Rationale

In September 2010 I began watching the Vlogbrothers, John and Hank Green, on YouTube and was instantly hooked. As a result of this and my long standing nerd status I became a Nerdfighter. But due to the nature of social interaction and YouTube I found it very difficult to understand some of the concepts and most of the in-jokes in their videos. The only way to fully understand the community was to go back and watch heaps of old videos, but I quickly discovered that I couldn’t spend 50 consecutive hours watching videos, so I watched just enough to get by and contented myself with buying all the music and doing general research on the internet.


I chose to do Nerdfighteria and nerd life for a number of reasons; I wanted to know more about Nerdfighteria, in doing this blog I could research much deeper and then summarise all of it, along with my opinion, in a way that was easy to understand. I wanted to try and understand the nerdiness within myself, which I did by examining my childhood to discover what influenced my nerdiness. And I thought it would be useful for other nerdfighters to have something that told them about Nerdfighteria and the people in it, without them having to spend heaps of time researching and watching videos, in a way that was simple and accessible.

Becoming A Nerd Part Two: The Game Nerd

Despite being pretty into books my whole life, book nerd isn’t the only field of nerdom that I have dabbled in. I would like to think that I’m a fairly decent movie nerd, Doctor Who Nerd, vampire nerd (if such a thing exists) and I went through a brief period of game nerd.

In the very late nineties  my dad won a Gameboy Colour in some sort of competition (as was his way) and he gave it to me for Christmas that year along with a Zelda game (the name escapes me) and a Tetris game. I wasn’t all that good at Zelda but I was ok at Tetris and I later acquired a copy of the Donkey Kong and Harry Potter games, which I was pretty alright at. Sometime later when they stopped manufacturing Gameboy Colour games I was given a Gameboy Advance SP and bought Crash Bandicoot and Mario Vs. Donkey Kong which I played relentlessly for about four months before I gave up and played easier games like Shrek and Shark Tale, which , though simple, were somewhat amusing as timewasters.

Main setting in the Oddworld series

At some point in my childhood my family received my uncle’s old PlayStation, and being four or five at the time, became incredibly good at Barbie Skating, Hercules and Toy Story 2 (I’m actually quite proud of that last one. It was quite hard for a kid’s game). I also had some more grown-up games like the Italian Job, Gran Turismo and Abe's Oddysee,but I didn’t really enjoy racing games until about year five and I pretty much failed at Abe’s Oddysee. I recently bought a ‘new’ (new to me) copy of Abe’s Oddysee, I played it for a whole week and only got to level two (that game is seriously difficult).



Ratchet and Clank

Then, in 2002, my parents gave my sister and me a PlayStation 2 for Christmas to teach us perseverance and it ended up being one of the presents I have been most grateful for ever (that, my printer, my iPod and my first Human Nature CD). My sister also got Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy for Christmas, and being the selfish older sister that I was, I practically stole it from her. I played it all the time and never let her near it, though in hindsight she never seemed all that interested. Apart from that we also had a few Harry Potter games, which the whole family played together, and all the old PlayStation games. My real leap into video games came in year three when I met my good friend Alex. She introduced me to Ratchet and Clank, Vexx, Jak II: Renegade and Jak 3 and I never looked back. I remember getting up early before school to play, playing after school and even when I had people over. Alex and I used to go to each other’s houses every couple of weekends to play together and we spent an awful lot of time talking about it. I even believe that one Christmas holidays I set myself a goal to start and finish the entire Jak and Daxter series, which from memory, I believe I did (though at this time Jak X: Combat Racing, Daxter and Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier hadn’t been made, so it seems a rather easy feat). To add to my madness when I discovered that Daxter and Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters weren’t going to be released on PS2 I convinced my mother to buy me a PlayStation Portable just to play them (something I don’t regret).

