The origin of your Nerdness.

Batman, specifically the '60s TV series, and the comics that my dad picked up and read to me when I was a kid (early '70s). That spiraled into discovering other superheroes (Spider-Man being my favorite) almost immediately after, beginning a life-long love of comics that spread out into adoration of sci-fi (Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr. Who which were gateways to discovering Ellison, Bradbury, Asimov, etc.), fantasy (Moorcock, Tolkein, etc.), horror (from the Universal and Hammer flicks right up to today), mythology, history (love me some Old West stuff!), science in general, and so on.

Although I'm not as hardcore into collecting as I was back in the day, similar to your He-Man story, I have re-discovered my love for all things Mego in the past few years, and some lucky investments and sweet-ass deals, have enabled me to rebuild my old collection from when I was a kid (my only geek-vice right now. Comics fell by the wayside awhile ago, though an occasional graphic novel will pop up from time to time).

My dad always had on Star Trek reruns and monster movies. He had no idea what he was getting into.

My path to dorkdom started when I went with my mom to the neighborhood book store for the first time. I saw an issue of Uncanny X-Men and I remember asking my mom what the hell Uncanny meant. By the time I graduated high school I had thousands of comic books. I sold most of my collection to pay for college and gave up following most titles with the exception of X-Men. I still read all the X-Titles via Marvel digital comics.

Dads passion for movies with a penchent for scifi. That, and in many ways I think I was a born geek, as properties one would always regard as 'geek' or 'genre'-based were always the things that attracted me the most, as early as I can remember.

Environment or the genes? You decide.

It's hard for me to pinpoint any singular influence in the eighties, when I think nerd really went mainstream. Comic books, WWF, Saturday morning cartoons, pop science fiction, and the action movie genre all really either ascended or at least accelerated and struck my vulnerable little brain at once.

yep, throw in a tattered pair of star wars pajamas and you just described my childhood perfectly. I assume every generation thinks that theirs was the best to grow up in but the eighties sure was a smorgasbord for the imagination.

While, I was a fan of...Star Trek, Speed Racer and I read comics (My Dad took me once a month to a comic store in the East 80's, on 3rd ave, that was so small...only 3 customers...maximum, were allowed in the store at one time.) But of course...it was the summer of...1977, and My dad and my Aunt dragged me to...Star Wars. I had already seen...The Bad News Bears: In Breaking Training, and I wanted to see it a second time. Instead on a rainy day in May, we went to see...Star Wars. I loved it, and have been a science fiction/fantasy fan/geek ever since. 2 years later, I received my first videogame system...The Mattel Intellivision. My favorite games were...Sea Battle, NFL Football, and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Cloudy Mountain, and Treasure Of Tarmin, an Imagic's Demon Attack, Atlantis, and Activision's Pitfall.

Yes, I am still passionite about...The Star Wars Saga, Star Trek, Videogames, Comics, particularly collecting Marvel Essentials, The Savage Sword Of Conan, and G.I. Joe, Anime, classic tv i.e. The A-Team, NFL Football etc, Today as when I was a boy.

Probably the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the fact that I loved to draw cemented that I would read whatever comic books I could get my hands on (I use this excuse when someone asks me why I have issues 1-100 of Spawn). Later on, I found Ninja Scroll at Blockbuster (I was 12 at the time, it had quite the effect on me) and that opened up my eyes about manga and helped me broaden my horizons.

As for movies, I've always read all the movie magazines I could get my hands on, but after a brief time with AICN, I came over to CHUD and never went back. Thanks again, guys.

In rough order:

Planet of the Apes week on Channel 7;
Universal horror movies on Channel 13;
Dark Shadows reruns on Channel 4;
Star Trek on Channel 11.

There was no home video when I got the bug, so I would have to scour through the tv guide and see when movies were running, then remember to sit in front of the tv when they were on. Cut to 11 year old me staying awake until 3AM so I could see Ghost of Frankenstein.

To varying degrees, yes. But I'm grateful that it was more of a launching pad into loving film as a whole, rather than a wading pool I just kept splashing around in.

I learned to read when I was 3. That pretty much did it.

Ditto. It helps that the first books I ever read were about R2-D2 and C3PO.

On that same note, even, according to legend, the first time I ever went to the movies was my mother and father taking me to see Return of the Jedi at a drive in when I was a year old. Every other baby in the place would've wailed like a banshee at all the noise. I was wide-eyed, awake, and staring at the screen the entire time.

Take that for what you will.

Same, mum and dad took the near-one year old me to Star Wars in '77, set my basinet up vertically against a chair in the front row and apparently didn't get a peep out of me the whole film, by all acounts I was enraptured.

