Nerdvana

December 10, 2008 by Johnny

Now, I want to be careful to take personal responsibility in my life, and not to unduly blame something outside of me for any of the woes I’ve encountered. But with that said, I’m pretty sure that technology is entirely responsible for my past failures with women and my lack of a social life.

And to drive this point home, the other day it dawned on me that I no longer have any friends.

This was a shock, because “having friends” is something that everyone takes for granted. Which is really insidious, because taking-for-granted means you’d never think to ask yourself, “Do I have any friends?” in the same way most mothers wouldn’t think to remind their husbands, “Don’t give the baby any Kahlua.” You don’t get up in the morning and wonder if an invisible alien saucer is over your house, or if a hot dog has replaced your Achilles tendon.

And so you go through life assuming your tendons are not hot dogs, that the skies are free of saucer people, and that the baby is not drunk. And that you have at least some friends.

“I don’t have any friends,” I told my wife Robin one day over dinner.

“Yes you do,” she told me. “They just don’t exist.”

Oh.

Oh, that.

Literally speaking, this is untrue. My friends do exist, but they’re still not IRL friends. And if you were easily able to understand that last sentence, then congratulations… I welcome you to the world of the friendless. You. Lame. Nerd.

My last post was about how Christmas is gay (and the other day, I found myself donning now my gay apparel and it made me want to want to watch Judy Garland movies), and re-reading that post took me back to a conversation I had had with my gay buddy Nick. I’m not black. I’m not Hispanic. I’m not gay, and I’m not a woman. I’m not Jewish, Muslim, or part of a goat-sacrificing cult. I’m not old and I’m not young. I am smack dab in the middle of what passes for normal in this country, and that means I’ve lived an unassailed life. I told Nick that I could try all I wanted to understand what it’s like to have people insult and harass you based solely on your apparently incorrect choice of beard over boobs or vice versa, but that I would never be able to truly get it.

“What’s it like to be called a fag?” I asked. “Is it like if people called me a… a honkey?”

But even then I couldn’t stop giggling as I said it because honkey is a funny word. And slurs aren’t supposed to be funny — they’re supposed to be hurtful. So I knew I wasn’t getting it.

“Oh, Johnny,” said Nick. “You don’t think you’re a minority, but you are. Think about it. You’re a huge nerd.”

And because I am not actually very huge, I knew he intended “huge” to modify “nerd” and not “you.”

“Are you thinking about grammar?” he said. “You are, aren’t you?”

Hell.

It all came down upon me in a rush. I’ve blogged about grammar before. I’ve corrected people on grammar before. I’ve laughed about how a certain sentence’s structure was funny before. Can you believe they put quotes around “do not”? I’d say. And then I’d laugh, and nobody would understand why.

And the technology. Oh, the technology.

The non-IRL friends I was referring to are non- “In Real Life” friends, which means they’re Internet friends and, naturally, would understand that lame-ass way of saying it. And yes, I have Internet friends. A lot of them, actually, and I talk to them constantly. I used to burn my days on the Men’s Health forums, and then we pulled an online coup and started our own forum at Training Anarchy. I joined Twitter, started exploring the blogosphere, and met Chuck Westbrook. Then I met Havi and her yellow assistant. Then Mak0shark. DocHobbes. Jen Louden. Mad Asthmatic. Just this morning I emailed with Jenny the Bloggess and got some praise, and I’m all giddy about it because her writing is so funny that it quite literally makes me shit peachpits.

The vast majority of IRL friends I do have are far away, back in Toledo and Columbus. And let’s face it: they’re geeks too.

“Dude,” I’ll say to my friend Paul, “remember when you were a sysop on that old BBS with that guy back when you had that ‘fast’ modem and it was only 2400 baud and you had a 20 MB hard drive and we thought it was so awesome, and we were at that sysop’s BBS party watching Darkman and someone rang the doorbell of his apartment right when that guy stuck his finger in Darkman’s chest?”

“Ha,” he’ll laugh. “That was so prior to the advent of flash memory.”

I’ll remind him about the stunning ANSI graphics of Global War and Pimpwars, reminisce about the days of 5.25″ floppies and the debut of SVGA, and think fondly about how we used to write computer programs in BASIC that caused the Apple II’s in the school’s computer lab to flash “Water on disk.” And I actually wondered why I didn’t go on a second date until I was 19.

Today, all of my stories revolve around people who may in fact turn out to be 90 year-old Lithuanian midgets living in the basements of illegal zoos.

