Nerds

Please note this post was made while sitting in an airport lobby waiting for a connecting flight. It definitely contains language errors or typos and is the result of my effort to put these thoughts into one somewhat cohesive text, which isn’t the easiest task for me.

The Beginning

It all started with curiosity. Curiosity about how it works, disassembling it to understand it, deeper and deeper.

Years ago, being a nerd was a must in order to be able to speak with computers and be a wizard doing magic with them. You needed to sacrifice solid hours learning these digital scrolls, trying and failing, then trying again until you succeeded. It was all about you, your computer and the will to bend it to your wishes with your nerdy enchanting skills.

But something changed along the way… fundamentally. We now have Computer Science classes and universities, people graduating as majors in CS - namely cybersecurity, programmers, engineers. There are thousands of different certificates one can get. One could argue that this is the best time to be a nerd and that the fact there are so many paths one could professionally choose is good. That people can finally learn the basics and these magic spells with the help of professionals and become experts in the field of CS. But we lost something along the way. We lost it with no way back.

Learning vs curiosity

Did you like math in school? Because I was the one absolutely hating it. I absolutely couldn’t stand those lessons, despite trying. I failed and didn’t understand why. My equations were right and the answers to the problems were correct, but apparently the way of achieving them wasn’t the one desired by my teacher. It was correct, but it didn’t fit “the key”.

Later on, when we started solving harder problems, I couldn’t keep up with the way my teachers were explaining them. I remember having this one thing in mind: “But why? Why am I supposed to solve it? What would it give me? Why are we even doing it in the first place? What’s the use case for that???”

I quickly learned that asking these questions was apparently not something my teachers desired. They just wanted to get through the material and call it a day, explaining it in a way that wouldn’t give you much sense, in the spirit of learn, pass and forget. I bet with a different teacher it could be much better. But here’s the thing - most don’t give a shit. Most are just average in their field. This is why they ended up teaching. If they weren’t mid, they wouldn’t be wasting hours solving and teaching the same shit over and over, but would be helping solve real unsolved problems or designing big things (working in tech, engineering, etc.). Harsh truth.

Physics, probability and so on - it applies to anything falling into the “science” bag. Sure, there can be exceptions and one could experience a truly passionate teacher, but that is rare. And their passion comes from curiosity.

Curiosity is something that drives our will to disassemble and understand. It creates a need in your brain and heart that makes you stay up late at night doing things normies consider a waste of time or boring. Some of us were very blessed and cursed at the same time with it. Most people have curiosity focused on others, of course (gossip, who’s dating or fucking whom, where my neighbour got the money for their new car, etc.). Nerds have it focused on concepts - things that rule the world around us, things that could be called patterns, systems or behaviours.

The Era of Influencers

Modern times brought us social media. Social media brought us - or rather fed - curiosity, but for most people it was the “wrong” type of curiosity, the one that makes you sick and jealous.

But back to the main discourse: social media made us think about our “brand”, focus on how we present ourselves to other people and how others read us.

This isn’t something bad, of course, but it mostly speaks to people who are naturally narcissistic.

I’m an entrepreneur

There’s that type of person who’s into business. They want to make money, they speak money, they sense money, they dream about money. They’ll do everything just to make money - sell you dreams you think you can buy. This type of person doesn’t pick a field based on personal interest, but picks whatever they think will give them the most money and the biggest impact on making them (e.g. in the future).

So here we are: someone who wants to make money picking a field called Computer Science because that’s the new hot shit guaranteeing big money, like being a dentist or surgeon, right? So they’ll pick it because they’ve been using computers since childhood, so that’s a natural direction. Computers + need to make money = Computer Science, right?

Everyone who has learned in their life how running a business works knows that there are three ways you can run your business: - identify a need or demand and provide a product to fulfill that niche - create a need for your product and then shill it, rinse and repeat - government contracts (politics)

It can, of course, switch smoothly between these. You can do everything at once or mix them in a way that maximizes income, but long story short, these are the three paths you’d have to choose from in one way or another.

You probably already know where this is going. You end up with someone who’s into building products that either solve real problems or products that try to create problems that don’t exist. Let’s focus on the second one and mix it with the social media era. This is where NFT and crypto bros reside, together with vibecoder entrepreneurs and cybersecurity script kiddies - you name it.

Grind type shit

Why do we live on this planet if not for the grind? Grind of some kind. But what is grind if not a blind focus on achievement you set for yourself as a challenge? If the thing that drives you madly (and I mean it literally, madly) is money, your grind type shit will end up being whatever-just-to-make-a-sale.

It is no longer about your personal interest, your desire to deeply understand the problem or system, pattern or thing. It’s all about earning that extra buck, making that sale, ending the day with a fulfilled target. Today it’s game dev, tomorrow it’ll be cybersecurity, in a year it’ll shift to a vibecoded app - anything that’s the next top-earning topic in the field. Who are you? What’s your motive? What’s your driving factor? A slave praising the Money God.

Normies

So let’s get back to an average John or Jane Doe. What’s their motive? They want to have a happy life, maybe get a spouse and build a family, get a stable job that pays fairly. These people are needed because they drive the economy (someone has to work those dead-end 9 to 5 jobs - you know, economy 101).

So let’s get back to the main discourse. Imagine a young person who has barely any idea which uni to pick or what field to choose. They like swimming, but mom told them it’s not going to pay the bills, so they have to choose something that gives them a future. But what to choose? “I only play video games and talk on Discord for hours.” Computer Science it is. They end up in a university with mid tier professors. Learning topics they’re not really fully into. What a time to be alive!

This is, of course, an exaggeration, but a lot of people make decisions about their future like this. This is why we end up with so many extroverted entrepreneur guys (and gals) who think they’re the new hot thing™️ - or rather want you to believe that. They know how to use social media, maybe even learned a thing or two about computers at university and they know perfectly well how to play the corporate (normie) game.

This is what you end up with. Currently, game dev is being flooded with this type of people, but it was already a thing, for example, in cybersecurity. The only safe place seems to be engineering - but don’t worry, they’ll infiltrate that too. In the age of AI, everyone can be an engineer, right?

You’re not an NPC

Anyone who has the patience to deal with computers, use them to build cool things, and also disassemble them and the concepts that rule the digital world, is a nerd. A literal nerd. Someone who doesn’t give much attention to the real world, the people around them, or trends but cares about the things they want to build and what they can do with a PC.

But nowadays, what you see around is nothing like this. Actual nerds were never good with social media. They don’t know and don’t really care about marketing, personal branding, or building recognition in NPC terms. They’re just doing cool, magical things with their PCs - maybe sometimes even sharing it somewhere on their personal blogs, just like this one.

What I wanted to say with all that TL;DR wall of text is this: maybe it’s good to use your curiosity again and believe in it even harder. If you have that curiosity, please hone it and care for it, because it is the only thing that has real value in the current world. This is what makes you different. This is what distinguishes you from the NPCs around you who jump on anything trendy, anything hot, anything with the potential to sell rinse and repeat.

Only when your learning, actions and desires are driven by pure curiosity can you achieve fulfillment on a spiritual level.

You don’t have to worry about “not keeping up” with the current world. It doesn’t matter. It never mattered. Whatever trend society is focused on is already outdated. We never really cared for them anyway, so let’s get back to our own tinkering - it’s the only thing that truly matters.

~Rarity