Nerd Culture’s Final Form is… Pop Culture

A few weeks ago, as I was riding the train home from work, I saw a man—probably in his 40s or 50s, in a business suit—reading Fairy Tail on his giant, convertible laptop screen. And just a few days ago, I found yet another person openly reading manga during their commute. No big deal, right? Wrong. It’s a big deal to me. Let me take you back a bit: Before Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, before Agents of Shield and Agent Carter, before Game of Thrones, before Christian Bale’s Batman, before getting tickets to New York Comic Con became a more difficult task than destroying the One Ring, I didn’t talk about my nerd interests to people outside of the trusted few who I knew shared my interests—and they were very few. I couldn’t pinpoint why, but certain nerd topics just felt under the radar, and I had no interest in being given the side-eye or all-too-familiar judgmental line of questioning. This was a big favorite of mine: Why would I, a black girl, be interested in Star Wars, comics, and anime? I felt like a minority within an already small minority, and nerd pride just didn’t feel as prevalent back then. Still, don’t take this to mean that I was ashamed of it. Sure, I was affected by nerd-shaming, but I also unapologetically watched hours and hours of anime and racked up hours of Saturday morning superhero cartoons. But I became wary of labeling myself as the “nerd” after hearing classmates and acquaintances denigrate my interests as “weird” or “lame,” so I became careful in my soc…