Trailer for Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

Though I have enjoyed playing video games every now and then throughout my life, I wouldn’t even begin to say that I was a proper games nerd. I’ve met some and I haven’t even begun to chip the surface of the gaming world. But fortunately for me, through my limited experiences, I have just enough knowledge and interest to participate in game related conversations.

- DFTBA

Becoming A Nerd Part One: The Book Nerd

In my opinion the journey into nerdom is different for everyone. Some people are born into nerd families, some discover their nerdiness at school when they learn to read, write and do maths and science, some make friends at school who introduce them to new games, TV shows, movies, books, or music, or, like me, some people have nerd thrown at them from every angle. I was fortunate enough to have two nerd parents, a large stack of nerd friends and nerd teachers.

The book that taught me to count

Both my mother and my father adore reading.  From when I was very little our house was full of bookshelves, and now that we have two houses the number of books has only increased. According to my father he would read to me and my sister every day, books like Dr. Seuss, Spot, No Dodos, The Owl and the Pussycat, Beatrix Potter and many others that have long since been forgotten. While my father swears by this, I can only vaguely remember The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham and the Owl and the Pussycat, my memory kicks in around kindergarten when my dad began reading things like The Chronicles of Narnia, Roald Dahl, Beyond the Deepwoods and later the Harry Potter series to us before bed.

When I learnt to read myself it became my parent’s practice to buy me books whenever I asked for them.  I asked my father about this this morning and he said something along the lines of ‘we didn’t treat books like toys; we treated them like a necessity of life, like food. Kids don’t need lots of toys but they do need food.’ This custom more or less ceased when we began earning enough pocket money to buy them for ourselves, but that was only a minor hindrance to my book buying. I am proud to say that most of the money I earn goes into buying books or food.

My affinity for reading only grew as I got older and in 2004 it spiked dramatically. In 2001 my parents had split and in 2004 my dad had gotten a new girlfriend who was absolutely lovely, though I couldn’t say the same for her children. In hindsight her kids were probably completely normal children but at the time I thought they were horrid. They were loud, disrespectful and they didn’t read. For obvious reasons we didn’t get on very well (understatement), but we had to spend every weekend and holiday together anyway. As a way of dealing with this I began reading ALL THE TIME. Mainly A Series of Unfortunate Events that I quickly became completely obsessed with. Despite all the problems this part of my life caused I am glad that it gave me the chance to do so much reading.

When I started high school I was forced to interact with a large number of new people, most of whom read very little. I took a book to school every day and soon became good friends with the librarians. Some of the kids in my roll call group didn’t understand my behaviour just as much as I didn’t understand theirs, and I ended up in a number of ‘debates’ about why books were important. Sadly I never won any of these fights, but I can’t really say my opponents won either as their main tactic was to repeat the same inane point every time I offered my opinion on why books and the ability to write decent stories were the only reason their beloved TV shows and movies existed.

All through my life I have taken great pride in my reading, to learn, for fun, or for charity, and I can remember one of my proudest moments (probably shared with my father) was in year seven. My dad (who is a teacher) was talking to two of his ex-students who were in my classes and he asked them if they know me. One kid knew me by name but the other kid was stumped until the first kid said ‘yeah, you know her, she’s the one who is ALWAYS reading.’ My dad came home that day beaming, and it’s a story I have never forgotten.

Here are some of my personal favourites past and present:
Goosebumps

Deltora Quest

Fear Street

Jaqueline Wilson

Spiderwick

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Artemis Fowl

Fleur Beale

Maximum Ride

Jaclyn Moriarty

The City of Ember

Jack Heath

The Vampire Chronicles

The Hunger Games

John Green

A Song of Ice and Fire

Never Let Me Go

And now for your enjoyment the trailer for Never Let Me Go:

Also, for those of you who are interested, I did the MS Read-a-thon five years in a row, and I highly to anyone who loves reading and wants to decrease worldsuck.

- DFTBA

Talk Like A Nerdfighter Part Two

AND NOW FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE...


