even though we all were casual fans of adult swim saturdays and whatnot, we weren't obsessive (well, maybe I was the biggest anime fan of the bunch, but I kept my powerlevel low) Anyway, so one day I open my lunch, and I look over to the Wapanese table, and I notice that they are all getting out sushi out of their backpacks, sushi followed by pocky and chopsticks. Then, once they all have their food and eating utensils out, they say, in unison, "Itadaki-masu!", then they all bite into their sushi and say "Oyashii!".
The entire lunchroom went quiet. I just facepalmed and went back to my sandwich and was glad my other lunch crew members didn't know too much of my anime nerdery.
The One Gerbil said:
My relatives have a friend who was pregnant and due to deliver just prior to the release of the new Star Wars movies. They decided that, in the ultimate geek move, they would name their child after Luke Skywalker's father. Teenage me was utterly stoked at the thought. These folk had just become my new heros! That is, until the baby was born and I learned that they had mis-heard the pronunciation of the name...and so they had stuck their kid with the name "Attikan," not Anakin. What is that kid supposed to say? "Umm..yeah...I was supposed to be named after the great Sith lord, but my parents didn't hear well and couldn't be bothered to check the source, so you know..." I was so devestated for that child.I should send that kid a shirt. He deserves one more than anybody.
ChrisJF said:
Back in high school, one my friends discovered Tolkien around our sophomore year. He became completely obsessed, read every single word that Tolkien wrote and every word that anybody had written about Tolkien. Memorized histories, maps, learned to write in Elvish and Dwarfish.Jesus. Teenage romance is fucking awful and excruciating enough would bringing insane nerdery into it. So you're really into Tolkien. That's fine. But maybe if you're sending a love note to a girl you have a crush on, it should be 1) IN A LANGUAGE SHE UNDERSTANDS and 2) IN A LANGUAGE THAT ISN'T FAKE AND SPOKEN BY ELVES. That's just common sense.
Pretty harmless when we were hanging out in the chess club room during lunch. But that summer we had a summer school class together. It was a class that took in students from several surrounding schools, so we were surrounded by students who had no idea who we were, which was pretty awesome, b/c people in our own school already knew what to think of us.
I spent the time denying any knowledge of Star Trek and Lord of the Rings as much as possible so that I could learn dirty jokes. Imagine my horror, then, when I found out that my friend had a crush on the hot chick who sat behind us, and was writing her a love note in Elvish, with a little secret decoder drawing.
Despite my pleading advice, he gave her the note. She didn't even know what to make of it, till he told her. Which was the most awkward thing ever. I know, because I was on the other side of the room pretending I didn't know him, desperately hoping to avoid any collateral nerd shame.
LoveWaffles said:
I have a good friend that is one of those Yaoi-Role Playing-Fanfiction maniacs (don't get me wrong, I read plenty of FF myself, but it's not my entire life and social interaction). We were going to a con where one of our favorite writers was going to be, and we were able to meet her. My friend was in cosplay as one of the characters this woman had created and we were all having a great conversation about writing and fantasy novels in general, and then my friend had to bring up that she made fan-characters. She then proceeded to tell the author about the fan-characters she had made, and roleplayed with, FOR THAT WOMAN'S UNIVERSE! I just had to leave the area, even though it was probably one of my only times that I'd be able to have a face-to-face conversation with the author. I was just too ashamed to be connected with someone that dense, especially in front of my favorite author.I understand loving something so much you want to insert yourself into it. I understand the escapism behind writing fan fiction where you're the star. But no one else cares, nor should they. Don't try to bring anyone else into your little fantasy, especially especially especially the original creator. He/she won't be impressed. Just appalled and probably terrified you're going to break into their house with a knife later.
