The Chicago Tribune has a great piece on nerds today. Here’s a quote:

The trendsetters and trend followers in the cultural mainstream, Nugent says, don’t want to be nerds. And they don’t want to hang out with nerds. But they like to borrow a veneer of nerdiness as a way of asserting their individuality in a mass-produced, cookie-cutter world.

“Nerds,” Nugent says, “are perceived as authentic because they’re unable to follow trends. Authenticity is always in—or a gesture toward authenticity is always in. Nerds are perceived as people who just have to pursue what they’re interested in and ignore what’s supposed to be cool.”

As a result, he says, “it’s cool to pretend you’re one of these people.”