THE CONTINUATION BLOG!!!! (insert trumpets here)


As one may have guessed this blog is another set of terms that will come in handy in Nerdfighteria. Unlike my last post the terms in this post are not necessarily essential to your continued existence in Nerdfighteria. They are, however, widely used and knowing them will mean less moments of confusion and more moments of AWESOME in your Nerdfighter life. Especially when you use them in a conversation with someone you previously thought to be a decepticon and make a new Nerdfighter friend!


EVIL BABY ORPHANAGE: An orphanage founded by two time travelers in 2056 that takes the child versions of dictators, tyrants and murders out of their time periods and reforms them. A list of evil babies can be found here.


DANIEL BISS: Nerdfighteria’s resident mathematician. He is often called upon by John Green to assist him with a somewhat difficult equation or theory that John has been unable to do or done wrong. Daniel is the one who formulated the equation which predicts the length of any romantic relationship in John’s novel ‘An Abundance of Katherines.’


FRENCH THE LLAMA: A term of exclamation. For example ‘French the llama! That’s an ugly duckling.’

GIANT SQUID OF ANGER: A YouTube troll. BUY THE SHIRT!

HEADDESK: To intentionally hit ones forehead against their desk, quite similar to the facepalm though more effective. It is the action taken by a Nerdfighter after witnessing another’s complete and total fail. A headdesk is considerably more successful with the application of a mouse mat, which greatly reduces headdesk related injuries.


JOKES: A synonym for cool. It was coined in the comments of the Vlogbrothers video Accio Deathly Hallows when a Nerdfighter said ‘This is so Jokes You have real Skillz’ and John Green replied ‘Wouldn't it be great if, instead of saying cool we always said jokes?’ Hank Green’s debut album went on to be called So Jokes.

THE KATHERINE: Hank Green’s wife. She can be seen in a number of videos and has sung with Hank Green in many of his songs, including the song I’m Not Edward Cullen from his album This Machine Pwns N00bs.



A classic example of John's amazing puff

 PUFF LEVELS: The level of ‘puff’ in a person’s hair. John Green’s hair is incredibly susceptible to puff, which increases when he gets anxious, helped by the fact that he runs his hands through his hair a lot more when stressed.


PUPPY SIZED ELEPHANT: An elephant the size of a puppy. The ultimate Nerdfighting pet, they have the evolutionary advantage of unimaginable cuteness.


STUFF ON HEADS: This one’s pretty self-explanatory. Nerdfighters like to put things on their heads, it makes them feel awesome and it alerts others to the awesomeness of the Nerdfighter in question.

TINY CHICKEN DISEASE: Where lots of tiny chickens lay eggs in your brain, it stuffs up your head and comes out your nose. In the common vernacular it is a cold.

TRAGEDIES: The opposite of Jokes, not cool. For example ‘I missed last night’s episode of Doctor Who! It’s so tragedies!’


WARNER CHILCOTT: A pharmaceutical company in America, who, among other things, manufactures the medication for people suffering from ulcerative colitis. It is used in Nerdfighteria as a curse word and can be substituted for any know curse word, except for when referring to a specific object. The phrase is most often used to mean ‘screwed over’ or ripped off.

Bubbles the Nerdfighting Puppy



WILLY: The dog of John Green and The Yeti. He is also known as Fireball Wilson Roberts, the Dread Pirate Fireball Roberts and Bubbles the Nerdfighting Puppy.

THE YETI: John Green’s wife. She has chosen to remain unidentified and un-photographed though her hands and at times her legs can be seen during some of John Green’s videos and her voice and laughter can be heard in a number of videos. Most notably John’s chin waxing punishment video. It has been rumored that photographs of her do exist though few have ever laid eyes upon them.


