Inane Conversations Proudly Presents....
Bradley Vargyas and Jennifer Cardwell's Social Taxonomy of Nerds
The following is a description of the social order of nerds, culminating with the pinnacle of the order.
- Fantasy Nerd - This nerd delights in playing dungeons and dragons and is not generally well respected by society, including higher order nerds.
- Sci-Fi Nerd - This nerd attempts to "interpret the Star Wars Trilogy as some message from God" (Brad's words).
- Music Nerd - One who "knows that Krist Novelsic played bass on Nirvan's albums but Pat Smear from the Germs used to tour with them" (again, Brad's words, self-descriptive this time). Obviously a music nerd doesn't necessarily need this precise piece of arcane knowledge, but they would know things in this vein.
- Sports Nerd - Commonly known as Sports Fan, this speciman often has no involvement in sports itself, other than through the television or perhaps attending games. They can, however, spout off useless bits of knowledge about their favorite team or game.
- Political Nerd - One who follows politics incessantly. Often more annoying than the sports nerd, but also usually more respected. This nerd is closer to the realm of the intellectual nerd and politics can actually have direct implications on people's lives.
- Intellectual Nerd - This type of nerd relishes in all things cerebral. They may also be described (often) as an Intellectual Snob. This type of nerd is broken down into three sub-categories, again in class order:
* Trivia Nerd - This nerd knows asinine things such as the fact that William Churchill wore silk underwear (self-describing). This is included with the Intellectual Nerds because of the large degree of overlap between this and the next category
* General Knowledge Nerd - Should be quite self-explanatory. General knowledge includes grammatical constructs such as the abhorrence of dangling participles and prepositions as well as basic scientific theories, historical dates, and mathematics. Again, there is some degree of overlap between this and the following category.
* Subject Matter Nerd - The pinnacle of the Social Taxonomy of Nerds. This nerd has a slavish affinity for one or more traditional subject matters. They are placed at the top of the order because their nerdiness has the greatest potential to help human-kind.
It is possible to belong to more than one order of nerdiness. It is, in fact, quite common. This is known as cross-nerdination
Note: the origin of this taxonomy is Brad. We fleshed out some of the details together. The lower echelons are mostly his, while I supplied more of the upper parts of the order. He probably deserves the most credit, but then again, I am his muse!