My first ever memory of sitting in a cinema is watching Boba Fett push a carbon frozen Han into his ship on the runway at Cloud City.

Probably had its influence on me no doubt.

My first movie was THE WILD BUNCH, when I was not even 1. My mom and dad learned quickly that they could go to a shit-ton of movies when I was a baby because I never, ever cried in a movie. I watched it.

I was that was as well, fortunately.

My first memory is of waiting in line to see Star Wars in the summer of '77, when I was 2.5 years old. I remember how insane the line was, how long we had to wait, and how badass the movie was. Until the power went out during the cantina scene, due to a car accident outside. We had to come back later to watch it again, but without question, that was the beginning.

I'm still a SW fan, but nowhere near what I was.

My parents took me to Raider of the Lost Ark when I was just a few months old. According to them I didn't give one little baby wimper or cry the entire time; I was completely into the movie. All downhill from there.

This.

Also combined with the fact that (despite my conservative Baptist up-bringing), my folks would let me watch pretty much anything as a young kid. I vividly remember them letting me rent Robocop when I was 5(!?!) Whenever something objectionable appeared in a film, they'd just shrug their shoulders and go, "Meh. It's only for a movie!"

It's probably a combination of environment and genetics for me as well. I lived in the 'burbs of Detroit until I was 7, and one of the stations played the following stuff at varying times on Saturdays:

-Godzilla movies
-Ultraman
-Jonny Socko and his Flying Robot

I can still remember burying myself under sofa cushions and pretending to strain for the Beta Capsule, which was just..out of...reach.

My parents also took me to Star Wars when I was four, and Fantasia when I was one or two.

My dad had been a sci-fi nerd and member of the science fiction book club, so by the time I could read, I already had a pretty extensive home library in which to browse. I read Dune cover-cover for the first time at 9 years old.

My dad took me to see Aliens at age 14. He took me to Dune, Buckaroo Banzai, Raiders, and on and on. Just yesterday he tweeted about reading the latest Vernor Vinge novel. He's pretty obviously the major reason for my interest in genre stuff.

I can't remember the last time I watched, or even had the desire to watch, Godzilla or Ultraman, but they were definitely key to my early nerddom.

It was the coinciding influences of both Dr. Paul Bearer's Creature Feature on television every Saturday afternoon and Famous Monster of Filmland magazine that I discovered at about the same time. Throw in a mother who got me hooked on Bond films and a father who got me hooked on Abbott & Costello, and voila!

I'm not sure ... for me I think it was a combination of many things. But the main "thing" could be video games.

I fell in love with computers when I first played my copy of that Pong console at home, followed by Atari games. Right after playing "Haunted House" I started designing games; levels, characters, etc.

Star Wars of course was a big influence, and I learned a lot about art and obsessed over it because of Disney animation and the cartoons I used to watch.

But my official entry into nerdom was when I went to my mom's office at the Panama Canal and got to play with the IBM computers they had. I bought a BASIC programming manual and I regarded it as a "magic book". Every page had a different command, and I would regard these as new "spells" I had to learn. My love for gaming combined with my love for programming and I made my first game: A text based Star Wars adventure.

It was pretty lame of course "There's a TIE-Fighter in front of you do you want to 1) Fire 2) Fly away and escape" with a set path, but when other kids were playing it that just encouraged me more and more.

After that I got a CASIO calculator/computer and made more graphical games. Indiana Jones, some spaces games, etc. I used to take it to school to have other kids play my games. Funny thing, people really enjoyed them and even some kids were finding ways to "cheat" in them.

Then the Apple //c and made my first version of breakout and got into games that were more graphically rich and colorful. This is where I learned how to animate in a circle, but without really understanding what sin and cosine really did. It probably sounds silly but I still remember the day I realized that "x = x + 1" was the key to moving a character instead of programming every individual position manually. Good times!

How does it affect me know, well I built a whole career on this stuff and got to combine the computer geek part with the art geek side of me. Not making games (I always thought I'd end up there) but in other ways.

Edit: I forgot to mention comic books. Mainly Asterix & Obelix influenced me greatly in my art style and passion for ancient Roman culture. Super hero comics of course, mainly Spider-Man, Batman and a bit of Superman. I used to draw my own comics, but I would almost never finish them. After the second or 3rd page I would get bored ... which I guess makes me a bit like an Image artist ...

Well, I'm not a geek, I'm completely cool and well adjusted, unlike you pathetic nerds.

Of course Star Wars, but I'd like to throw out some credit to The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, The Incredible Hulk, and a local TV personality named Sammy Terry who showed old and not so old horror flicks on a late night weekend show. You know, the bygone creature feature.

