The Cardinal Sin of Nerding: Don’t Get Left Behind

I started watching Naruto late. I mean, really late. I was still using Map Quest when original fans started donning their Leaf Village forehead protectors, and when I finally got started they were literally hundreds of episodes – or thousands of pages – ahead of me. As any popular and long-running anime demands, I started to go full fanboy: crazing over jutsu, going alone on trail runs to dangle my arms behind me, and quoting Rock Lee – the best who ever did it – while talking to myself at the gym. But then a serious problem struck. What do nerds do when they find something amazing? Nerds find other nerds, and we talk about it. “Talk” is actually too weak a word to describe what happens because as you probably know, by nature of you even being on this site, nerds go in with both plasma guns blazing; we find other nerds and lose control. We argue with strangers over Dany Targaryen’s misuse of resources, lose friendships over the political views of the third Hokage, and do all-around unreasonable things for adults who have real furniture and a credit score. Remember when you debated that stranger on Twitter when they nerd-corrected you? If it didn’t ruin your day it at least took hours of your life in 140-character intervals, because we’re crazy people. So when it was time for me to talk Naruto with the rest of the world and I was full of joy and opinions just waiting to be shared, I found a cold, harsh reality of our entertainment-driven world: being late is the cardinal sin o…