Like, I can just about understand iPods being such a phenomenon, even though they are basically just expensive and hard-to-use MP3 players. But Facebook? WTF is that all about? I got persuaded to sign up to it the other day, and it drove me INSANE – all the operations I’d have considered totally basic such as, for example, clicking on a link to it sent to me by a friend in an IM conversation, simply DIDN’T WORK. There’s some stupid crappy new load of things you have to do to persuade this awkward, horrifically designed, unique UI of Facebook to actually do what you want it to do, and I don’t understand it. Within three days of joining, more than sixty of my friends who already had existing accounts had added me to their lists and started tagging me in photos. I work for MICROSOFT, for God’s sake, you cannot GET more geeky than that, and here I was being out-geeked by pretty much every significant friend by having joined this Web 2.0 revolution before me (and I still don’t really know what Web 2.0 means) and yet all I could think of was how terribly, terribly, TERRIBLY designed the whole thing was. (And again: I work for Microsoft. So I know terrible design when I see it).

Even musically my identity is disappearing. Acts I knew as slightly esoteric yet talented and appealling to my geekhood are now known by the wider world as “emo”, which is apparently nowadays second only to hip-hop in global popularity. So I can’t even content myself with looking down my nose at people for now knowing the bands I like, any more! As a geek, I really was different enough to distance myself from the masses. As part of the mainstream, I’m just not very good at anything any more.

More importantly, your identity is safe; dorks are a dime a dozen, even way back when. Negative scowling dorks with good taste in food and a Paris obsession are rare to the point of being interesting.

Great article.

I’m not sure the nerds are getting a free pass in high school, though.

Also, I am duty bound to link to the Weird Al video “White and Nerdy” (available in high-res at iTunes).