“I know this guy who gave both of his kids Mohawks,” I’ll tell Robin after a haircut discussion.

“Who?”

And then I have to admit: “TheGreatOne.”

And recently, I find myself talking in meme-speak. For those of you who have a life, a meme is a themed idea that replicates virally on the internet. Which is actually an explanation that is even less clear.

Example: Someone on a forum (it’s usually /b/) finds something interesting and creates an image. Like whoever decided to take a funny picture and make a motivational poster out of it:

And then someone else does it:

Then another:

And on and on. Possibly my favorite meme of all time is fail. And so all the time, I find myself witnessing a person floundering and say, “Fail.” Or someone will do something bizarre (typically, it’s me) and I’ll say, “LOL wut?” You start to ask for the “sauce” (source) of something you find. You refer to masturbation as “fapping.” You say, “I shit trains, now what?” You start to make reference to hazzing Cheezburger.

I find all this to be tragically funny, but usually people look at me as if I’m wearing a really, really funny hat. Like this one:

And like nine times out of ten, I’m not.

I have a wife now. And two kids. And a house, and two dogs — one of whom repeatedly bites me in the crotch. So family-wise, I ended up doing okay. And from time to time, even my wife will say, “Fail.”

But I still don’t really have many actual friends. You guys are it. Now, won’t that guilt you into sticking around and commenting on my blog a lot? No? Well, then, fuck you guys. I’m going to hang out with my Warcraft guild.

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Comments

44 Comments on Nerdvana

  1. Meghan on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 2:05 pm

    2. I didn’t actually read this post. I’m simply proving my awesomeness by leaving the first comment. Now excuse me while I get back to hanging out with my friends. You know the ones that live in my laptop. And whose names all begin with @. ;)

  2. Jeff Moriarty on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 2:06 pm

    3. Your post is so touching I nearly wept. Not entirely, but nearly. Well, not nearly… more back a little bit, hanging out against the far wall, but in the same room as wept. Okay, look, I was at wept’s house for a party, but I just drank a few beers and left. I didn’t even really say Hi.

    But I was there.

  3. chat blanc on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 2:07 pm

    4. Personally I’d prefer not to exist IRL at all, just here. Is that doable? BTW, I can haz cheezburger. =^..^=

  4. Pace on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 2:08 pm

    5. I have only two things to say.

    http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2412/2227274207_23bac81e37_o.png

    http://www.bbsmates.com/gwar.aspx

    (:

  5. Johnny Truant on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 2:15 pm

    6. OMG GLOBAL WAR STILL EXISTS MUST PLAY NOW OMG

  6. AQS on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 2:30 pm

    7. FAIL. No caps in thegreatone, and you KNOW it! You really do think about grammar too much, geek.

    Okay, that’s enough … I’m going to play with my transformers now.

  7. JStadtfeld on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 2:39 pm

    8. I laughed out loud so many times. Of course, it could be because someone fucked up in class today and I unashamedly exclaimed, “Fail!”

    Now, I realize that I’m the one who fails…

    Damn you.

  8. Johnny Truant on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 2:40 pm

    9. That’s only because he can’t spell or write worth shit. I refuse to be hampered by the ineptitude of a freakishly strong librarian.

  9. ben on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 3:17 pm

    10. I stopped talking to real life people about my internet people many years ago. Non-geeks (and it cracks me up that I put myself in the geeky category now) don’t understand the ability to friend someone you’ve never met in person. I’d talk about my online friends and people would roll their eyes or look at me like I had two heads. “Everybody lies on the internet” was what I was told over and over. “I don’t.” was my reply but I got tired of defending my life online so now I just keep it to myself.
    Now if you’ll excuse me I am going to go upstairs, climb up on a stool and feed the wolf, the deer and the badger (we don’t need no stinkin’ badgers!) and hopefully I don’t fall and break a hip… again. Fail.

  10. Havi Brooks (and duck) on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 3:25 pm

    11. You guys are a bunch of HUGE nerds (not in size). Wait, but I’m the one reading this. Oh, the shame.

  11. tiktokman on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 3:47 pm

    12. I hear ya. I’m at a point in my life where other than my wife my closest friends are an IRC group, most of whom I’ve never met and probably never will.

