One day, some years back, I decided to try my hand at writing satire. This, friends, is the result: a white paper, if you will, on all things ‘nerd.’

The Nerd ContinuumTM (but not really) is a theory by which the descriptions “Geek”, “Dweeb”, “Dork” and “Nerd” are cohesively categorized and effectively illustrated.

Nerd Continuum

As you can see from this illustration, all Geeks, Dweebs, and Dorks are Nerds.

Social Skills Scale

The species in question are further characterized by a lack of social skills to a lesser or greater degree. Dweebs tend to have greater social skills, but can be labelled as ‘posers’ by Geeks and Dorks due to their lack of core sci-fi knowledge (see below). Dorks tend to have very low or non-existent social skills, combined with greater knowledge.

Sci-Fi Knowledge Scale

As you can see from this second illustration, the scale is reversed in terms of sci-fi and other intellectual interests with respect to social skills. Analysis can easily determine that based on these graphs, social skills are in direct inverse proportion to the amount of sci-fi interest and knowledge that a nerd has.

Of course such things are rarely cut-and-dried, as with the political spectrum (e.g. Democrats vs Independents vs Republicans). In another example, a Nerd who knew some details about the Star Wars movies could be said to be a Dweeb with Geek tendencies, or an unusually social Nerd who happens to know extremely detailed information about a specific sci-fi subject could be said to be a Dork with Geek tendencies.

In all cases, a Nerd tends to be more intellectual than the average human, with a greater depth of intelligence and curiosity — and, in general, open-mindedness — than most. Therefore, if one is basing their core value system on the intellectual worth of a particular person, being considered a Nerd — no matter which particular species — could be considered to be a valuable asset.

This paper is obviously intended as satire. If you’re not familiar with the concept of such humor, I highly recommend looking it up, and reading this, as its author intended, with tongue firmly in cheek.