Unironically Enthusiastic

"Nerdfighteria is not a fandom," posits one commenter on a John Green Facebook post. I don't ask you to believe this by the end of this post, but I agree with John in his aspiration that identifying as a nerdfighter should be values-based.

Quick introduction: "Nerdfighters" arose as a term to describe those people who watch the videos of John and Hank Green. It's grown to describe a community of people, including John and Hank themselves, who identify as nerds and take on a responsibility to change the world for the better, in whatever way they can. The goal in nerdfighter terms is to "decrease worldsuck." And there's an actual non-profit organization now to do that. John and Hank talk about the "bank of Nerdfighteria" as a description of all the quantifiable charity the community has generated.

On a more personal level, the community touches individual lives by inspiring people to be comfortable with themselves as human beings. Nerdy, nerdy human beings. I like to refer to John Green himself to define being a nerd, and my favorite way is to link to this video, in which Wil Wheaton reads a Tumblr post he reblogged that contained a mashup of quotes from two separate John Green videos: (1) (2)

Saying I notice you're a nerd is like saying, "Hey, I noticed that you'd rather be intelligent than stupid; that you'd rather be thoughtful than vapid; that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan." Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff. Like, jump-up-and-down-in-your-chair, can't-control-yourself LOVE it. When people call people nerds, mostly what they're saying is, "You like stuff." That's not a good insult at all! Like, "You're too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness."

This. This is what I identify with. And anyone who knows me should be able to verify that "unironically enthusiastic" is how I live my life. (If you know me and you don't know this, I apologize. Let's go have some delicious cocoa together and chat more. I'm an enthusiastic introvert. What can you do.)

I love this definition of nerdiness because it should help nerds of all kinds recognize that there are infinite ways to be nerdy. When lived and understood truly, being a nerdfighter means imagining people complexly and appreciating them for who they are. So someone belongs to a different fandom--they're still nerds like you. Many nerdfighters like Sherlock and Dr. Who, but I've never seen Sherlock, and the, like, two Dr. Who episodes I've seen scared the pants off me and I haven't watched any more yet. But I don't feel excluded from the nerdfighter community. I just have some different enthusiasms.

Coming at Nerdfighteria from this perspective, I had a really hard time watching this video (long but worth it) by the new series Becoming YouTube. It shows how some people unfamiliar with the Green brothers view the nerdfighter community, and it's troubling. Mainly I came away from it truly distressed that there are nerdfighters out there being such... jerks. They clearly don't understand that they're ambassadors to the world for their community.

But that's true of any community, and the video does admit that you're going to find a bunch of jerks anytime any community starts to grow pretty large. You can scale this to any level. There are a lot of people who think all Americans are jerks, sadly. We all need to be better ambassadors, for every level of community to which we belong.

Another troubling aspect of the odd documentary-style video was that some of these people were concerned about Nerdfighteria "promoting social awkwardness." They said that some people were wearing it as a badge, proudly, and that this is a problem.

What?

There are several things I take issue with about this. First of all, the attitude conveyed by several of the interviewees was that social awkwardness is always a bad thing, and always something that needs to be "fixed." True, in the comment thread I mentioned initially, there was one person who spoke up and said that they never thought of their crippling social phobias as a point of pride (though they didn't consider it shameful either). But the problem is that there are many levels of social awkwardness, and the interviewees seemed to be grouping all introverts into the "socially awkward and needs to be fixed" category. One of them said that it might be okay to be proud of your awkwardness together with other awkward people if it gets you to go out and talk with people afterward. What? What?

I'm perpetually frustrated by the inability of some extroverts to believe that many introverts are quite happy the way they are. Introversion is a way of looking at yourself and at the world. It's not a medical condition, and it doesn't always mean that you can't hold a public conversation now and again. It means, for me, that I have a few very close friends and they're the ones I relax with. So I might be a bit awkward around others. I'm totally okay with that.

This relates to another complaint they had about nerdfighters: that they don't watch any other YouTube channels aside from those John and Hank produce. My retort to that is that many nerdfighters are introverts and don't have the time and energy to watch a zillion channels. Just as I'd rather have a few good friends than a hundred acquaintances, I'd rather be deeply engaged with a few channels than a dilettante with several dozen.

I much appreciated the follow-up to that video, in which the creator interviews John Green about the ideas discussed in the previous video. I still have a vaguely negative reaction to the overall intent and result of the two videos, but I think the ideas they bring up are important. And they only tie me closer to my identity as a values-based nerdfighter. John Green envisions the future thus:

I like the idea of Nerdfighteria being about more than us. And I like to imagine a world in which people identify as nerdfighters or embrace the values of Nerdfighteria without even necessarily knowing who I am. That sounds great to me. (11:38) 

I'd like to see Nerdfighteria defined not as a fandom, but as a community of nerdy people, who belong to many and disparate fandoms, unified by a set of ideals and a way--an enthusiastic way--of looking at the world.

Look at your world. What makes you unironically enthusiastic?