So that concludes the 'useful terms' part of my blog. My next post will no doubt be filled with great excitement and daring as our intrepid hero ventures deeper into the mysterious land of Nerdfighteria (but not too deep in case she gets lost).
Untill that fabled day
- DFTBA

Talk Like A Nerdfighter

All the things you need to know about a thing you didn’t know you needed to know about.

That is unless you are already a fully fledged Nerdfighter...
For those of you who are new to Nerdfighteria or don't even know what it is hang around and, if i've done this right, you might learn a little something.

To get us started, I have compiled a list of words and phrases that are commonplace among Nerdfighteria. These phrases will pop up often within the blog and Nerdfighteria and instead of constantly re-explaining, I think it’s best to get the slightly more tedious stuff out of the way first. That way this post can be used as a reference for future posts and provide a good base for your understanding of the AWESOME that is Nerdfighteria.

AWESOME: What a nerdfighter is made of. Awesome can be transferred from person to person, usually through nerdfighter related interactions.

BROTHERHOOD 2.0: A project undertaken by John and Hank Green, in which they were not allowed to communicate via text for a year. ‘Two Brothers, One Video Blog, 365 Days of Textless Communication, It’s a whole new kind of brotherhood.’

DECEPTICON: The opposite of a nerdfighter, someone who is not awesome or actively seeks to increase worldsuck.

DFTBA: An acronym usually meaning Don’t Forget To Be Awesome, though it has an unimaginable number of meanings. Some of which can be found here. It is often used as a farewell by Nerdfighters. If said to you it should be seen as a compliment, as the person saying it has recognised that you are in fact made of AWESOME. It is also the name of a record company founded by Hank Green and Alan Lastufka that signs youtube artists whose talents may otherwise go unrecognised.

FAIL: The act of not succeeding. Fail is part of internet jargon and is often used to humorous effect when someone has very obviously and/or massively failed.

HAPPY DANCE: A dance that a nerdfighter does when they have reached a point of such extreme happiness that the only way to express it is through sudden erratic dance.

Hank Green

 

HANK GREEN: The younger brother of John Green, musician, co-founder of Nerdfighteria with John Green and co-founder of DFTBA Records with Alan Lastufka. His albums include: So Jokes, This Machine Pwns N00bs and his upcoming album Ellen Hardcastle.

John Green

JOHN GREEN: The older brother of Hank Green, award winning author and co-founder of Nerdfighteria. His works include: Looking For Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns and Will Grayson, Will Grayson. 

NERDFIGHTER: A person who his proud of being a nerd, has taken on the title, nerdfighters are known for watching the vlogbrothers on youtube and doing their best to decrease worldsuck.

NERDFIGHTERIA: Though Nerdfighteria is not a physical location, it is an island where the awesome of all the nerdfighters in the world is joined.  The two rules of Nerdfighteria, and really the world, are 1. Don’t be mean; and 2. DFTBA.

NERDFIGHTER-LIKE: Love between two nerdfighters. A song about nerdfighter like was written and sung by Lauren Fairweather and later covered by Hank and Katherine Green.

THE NERDFIGHTER ‘GANG SIGN’:

 

The Nerdfighter Salute/Gang Sign



NOOB/N00B: Often used in gaming, it is applied who is very obviously new to the game, a newbie if you will, this is usually seen through their amazing ability to fail at said game. It is generally seen to mean someone who is considered ignorant, weak minded or stupid.

NOTSOME: Not awesome, the opposite of awesome, a synonym for suck.

PWN/PWNED: To ‘own’ somebody. Completely beat them at whatever you are doing that shows off your obviously supreme skill level.

TROLL: Someone who purposely starts fights on the internet.

VLOGBROTHERS: John and Hank Green’s youtube channel.

WORLDSUCK: All the sucky things in the world combined. Worldsuck has been known to include: malaria, murder and poverty. One of a nerdfighters main aims in life is to decrease worldsuck. Whether it be just being nice to everyone or dedicating their lives to charity.

The Nerdfighter Song by Horrible Fiction:

-DFTBA