The best part of being a geek is wearing your enthusiasms on your sleeves.
But just as often it turns to this:
If you hang around nerds, you've definitely met this sort of person.
Or this sort of fandom pedant:
A lot of nerd culture equates surliness with unadorned intelligence, caviling with expertise.
...When often it's over meaningless stuff.
And no one likes a pathological know-it-all.
And geek exceptionalism can create false categories.
Or become a meaningless pecking order.
Geekdom's no less likely to be sexist.
Or racist. Or any combination of those two.
Sometimes it takes the form of hysterical death threats from fans:
And sometimes it just means being a run-of-the-mill dickhead.
How you define 'hipster' is unimportant. What matters is that no one likes a cultural bully pretending to be a misunderstood bookworm. And that's what a geek can sometimes be.
The best episode of "30 Rock" was when Liz Lemon realized she wasn't an adorkable nerd in high school, but a censuring jerk and snob.
So yes, geekdom tends to see itself as the embattled underdog, even when it's not true. Nerd out to your heart's content, but be an enthusiast, not a bully!