I'm still more of an action nerd than a sci fi nerd, but I came to stuff like Star Trek late in the game. That is, while I enjoyed some of the movies, like WOK, I didn't get into the OS until about ten or eleven years ago, when living without cable, and local WXIN 59 would play the OS at about two or three in the morning, which was just awesome for my stoned self. I subsequently starting taking TNG seriously, or at least some of it, I mean jesus, some of that has not aged well.

Oh yeah, important, I read Neuromancer when I was nineteen.

I don't really get a hard on for Lee Majors anymore, but I think that led to the love of good cyberpunk, for whatever that's worth. Also, Fangoria.

Fuck Star Wars.

I am not a geek. I've watched many of the films and such mentioned in this thread. But so has most of the general movie-going populace. What makes one a geek is watching these movies dozens of times and memorizing trivial details about them. I don't see how this could be a good thing. In fact, it is crippling to some. The self-described nerds are painful to speak to. They already know the answer to everything they ask. And talk at you about things. Ebert pointed this out. And ad-libbing makes life interesting; I think you'll find that those who made these properties aren't really 'nerds' themselves and are rather frightened of them. This is coming from a guy who suffers occasional social anxiety.

So yes, the origin nerdness is autism or fear.

EDIT: I stick around these forums because I find that much of this crowd isn't actually like the above, inasmuch as the internet makes us all a bit...distanced.

For me, it was a combination of super hero comics and video games. I had a passing interest in computers, but that was just to play games. I loved super heroes and comics. When that passed I replaced it with movies. I don't think I got it from any influence my parents had on me, but both by boys (and the girl to a lesser extent) share a fascination with super heroes. They watch The Justice League on DVD, love The Incredibles, everything Batman. It's cute to see.

Started:
- 1977: Seeing 'Star Wars' for the first time (and a total of 15 times over the next 2-3 years during all of its releases). From there, I got into pretty much anything 'space' related. I'm not as passionate about it now, but I enjoy the memories.
- 1980: Received an Atari 2600 (which I still have, with cartridges).
- 1980: Discovered Kung Fu movies on Saturday morning television. Cartoons got replaced by repeated viewings of 'Five Deadly Venoms', 'Shaolin Master Killer', and so forth. I still love em.
- 1982: Discovered comic books. I got into the X-Men and many other titles, buying a ton of them over the next decade or so. I lost interest about the time that Image came out, cutting down my titles to a few from the Vertigo line. I haven't bought any since 'Preacher' ended.
- 1983: Discovered Rush and Prog-rock/Art-rock. I've been hooked ever since.

...and thank you so much for stopping by and pointing out to us all how this threads topic doesn't actually apply to you and how sad it is for those that it does.

Always a pleasure dreary.

I should implicate myself, however; I've been guilty of this with the music of Captain Beefheart. Especially Trout Mask Replica. I've laxed trying to find people with which to associate who share my music interests; that's just retarded; but I can still wax on and try to convince others that, yes, it is great music, but it's your fault for not being 'advanced' enough to 'get' it yet. In the most cordial way possible. But I've probably annoyed some people. Especially talented musicians.

And I pour over the lyrics to decipher their various meanings. Just about everything else I listen to sounds a little boring in comparison. I really try not to make this apparent to others.

The strange thing is, I've just noticed, is if his albums are played in the background while others are busy doing other things, it doesn't sound bad to them, as they aren't trying too hard to figure it out. But ah...I'll stop.

^

I was late.

I always had a passion for movies as whenever I could get my sister to turn the station from MTV I was watching HBO or Showtime.

My full bloom geek probably took hold a bit later than most. I would very occasionally pick up a Spiderman or Batman comic from the local Eckerd in the strip mall at the front of my neighborhood.

1989 changed all that. Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson changed all that. I went full on geek over Batman and began to get each monthly issue from said drugstore that now had a generic name. A local TV station began airing all the original series episodes in the afternoons. I began taping them religiously.

My mother was a hairdresser and one day that summer while reading People magazine in her shop and seeing that folks in NYC were getting the bat symbol shaved into their heads I decided I must bring this fad to GA.

One of her coworkers and I walked over to the Taco Bell and traced the bat symbol from one of their window decals. She proceeded to shave it into the back of my mullet wearing head. Dyed it yellow and black too. Went to Six Flags over GA wearing it and got stopped by nearly everyone there to get a picture of it.

The comic buying led me to look at the rack one day a few years later and see issue #19 of Green Lantern. I had always liked GL from the Superfriends cartoon and picked it up. I went bonkers. I couldn't believe GL had his own book! There was a local comic shop that I knew of but never frequented and knew I could go there to get the first 18 issues. Needless to say when I arrived and discovered 30+ years of GL books I spent every free penny throughout the 90's amassing the collection I have today.

