The 7/29 New York Times Won’t Stop, Can’t Stop
This is dedicated to the robot person from the previous post, obvi.
But yeah — It just. Keeps. Giving. We will continue to write about the 7/29/07 New York Times (Magazine) article-by-image-by-article until it’s exhausted. And I want to keep this brief, because I’ve had enough with nerds for the day, but there was yet another relevant article in this issue of the Magazine. It’s called “Who’s a Nerd, Anyway?” and no, it’s different from the robot cover story. I could write a whole post on it… or I could just let you chew this one over:
By cultivating an identity perceived as white to the point of excess, nerds deny themselves the aura of normality that is usually one of the perks of being white.
Sleep well!
–JIM NEWELL
5 Comments | 
| 
Print This Post
Read more: nerds, new york times, robots
Email – 
Search
About
Follow us on Twitter
Report a bug
Archives
RSS Feed
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:40 pm
best. editors. ever.
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:44 pm
best. editors. ever.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Interesting, this correlation between nerdiness and whiteness… I thought the article was going to go in the direction of stereotyping other types of ethnic categories (Jewish-ness, Asian-ness) but I guess it didn’t go there…
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:00 am
Wasn’t this one of the underlying subtexts in 1984’s “Revenge of the Nerds”?
After being rejected by all the other (mostly white) national fraternities, the nerds ended up becoming a chapter of a national black fraternity (Lambda, Lambda, Lamda). And in the end its the African American brothers of from other chapters of Tri-Lam that forcefully defend the nerds from the (all white) jocks of Addams College
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:11 pm
@Skolnik: You are correct. But to move that idea from absurd comedy to straight-faced academic theorizing takes some SERIOUSLY good dope.