Casting Call For "Nerd Girls" And/Or Aspiring Reality-TV Stars

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4 pointsf1gm3nt4 comments

One has to tell these cliche-lovers that the age of pocket protectors are long gone. Not only that, they symbolized (along with slide rulers) properties that are opposite of "nerdy" nowadays. Those 60s people were uniformed engineers with their ties and all. Today's nerds question the system and are misfits.

It's amazing how the nerd stereotype has changed over the years.

Surely both pocket protectors, which emphasize practicality over looks, and slide rules, an elegant tool for mathematical operations, ought to count as nerdy.

Indeed, pocket protectors were very nerdy. They died out not because nerds stopped being nerdy, but because nerds became so slobby that they no longer wore shirts with pockets.

I think it's better to accept that the pocket protector has entered the language as the achetypal symbol of nerdiness, and will remain that way long after the last person who ever wore an actual pocket protector has died.

Don't get too excited about the idea that nerds are "misfits challenging the system", either. Everybody is a misfit challenging the system nowadays, it's the new conformity.

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