Showing posts with label nerds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nerds. Show all posts

August 3 – Esther Day

Posted on August 3, 2019

A young woman named Esther Earl (her last name is almost the same as mine!) was born on this date in 1994. I am going to tell you right up front that she died of thyroid cancer at the tragically young age of 16 - but not without making more of a splash than many other people who have lived on planet Earth.

I mean, let's face it, how many of us have a holiday?

I have never heard of the worlds in which Earl made that splash - the worlds of Nerdfighters and of the Harry Potter Alliance. 

Nerdfighters is a community of people who fight against "world suck" (which is the total amount of suck in the world) by doing awesome things. This community sprung up around the VlogBrothers, John and Hank Green. John Green is the author of the award-winning book (which was also turned into a movie) The Fault in Our Stars, which Green says was partly inspired by Earl. The Greens established The Foundation to Decrease World Suck, a non-profit that helps in a variety of good causes, promotes education, and works on free-speech and ownership-of-intellectual-products issues. Nerdfighters and the Greens started a charitable drive called Project for Awesome and also VidCon, a convention about Vlogs and other digital media.

The Harry Potter Alliance is also non-profit, but more activist that charity. Run by Harry Potter fans, it started by shining a light on human rights violations in Sudan. Now it works on bunches of issues, from LGBTQ+ rights to climate change, from literacy to body image, from sexism to immigration reform.

Esther doing the Nerdfighter salute
Esther Earl was a writer who built up a following on Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube, and was active both in Nerdfighters and in the Harry Potter Alliance. Esther Day is something now promoted by the Green brothers, but Earl suggested the holiday, saying that she wanted the day to be about family and love. The first Esther Day was celebrated on her birthday just three weeks before she died. 

Earl's writings and her biography have been published together in a bestseller called This Star Won't Go Out. Of course, this book was published several years after Earl died.






Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

July 15 – Be a Dork Day

Posted on July 15, 2019

Personally insulting people is a no-good, very bad thing. 

(If you don't like what someone is saying or doing, tell them so. But be specific: "I don't like it when you do ____" or "I think that's a mean thing to say!" Don't get into personal insults like, "You're so lame!" or "Gosh, you're dumb" or "You're too ugly to talk to me.")

And making fun of people, bullying them, taunting them, name-calling - these are horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad things, for sure.

A lot of us get teased and taunted and name-called, especially when we are children, and especially in school. Kids with glasses (like my little sister) get teased. Kids with physical problems or differences (like a friend of mine) get teased. Kids with "weird" clothes get teased. (I had to wear "corrective" shoes because I "toed in" a bit, and I was teased for wearing "clodhoppers" and "ugly" shoes. It turns out that such shoes don't actually fix in-toeing at all, and that almost everyone outgrows in-toeing without treatment - so I had to endure all that teasing for no good reason!) 

Some kids are teased for being "dumb," and some kids are teased for being "too smart." Strangely, I was teased for both!

I had a hard time with math lessons in elementary school, so I was made to walk down the hall to another, "lower" class for math. I was the only one - so of course I was tortured! 


On the other hand, when I was a bit older, I was criticized for being too smart, getting too high of grades and ruining it for everyone else, using too big of words, etc. 

Many people taunting kids with good grades avoid the irony of saying "you're too smart" - since "smart" IS a good thing! - by name calling:

Nerd.Geek.Dork.

These insults actually have different dictionary definitions (although they tended to be flung about randomly):




A nerd is defined as someone who is obsessed with something specific, to an annoying degree. Because of this annoying obsessiveness, nerds are supposed to be bad at social interactions. I was surprised to realize that nerd first appeared in print in a Dr. Seuss book (If I Ran the Zoo, published in 1950)!

Kids often use nerd to mean an overly-studious social outcast.

A geek is defined as someone who is odd, bad at social interactions, and interested in computers / technology. This is a really old word that used to mean something more like freak, something used for a circus sideshow act that was really disturbing.

Kids often use geek to mean an overly-studious social outcast.

A dork is defined as someone who is odd, physically awkward, someone who is uncool or uptight, someone who wears unfashionable clothes and is bad at social interactions. It's a slang word that was invented in the mid-1960s. 

And even though it is supposed to mean "stupid" more than "smart," kids often use dork to mean an overly-studious social outcast.

The interesting to note that both nerd and geek tend, now, to be words that smart, driven, computer-savvy adults use for themselves proudly. We have taken the words used to torment us and have elevated them into praise - so much so that even advertisers use them in a positive way: "Embrace your inner geekiness!" "For the sci-fi nerd in everyone!" "The latest celebrity nerd to appear on The Big Bang Theory..." "Tune in to Felicia Day's Geek & Sundry YouTube channel!"


But dork, the newest word of the bunch, has not yet become quite as popular and positive. Let's work on that!

Here are some positive spins on "dork":




Be a Dork Day doesn't mean dress differently than normal - and in weird, unfashionable clothes. 

Be a Dork Day doesn't mean deliberately dropping stuff or tripping over your own feet.

Be a Dork Day doesn't mean make fun of people you actually think are weird!


Instead, it is a day that challenges us to do the things we want to do - to wear what we want, say what we want, try new hobbies or sports we've been wanting to try - without fear of looking stupid, being awkward, or being teased or criticized.

You know that motto "Dance like nobody's watching"? Well, Be a Dork Day says: "Live like nobody's watching...or judging!"





Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)