You're All Nerds

I just realized the other day that everyone is a nerd. At least everyone with enough intelligence to take a particular interest in something. The problem with our society is certain "something"s aren't considered nerdy to be hopelessly pointlessly obsessed with. Best example that will probably come to everyone'd mind when you think of non-nerds is: Sports. Some die-hard sports fans are the biggest damn nerds on the planet, but because their psychotic obsession is sports, it's considered the opposite of nerdy. When you know the names of several years worth of players on a given team, and individual player statistics, you, sir, are a NERD.

The idea came to me when I was about to call my two roommates collosal nerds for geeking out over a National Geographic channel special about the building of some super crazy high tech dam system or something in the Netherlands. I don't know the specifics, I don't NERD on that stuff. But obviously I'm a total music nerd. (geek and dork are pretty equally applicable terms depending on the particular context) The truth is that it's only cool to be apathetic or mildly disdainful towards things. Any real exertion to demonstrate enthusiasm one way or the other leads to nerddom.

So yeah I guess what I'm saying is barring exceptions I haven't thought of yet (this idea hasn't incubated very long) you're probably either a nerd or a moron.

Unexpected synonyms: connoisseur, enthusiast, afficianado