tell ten friends::

geek is the new chic

Everytime I start getting excited about something, like the fact that I set up a blog for my mom, or that my wife's Squidoo page comes up in a Google search, or that Nicholas Negroponte is building $100 laptops for kids in the third world, inevitably someone will call me a nerd.

And by someone, I mean the beloved members of my family. Sure, they think it's cute that Engadget is my porn; and they even try to act amused when I try to explain one of Hugh Mcleod's "cartoons on the back of business cards," even when they haven't a clue what blogging is.

That's because they don't know what I know; that being a "geek" is the new cool. If for some reason this isn't true, and the fashion and pop culture experts (Queer Eye Guys??) of the world tell me I'm dead wrong, I don't care. I'm ahead of time maybe, in saying this, but nerds rule the world.

I mean, why else would Wired (also porn for me) release a top ten Sexiest Geeks of 2005 list? Because nerds are sexy, that's why. Cool people dress like nerds because they know it's cool. And nerds wear their nerdiness like a badge because they realize that in this ever-changing world that individuality and having skills at something makes you desirable. Did you see Napoleon Dynamite? Run-away. Low budget. Cult. Hit. Why? Because Napoleon's the coolest son-of-a-bitch ever to wear a terra-cotta colored polyester suit, that's why.

More proof? Geeks were the first ones to have ipods, carry a Blackberry (in fact they talked about RIM like it was a company touched by God) and use digital cameras, too.

Marketer's take note: You heard it here first. Whatever's the opposite of cool is the new cool, which in turn will eventually make it uncool, because everyone's doing it. (But isn't that always the way with fads?) Forget I said that. I hate fads. Fads suck.

I'm not even sure why I wrote this.

posted by Jordan Behan @ 7:44 PM