Postaday for January 13th: Image Search. Pick a random word and do Google image search on it. Check out the eleventh picture it brings up. Write about whatever that image brings to mind.
This pink guy is a Pokemon character. Maybe. I’m not sure. I never got into Pokemon, not the video game, not the cartoon, not the card game. Not for any reason. “Gotta collect them all” is right in my wheel house. I’m not a hoarder, per se, but I like to collect things. I have over three hundred rubber ducks! But I’m getting better.
There are a billion things in the world to fascinate a nerd, and this nerd right here was distracted by something else when Pokemon happened. It wasn’t like I chose to ignore Pokemon, just that I succumbed to a different drug. I’m only human, and “gotta collect them all” might refer to all of the nerd things, and there’s just too many of them these days.
Collecting things is a such a nerd aesthetic. One I am trying to eschew. There’s this thing, Lootcrate, which simultaneously fascinates and depresses me. You subscribe to Lootcrate and once a month they send you a box of nerd stuff. Figurines and posters and t-shirts and all manner of branded miscellenia. Detritus. Nothing against nerds who want all that stuff. It just feels like clutter to me, and I can’t think around clutter.
Pokemon is a perfect symbol for this. Nerds collect all these things and then use trivia to fight with each other.
I don’t even know what a nerd is anymore. And at risk of coming across as a hipster, I don’t even think I’m cool enough to be a nerd, these days. Like, I’m too old. I still like video games and such but… I’m getting too judgmental when it comes to sci fi and fantasy and super-hero fiction. Also, I’m mad at nerds, (at least the ones on Reddit) who are constantly making fun of “neckbeards.” They’ve taken all that bullying they’ve survived and, now that nerdom is cool, they’ve started dishing it out.
Oh god, I am a hipster. I sit here and write my little rants on this blog and try to differentiate myself from the rabble. I’m no better than these nerds! I’m not collecting Pokemon, maybe, but I’m collecting nerd foibles, and jousting with the windmills of the nerd agenda, something I’ve created out of my own insecurities.
All in an effort to create and justify seriously screwy mixed metaphors.