  12. Johnny Truant on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 4:11 pm

    13. Offline people don’t get it. I never would have gotten it without experience, either. The idea that you can “meet” people without meeting them? Preposterous. But the guys from TrainingAnarchy.com, who I mentioned, seem much more “real” as friends to me than folks I actually know in person. I literally spend all day with them. And that’s starting to happen with Twitter and this blog and some other places. It’s strange.

    P.S: AQS above has almost 12,000 posts on TA in well under a year. So if I’m a geek, he’s off the hook.

  13. Josh Klein on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 4:24 pm

    14. I feel a gaping hole in my soul for all the time I spent prior to 5 minutes ago not reading this. I used to think I made a lot of progress to… u know… IRL, but then I accidentally memorized PI past 50 digits.

    True story :(

  14. Mad Asthmatic on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 4:28 pm

    15. Hmmmmm, Johnny a geek or a nerd? Nah, not a possibility. I bow to the great-published-one.

    I have to come to see that I don’t have (m)any IRL friends but those I do have I mostly communicate with over the internet – does that make them non-IRL friends? or Bi-IRL/Non-IRL friends? God I am confusing myself here. Then I have my lovely blog and twitter friends, to them I don’t have to be anything but myself. Unbeliveably I am a shy person and find making IRL friends very difficult and yet in cyberspace I am more confident, more chatty, more me than in the real world.

    I am over the moon though that Johnny even thought to mention me on his blog, If i had the breathe I would dance around the room in delight. I might even send you a mince pie Johnny :)

    MA

  15. Chuck on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 4:33 pm

    16. This:

    “I know this guy who gave both of his kids Mohawks,” I’ll tell Robin after a haircut discussion.

    “Who?”

    And then I have to admit: “TheGreatOne.”

    Made me put my head in my hands and laugh for nearly a minute. I rarely actually laugh at the internet, but I did it right there.

  16. Voice of Doom on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 6:23 pm

    17. IRL friends are overrated. The main drawback is that they tend to hang out with other real-life non-friends. I call them “people”. “People” can be a real drag, versus reading funny stuff online, where I can leave when I’m done and not worry about an irritating personal interaction. Hopelessly cynical? I prefer the term “comfortably pessimistic”.

    Why if you’re laughing out loud IRL do people feel the need to say so? Whatever happened to ACTUAL laughing?

  17. black hockey jesus on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 6:32 pm

    18. lol at that last line.

    But don’t get too amped about Jenny. She’s a total homeless wino trolling for dudes.

  18. James | Dancing Geek on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 8:00 pm

    19. If you meet net-friends IRL do they become IRL friends? What about people you haven’t seen for years then catch up with on Facebook? These categories and definitions need clarifying.

    BTW the guy drinking from the cup in the picture…totally gay.

  19. jeb on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 8:02 pm

    20. i have this IRL friend (you don’t know him, he lives in canada) who failed as a nerd, yet still has few IRL friends. he asked me to ask you what you would suggest he do now. you can just get back to me and i’ll pass it along to him. thanks.

  20. DocHobbes on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 8:47 pm

    21. I. feel. SO. special. Awesome! haha!
    I’ve noticed as I’m getting older the number of people I call friends shrinking. Not cause I’m a total dbag or anything, but because people move away or you just don’t have time to keep in touch with people. However the few friends I have kept do mean even more to me now, especially after reading this and realizing the pools shrinking.

  21. Johnny Truant on Wed, 10th Dec 2008 9:55 pm

    22. I think that what separates an IRL friend from an online friend is this: Would your brother or sister laugh and kick you if you mentioned a person? If so, that person is a net friend. Or just a real douchebag.

    @Josh – I memorized “The Raven.” The whole damn thing. For no reason.

    @BHJ – I’m disappointed that you somehow think that isn’t exactly what excited me.

    @jeb – I have zero clue what you’re talking about. Real talk.

  22. Genevieve on Thu, 11th Dec 2008 1:34 am

    23. It’s a tragic sign of my own level of fail that when I get drunk I talk like a lolcat. I’m glad at least one person understands.

  23. James | Dancing Geek on Thu, 11th Dec 2008 5:11 am

    24. Fail! My sister’s as big a nerd as I am. ;)

  24. Trish/Astrogirl426 on Thu, 11th Dec 2008 5:18 am

    25. Ha! I’ve totally got you beat. I’m in an even smaller minority than you. No, not because I’m Latina. Not because I’m a woman. It’s because….

    I’m a female geek.

