As author John Green once said, ‘nerd life is so much better than regular life’

Better to be a nerd than one of the herd, so said Mandy Hale. Gone are the days you could call a nerd loser. On the contrary, they are winners in the world today, a world driven by technology and information. And the geek shall inherit the Earth, or so a mistranslated passage says. In the midst of the current global crisis, the introverted intellectuals are thriving. How so? They need minimal socialization, are digital natives in the first place, their hobbies and obsessions keep them preoccupied, and so on and so forth.

When you think about it, it’s the double-domes who have always been the go-to people then and now. All the greats and geniuses are nerds or geeks with experience, from the prodigious scientific mind and US founding father Benjamin Franklin to Microsoft founder Bill Gates and let’s not even go far, the developer of the first single-chip 16-bit microprocessor-based calculator and the first system logic chip sets Diosdado Banatao, a Cagayan Valley native who played a key role in the development of high-tech devices.

So what makes a geek? Is it smugness around niche elements and pop culture from films to comic books or mangas, to music or podcasts, or to gaming? Is it mastery of technology or any field equally significant like science, health, or arts? Is it love for books or the idea of learning in general? Is it unbridled passion toward something, without fear of judgement, at the expense of forgetting how to properly socialize? Is it a little weirdness and awkwardness?

One thing is for certain: Nerds rule. Who wouldn’t want to be on top of the world?