tasakeru828 said:
I actually met Chris-chan at an anime convention before ED found out about him and started trolling him en masse. A friend and I were hosting a Sonic the Hedgehog panel and trying to prove that not all Sonic fans are as batshit insane as they're made out to be. That noble goal was shot to hell when the one-and-only Christian Weston Chandler arrived in all his clown-shirted, Sonichu-medallion-wearing glory and started handing out free copies of his first issue. He asked us a completely unintelligible question (thinking mistakenly that we actually had some influence on the series as a whole), and afterwards he babbled at us personally while we smiled and nodded trying to look interested. We obviously knew he was mentally ill, but we had no idea that we were meeting a future Internet legend.Tasakeru, I really, really respect you standing by Sonic fandom. I believe you when you say some Sonic fans or normal, but I still think 95% of 'em consistseof the bottom of the crazy awful nerd barrel, best exemplified by Chris-chan. I wouldn't have the strength. At all.
Now, I still persist in my goal to prove that some Sonic fans are decent, intelligent people. And despite all the flamewars, recolors, and assorted drama that the Sonic series has caused, I still love it and will defend from haters till my dying breath. I am an unabashed, true blue Sonic fan, die-hardest of the die-hard, and nothing will ever change that. But Lord, Chris-chan comes very close to ruining it all for even me, and that should tell you something.
Destructochick said:
I consider myself a sort of jack-of-all-trades kind of nerd. However, the kind of friends I used to have were into anime almost exclusively. That's how I ended up with two friends trying to convince me that there was a hidden spirit world that they went to were they fought demons and god knows what else. I cringed every time they brought it up. The worst part was you could tell they really believed in it. Thankfully, I moved. Then, somehow, I met ANOTHER person who thought they were magical, but if you listened to them it was in the most Mary Sue way possible. Killing all evil, savior of the world, that kind of thing. Needless to say, I choose my friends carefully now.These people aren't nerds, or at least aren't just nerds. People who believe they have powers or can go to or are from a magical world are crazy. Period. They need help.
Nima said:
The guy I dated before my husband was into Anime. I am too, but like my religion, I have learned to keep it to myself. When we would go out, he would pretend to slice through people with a Beam Saber (Gundam), huge exaggerated motions and all. Can you imagine walking around a mall with your boyfriend slashing at people with invisible swords? While in a High school class with my future husband, he lost an Election, and he got so angry that he walked up to his desk and assumed the position associated with raising his "Power level" so that he could go Super Saiyan. When he failed, he slammed his hands into the desk, prompting the teacher to ask if he was ok. People still ask me why I ever dated him.Let this be a lesson, guys -- this jackass managed to date a girl. You cannot possibly nerdier -- and more nerdily awful -- and this lunatic. If he can have a girlfriend, so can you. DO NOT GIVE UP. CLEARLY, NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE.
(On a side note, Even though he broke up with me he was angry with me when I started dating my future husband (his best friend) six months after we broke up. So he had our characters killed in the online Gundam RPG we all played together by convincing the GM that it would be "Fun".)
Adnomad said:
OK, easily the most embarrassing moment I've had due to other nerds was this. After months of flirting and hemming and hawing, I convinced the cute girl that worked at EB (dating this somewhat) to go out on a date. We go to the local downtown where all the bars are. After having quite a few, she wants to go for a walk along the river thats about two blocks from the bars. As we walk through the park, we hear people talking and we run into a Vampire LARP game going on in the park. The first two groups of 3 or 4 people we run into completely will not leave character and one is apparently the Prince who asks my date if she would like to join his court. The second group includes a guy weighing about 300 lbs in skin tight velour who tries to kiss her hand. Finally we make it to the river where we run into the last group of them. The largest group, who she can hear tlaking about a plot to kill the Prince. She immediately starts making fun of them and stating out loud about how few friends these losers must have. Thats when a guy on the far side of the group noticed us, called me by name and asked if I was coming t his D&D game the next day.....Last thing I heard from her....I don't f'ing believe this as she walks away from me.If you like LARPing, more power to you. But LARPing is essentially playing D&D, in public, while in cosplay. The wrong people see you doing it, and it can affect your relationships, personal or professional. Maybe that's not fair, but it's a risk you take on. You should acknowledge that before you put on your fake vampire fangs and obfuscate over to the park. More HMs on the next page!
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