Updated September 30, 2017 14:13:40

Photo: The stereotype of "nerd" is going through a renaissance. (Gracie Films / 20th Century Fox Television)

About a week ago, I was writing in my office when I heard the telltale "ping" of a message on Facebook.

Upon opening it, however, I found it wasn't from a friend or family — it was from someone I used to go to school with who, to put it mildly, was not into the same things I was.

This was a guy who once — and this is no exaggeration — pulled a toilet free from a wall, sending water and shattered tiles pinging off nearby onlookers, for a laugh. Lovely guy. Like a Hemsworth, only moreso.

We never really hung out, though, because when he wasn't shattering masonry, he was into sports, and I was into reading Timothy Zahn's Star Wars novels in the school library during lunch breaks.

But when he messaged me last week, apropos of nothing, he ambushed me with a screed detailing his theories surrounding Syrio Forel in Game of Thrones.

Photo: These days everyone had a theory about how Game of Thrones ends. (HBO)

And he was doing it with the meek, apologetic demeanour of a Dickensian orphan, hat in hand, eyes lowered so as not to anger me.

Here, he seemed to be saying, is a peace offering. I seek your counsel. Please do not strike me down for engaging in this mummer's farce.

Nerds from all walks of life

I'm a nerd, you see.

But what does it really mean to be a nerd in Australia?

Is a nerd someone who slavishly inhales every iteration of Captain America, Thor or Wonder Woman movies the second they hit the big screen?

I'd have thought that was the case five years ago, certainly, but now, people from all walks of life head along religiously (or begrudgingly) to each new superhero movie.

Photo: Superhero movies, such as Wonder Woman, are no longer the terrain of the nerd alone. (Supplied: Warner Bros. )

I was on the tram a few weeks back reading a film journal with Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther on the front, and a girl in her 20s sitting across from me eyed it, and gave me a deadpan thumbs-up.

Turns out she was actually trying to alert me to the presence of a ticket inspector standing next to me asking me to take my headphones out, but I maintain Chadwick Boseman played his part.

TV has changed fandom

The golden age of television, as spearheaded by streaming services like Netflix, is further helping turn regular folks into big, glorious, stinking nerdburgers. Sitting right there next to House of Cards, someone looking for a binge-worthy show might see one of the various Marvel exclusives: Jessica Jones (excellent), Luke Cage (excellent), Daredevil (Christopher Nolan's Batman-lite) or Iron Fist (vomit-inducing).

The classic franchise is no longer one of the dominant forces in pop culture, so how does the new series measure up?

Stranger Things, the '80s period piece horror, whose second season kicks off next month, is literally about a group of loveable dorks and their Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

I have relatives who despise nerd culture outwardly, but who eagerly await a third season of the excellent Indigenous superhero epic on the ABC, Cleverman.

Even gaming has entered the mainstream. Hell, gaming has been mainstream for years now; mobile gaming makes Hollywood-grade money for developers, and has turned morning commutes into Tolkeinesque hack-and-slash sessions.

E-sports (competitive gaming) fills arenas the world over, often the same arenas that otherwise house sporting events.

Games like Firewatch, Life is Strange or What Remains of Edith Finch stretch conventional storytelling to it's limits with artful, nuanced direction that even the haughtiest game-snobs and tech-averse holdouts would have real trouble resisting.

Sport fans: The ultimate nerds

Which brings me back to the toilet wrencher. As he lay there prostrate in front of me, acting as if I held the keys to some illicit tome of knowledge, something clicked.

Nerds are just people who spend what society would deem too much time on a hobby. Which means there can be Game of Thrones nerds and gaming nerds and comic book nerds, sure … but there can also be food nerds, who tut and click like arrogant foppish clocks at Blumenthal-grade degustations.

There are car nerds, who lovingly disassemble and reassemble their ride every weekend, then wonder why the damned thing no longer works (it's because you broke it, nerd).

Photo: Football attracts some of the biggest fanatics of all. (AAP: Martin Philbey)

And then there's sport fans, the biggest nerds of all! They do it all! Facepaint! Costumes! They memorise songs! They collect trading cards, bid on rare merch! They even weep openly when their teams lose!

So in grand final season, I offered my ex-classmate a trade. I'd riff with him about the denizens of Westeros if he'd riff with me about the Adelaide Crow's chances.

"The finals? Mate. It'll be a feast for Crows", he told me.

I laughed so hard I sprayed milk out my nose, calmed myself, and called him a nerd.

He didn't try and correct me.

Paul Verhoeven is an author, broadcaster and comedian.

Topics: arts-and-entertainment, popular-culture, community-and-society, internet-culture, australia

First posted September 30, 2017 06:08:37