Remember that nerdy kid your peers held up to ridicule throughout high school? They sat in the front of the classroom, read lunch pauses away, and had no one to stand up for them. You thanked God for not being such an outcast, whether you were a part of the popular clique or blended in with the rest of the normies.
Today, however, intelligence and erudition asserted themselves among the most highly valued qualities, leading to the destigmatization of the nerd culture. You'd say: "Well, that's great news for those who used to be made fun of! Long live social progress, long live nerd pride!" But the outcome of this shift is more complex than it may seem.
Once demarginalized, the traditional nerd—the one who wears glasses, indulges in learning and lacks interpersonal skills—merged with the hipster. By contrast with the traditional nerd, the neo-nerd gulps down literary works to impress, despises "morons" disinterested in philosophy, and pays close attention to looks. This seemingly antithetical combo turned out to be a tenacious one. Far from dying out, it became one of the most widespread species inhabiting the concrete jungle.
Today, the cool kids' dating app profiles say they are "all about bookstore dates" and think that "brain is the sexiest organ". Their vocabulary is full of abstruse fancy words occasionally interrupted by Latin phrases they most probably mispronounce. They haunt coffee shops and judge other visitors from behind faux vision glasses instead of fully devoting themselves to Joyce or Hemingway borrowed from the public library.
—This description was obviously a hyperbole but you get the general picture.—
They come off as smart, or so they think. And looking back at their school years with a smirk, they almost commiserate with the ones they used to bully and now identify with. What they hardly realize is that they are but shallow wannabes, whose tastes and interests have been borrowed.
Those who consciously seek to be perceived as nerdy pick up what mass opinion claims as attributes of a learned individual. In other words, they don't value intelligence but the appearance of intelligence. They base their preferences on what others would approve of at the expense of their individual taste and are afraid to admit to digging that "uncool" song or to not have grasped the genius of that art house movie everyone is ecstatic about.
The concept of intelligence most pursue is limited and superficial. They aren't moved by the sheer desire of self-instruction but want to project the image of someone who is. Their memory might work as an information sponge, yet they do not apply what it has absorbed for practical purposes. Instead, they surround their hollow selves with an information barrier to prevent others from seeing that they are show-offs in disguise.
The truth is, intelligence comes in many forms but isn't reflected by the number of books we have read or documentaries we have watched. In fact, if you look at the infographic of Gardner's 9 types of intelligence, it doesn't include academic learning. And you know why? Because the ability to retain information is only natural to a properly functioning brain. So, sneaking quotes from Shakespeare into a casual conversation doesn't make one intelligent. It makes them a poser.
Caught up in appearances, neo-nerds don't value the ability to think critically, for example, and are liable to get duped by fake news spread on Twitter. Being a walking Encyclopedia of abstract scholarly concepts doesn't protect them from trends and wise advertising, to which they easily fall prey like the average consumers they think they outsmart.
Although intelligence is considered to be cool, few people actually are intelligent, whereas the majority only tries to seem as such. They believe they will thus be superior, valuable members of society and put effort into maintaining an ephemeral social status. So do we all, to some extent.