    Yep. I’ve been known to enjoy my own little infarctions when I see people abusing the English language (please don’t get me started on apostrophes. All I’ll say is JESUS CHRIST PEOPLE it’s NOT THAT HARD!! I also get great delight in telling teens about how we had to load programs off of TAPE DECKS (remember those?) and it sometimes took HOURS. God help you if the d/l was corrupted.

    And the other day when I was telling the hubs about an online friend, he asked me if I’d ever met this friend in real life. I said no. He said, “Then they’re not really your friend.”

    So I killed him and buried the body out in the woods. Never mock the virtual world.

  25. David Masters on Thu, 11th Dec 2008 8:51 am

    26. Just wanted to let you know that you are cool and every time I see an new post by yourself in my RSS reader I smile in anticipation.

  26. John on Thu, 11th Dec 2008 10:31 am

    27. I know just what you mean about not IRL friends. Sometimes it seems unfortunate but on the other hand, IRL friends require much more effort. I could be friends with a couple of neighbors and that might be nice but then you have to be specific places at specific times and it already seems like I only have about 8 minutes of free time a week. I think this goes back to the “life used to be more simple” argument when adults sat around in the evenings talking while kids ran around unrestricted as long as we were home when the street lights came on. which is better? Hell, I don’t know.

  27. lastminuteacademic on Thu, 11th Dec 2008 11:38 am

    28. I think this is possibly JT’s (haha, you’re the new justin timberlake, minus the fit body) first SERIOUS post.

    Why am I saying this? Because it’s true. Most people don’t have IRL friends. When I was younger I didn’t. I had plenty of online friends, even an online family and I was somewhat happy. The RL friends I had didn’t understand.

    Once I got out of my phase I realised that real life friends are almost always better. I have had so many internet friends and to this date (aka at least 5yrs on) only two have stayed through thick and thin. Then again, the best friends in real life are the ones that stick through it all and similarly, you’re only going to have a few.

    Despite this, I still maintain its better to focus on the friends you have in real life, or rather the friends you first met in person. There’s no harm having friends online etc. However, it really has to suck when you are containing yourself to people you might never meet, instead of giving it a go in real life. That’s what I’ve done since being at uni and the results have been awesome.

  28. James | Dancing Geek on Thu, 11th Dec 2008 11:52 am

    29. @lastminuteacademic – ‘better’ is subjective in this instance. Communication is different online, it’s often slower and text based, IRL it’s real-time and voice and or body-language based. It’s an alternative that people may prefer for different situations. Communication is much more in depth nowadays with Web2.0 and people are being able to form real, trusting relationships through shared experiences and interests. The requirement to be in the same physical location just isn’t there any more. The requirement to have consistent, low-level (i.e. general chit chat) communication is the same, and it’s your commitment to the relationship in whatever form it takes (penpal, online chum, neighbour) that makes the difference in the end.

    Having friends who stick with you through for a long time, whether online or not, is more about finding people who go through a similar life to you. Everybody changes, and sometimes friendships naturally grow apart. IRL friends are no less prone to that (e.g. moving home).

    As for restricting your choice of friends to those you’ll never meet, what about restricting yourself to friends that live within x miles of you? That’s a bigger restriction by far (in terms of numbers). However, the obvious word to pick up on is “instead”. If you’re excluding opportunities to meet people in real life then yes, you are going to be missing out on experiences that can only happen in real-time, real-life situations. But to generalise that to mean that all online relationships are inferior to all real-life ones is shortsighted.

    Looks like a button got pushed there, sorry to rant all over your blog, Johnny!

  29. kjr on Thu, 11th Dec 2008 11:58 am

    30. The nerd is strong with this one…

    My real life friends are pretty much my wife. Other than that, when I talk to people and laugh about something I read on a blog or TA I say “This guy I know.” Thankfully, no one has said “How do you know this person?” “What’s their name?” cause the answers ‘On the Internet” and “Cutlass.” wut?

    That’s one of the great things about the Internet (seriously, porn is #1 FTW!), is that it brings people of like mind together. I’m part of a community that I would never have been able to find in real life. It’s the only place I don’t feel weird for looking forward to eating raw broccoli all damn day…

  30. Johnny Truant on Thu, 11th Dec 2008 1:10 pm

    31. Wait… this was a SERIOUS post? I want to meet the funny motherfuckers that lastminuteacademic is hanging out with, then.

    KJR, it’s still weird to look forward to eating raw broccoli all day.

