The meaning of geekiness and the term nerd are contested. In this post, Andreas Ottemo reflects on some pros and cons of different strategies used in approaching the nerd in a Swedish context.
10 years ago, for their International Women’s Day issue, the Swedish popular feminist magazine Bang ran a series of articles on different ways to be a geek. In the issue we meet sourdough geeks (baking sourdough bread was a trend in Sweden at the time), embroidery geeks, horse geeks and book geeks, to name but a few. Over the past decade, such efforts to pluralise our understanding of what it means to be a geek have been increasingly common, manifesting in a discursive struggle over the terms ‘geek’ and ‘nerd’. This relates of course to an increased popularity and status connected to being a geek, but also to a recognition that there is something problematic about the term.
One problem, especially relevant to stakeholders in higher education, has been the way that the geek operates as a gatekeeper in relation to some areas of study. The notion of gatekeeping is then used to capture how narrow definitions of geekiness, that tie it closely to understandings of masculinity, tend to work to exclude, even when the definition of the geek itself is not wholly positive and desirable.
A high profile example of how such an identification of the geek as gatekeeper can look, and how stakeholders can tackle it, can be found in the case of so-called ‘Nerd Appeal’ that surfaced in the Swedish public sphere a few years after the Bang issue mentioned above.
This was initiated by NTI Upper Secondary Schools of Technology (NTI Gymnasiet) which is a company that runs some 20+ upper secondary technology schools in Sweden (part of AcadeMedia). In an effort to tackle associations with the geek that were found to impact negatively on recruitment of students in one school, the school hired a PR firm and initiated a campaign to change the idea of what it means to be a geek.
In particular, they targeted what they described as the outdated definition of ‘nerd’ (nörd) in the Swedish Academy Glossary (which describes itself as ‘the (unofficial) norm for the spelling and inflexion of Swedish words’). The campaign was branded The Geek Appeal, and a homepage was setup where one could sign up to a demand that the Swedish Academy change the definition of nerd in their glossary.
The campaign was very successful. The school managed to increase its number of applicants significantly and the PR firm behind the campaign won industry prizes for it. And, not least, a few years later, the definition of ‘nerd’ in the Swedish Academy Glossary was changed. The old definition as “(sometimes derogatory) single minded and ridiculous person, dork” was replaced by the more neutral: “Person who has a great special interest and therefore can be perceived as somewhat single-minded”.
While this definition does not exactly reject all negative connotations, it is typical of a broader contemporary trend of defining geekiness in minimalistic terms, basically ‘emptying’ geekiness of its meaning and reducing geekiness to being interested in or passionate about pretty much anything. This is obviously inclusive in a sense that most people are passionate about something. As one of the students from the school involved in the campaign put it: “In today’s society, everyone is a nerd really, whether it is about computers, sports or horseback riding. I myself am a music nerd”.
At the same time, one can ask what these kinds of re-descriptions of geekiness actually do? Are initiatives like this to be understood as challenges to the geek, or rather as efforts to navigate around ‘him’ without undermining the problematic logics that underpin conventional geekiness?
In the case of the NTI Gymnasiet, they seem to be trying to have their cake and eat it too. The school wants to appeal to everyone, but it is of course still a school of technology that wants people to direct their interests not towards anything but towards technology. So while the school gladly points out that “there are nerds in all areas, for instance sports, technology, IT, design and entrepreneurship” at the same time, they want to connect ‘positive’ geekiness to studying at their schools. Therefore, it is only logical that they simultaneously underscore that the NTI Gymnasium is a perfect place to nurture one’s geekiness, or as one of their representatives formulates it: “We want to show that at NTI Upper Secondary School you get the tools to find your inner nerd and become the best at what you like”. This is far from taking issue with the problematic aspects of geekiness or even taking an interest in how technology relates to being a geek. Pluralising yes, but challenging?