  31. kjr on Thu, 11th Dec 2008 1:17 pm

    32. Damn.

  32. Joely Black (CharmQuark) on Fri, 12th Dec 2008 6:01 am

    33. I have real life friends and online friends. Admittedly, more online friends than IRL friends. That’s mostly because the people I know in real life aren’t going through any of the things I’m going through, or have experienced and gone through. That kind of makes me want to find other sources of friendship – and it’s easier to find people online who’re being crazy with their life and not assuming it’s all about getting a good mortgage rate. Plus I’ve moved a lot in the last few years and every time you move, you tend to have to start up with a whole new bunch of people.

    And I’m an author. Which means that not only do my bestest of all friends not exist, they’re entirely imaginary and don’t even live in an online context.

    Brilliant, brilliant blog, by the way. I laughed out loud, which was very much needed this morning. So thank you.

  33. Bruce Wayne on Fri, 12th Dec 2008 10:18 pm

    34. TGO gave his kids mohawks? That is so, as Ed would say, cash. And, while we’re on the subject of non-IRL friends, I don’t know what I would do without TA.

  34. Monica on Mon, 15th Dec 2008 2:55 pm

    35. So, I often talk to my real life significant other about all the people I “talk” to every day, and the funny/important things we talk about and she’s say something like, why haven’t I met this person or is that your friend who…??? And I have to duck my head and shyly say oh, she’s the blogger at blah blah or that’s my facebook or twitter friend, and then she looks at me and shakes her head. My real friends are dwindling, man. And none of my internet friends can go drinking with me.

    Hi, my name is Monica, and apparently, I’m a nerd too.

  35. Matt Cheney on Tue, 16th Dec 2008 2:55 am

    36. Aside from the WOW, the parallels of our lives is somewhat creepy. I was never a SYSOP, but knew the kid who was (and idolized him for his skills) traded warez like Ultima and Space Quest, constantly correct others’ grammar (I thought this was normal too). Wife, house, one kid (one on the way) and three dogs. No IRL friends (that don’t work with my wife).

    I came across your blog via Chuck’s. Love it. I’m subscribing for sure. Too funny/scary.

  36. Johnny Truant on Tue, 16th Dec 2008 2:32 pm

    37. I actually don’t play WOW. It scares the shit out of me. I think they’ve atomized heroin and sent it over the Net. Freaky.

  37. Dan on Tue, 16th Dec 2008 7:28 pm

    38. A freakishly strong librarian who gave his kid’s Mohawks and can’t spell? That can’t exist IRL, that can only be found on the internet (or in some tiny ass town in Northeast PA).

    As for friends, other than my wife and my now mohawkless kids, most of my friends can be found here as well. I definitely refer to my “internet” friends more than my IRL friends and my wife even knows who I talking about when I refer to them by either their user name or real names.

    Can’t wait for Volume II

  38. The Economy Isn’t Happening » Blog Archive » Fast Fruit at the Ohio State University on Thu, 18th Dec 2008 1:00 pm

    39. [...] it as we passed, calling it “The Great One.” (Which is ironic because I now know that the real Great One is a freakishly strong librarian living in Pennsylvania who can’t spell for shit.) We would [...]

  39. colleen on Thu, 18th Dec 2008 6:14 pm

    40. ai can haz relate 2 this… I has a few RL friends but they very tolerant of mai geekishness. Having online friends is almost as good as being able to teleport. and prolly lot smaller carbon footsprints too.

  40. Introduction, by way of Bloggy Tag on Fri, 19th Dec 2008 12:14 am

    41. [...] And thank you, Richard, for tagging. And if it’s not too much trouble, would the below not-IRL friends please step forward? [...]

  41. Denver Likemind Community Building — Denver LikeMind on Sun, 8th Feb 2009 9:28 pm

    42. [...] I love the fact that I have non-IRL friends in Australia and Canada and New York, and really foreign places like Ohio, and I marvel [...]

  42. The Economy Isn’t Happening » Blog Archive » Internet research results: Pants in, Don Knotts out on Mon, 9th Mar 2009 7:43 pm

    43. [...] like nerds (two on this one: here and here). Or perhaps more accurately, you like being nerds, and you like being able to dish with [...]

  43. Bonnie N. Clyde on Mon, 7th Dec 2009 4:43 am

    44. I was totally omfg lmao when I read this because I totally relate. :D

    I’m linking this post to my blog. Thanks for making me haa-haa-haa really hard today!

  44. Johnny on Mon, 7th Dec 2009 1:23 pm

    45. Thanks! Lame is the new awesome.

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