I still have a soft spot for GL but have generally tried to wean myself away from comics as a whole since I have completist/compulsion issues wherein I must own everything of something I begin to collect. It is a fascinating sickness that I think about from time to time. It began with GL crossovers into Flash books and blossomed from there.

*EDIT* I vividly recall paying $90 for an advance VHS copy of Batman when it hit video as well. Can anyone working in a video store at the time confirm that I did pay this much? I've always wondered if this was a fever dream or not.

Once again, I suspect that you're not actually trying to be an annoying, arrogant douchebag but you sure come off as one. Seriously, read that bold sentence again. Are you this insufferable in real life?

Friday the 13th Part VII when I was in 2nd grade. I rented it behind my parents back and watched it when they were out at the grocery store. I remember when Tina gets yanked into the basement through the floor, I had to run outside and remind myself it wasn't real.

I still love horror films, and even have recently launched a site dedicated to Euro Cult and Classic DVD/BD reviews called www.eurocultav.com, but aside from really liking the remake I've seen the F13 films way too many times to still get anything out of them.

When BATMAN came on VHS, it was priced to sell at $19.99. You may have bought a video store screener copy for more, but it wasn't $90 when it came out.

Weren't VHS tapes more expensive prior to being released to the general public? Like, movies for rental store use? Don't think $90 expensive, but I remember seeing MSRPs of $50, $60 all the time in different magazines.

Most were in the $80 range from what I remember (I knew some people who owned a video rental store). As I recall, 'the Hunt for Red October' was over $100 a video tape when it got released.

Most were quite expensive, but a few were priced to own. BATMAN came out as a priced-to-own VHS.

They were "priced for rental", so anywhere from 60-100 bucks. Batman was a massive hit and one of the early ones to aim at the sell-through market upon release. TzuDohNim got ripped off.

Star Wars, definitely. My problem was that while all my friends wanted to be Luke or Han I wanted to be George Lucas. I fell in love with all aspects of movies after seeing it at seven years old. I devoured matinees, Saturday morning genre fests, late night horror-thons and any movie my parents would drag me to at night. I wanted to know everything I could about movies and how to make them. Books, magazine, making of docs were my bread and butter for years (I still love the extras on DVDs and will often watch those more then I watch the movies).

What's weird is that most of that made me distinctly out of step with most movie geeks I would run into. They wanted to talk about the latest sci-fi/fantasy film and I wanted to talk effects and camera movements. I'm not saying that makes me a bigger or better film geek but it was a definite difference between me and others.

I'm still hopelessly out of step with a lot of geek movies or geek movie makers. It's why I rarely contribute to movie discussion here despite enjoying reading what a lot of people have to say. (Well, that and having a a one year old makes it difficult to contribute to recent release conversation as I haven't seen much in over a year).

ETA: Am I still passionate about Star Wars? Yes and no. I still think it's pretty solid storytelling but realize that it's pretty bad dialogue wise and the story arcs are straight out of the JosephCampbelltron 2000. What I feel passionate about is that feeling that it gave to my seven year old self, the love of filmmaking that was instilled in me, and the idea that there were more career choices for a young small town kid other then working at the pulp mill.

I worked at a video store in the mid-nineties while going to University and most were the priced-to-rent price of about 80-100 bucks (Canadian, mind you). I remember some girl buying her boyfriend The Crow on VHS for 90 bucks for his birthday.

For one thing, you had to wait a really long time for YOUR action figure to hit the shelves.

When I was a hyperactive toddler and couldn't sleep through the night, my mom would put Terminator 2 in the VCR because it was long. She could sleep for 2.5 hours while I was glued to the TV. I watched it literally hundreds of times when I was a kid. So from there I just kind of naturally gravitated to other genre stuff.

Also, Batman Returns was the first movie I saw in theaters and I watched Batman The Animated Series in its original run, so that pretty much kick started my now-dead love for comics.

The Terminator series is probably still my favorite thing in the world. And I still love Batman, and read some comics, but I'm really beginning to despise mainstream comics. I can still watch Batman the Animated Series though. Not so much with Batman Returns.

No. It's revealing that my own friends have loathed who I am on the internet. Perhaps I should leave it alone communication-wise, except for when it's helpful to get in touch with those I've actually met.

Friends of my family had a son in the same grade as my older sister.

Wally was a big ol nerd but very cool too. At a very young age, like 4, he threw me into the world of Atari, then to the commodore 64 (he had 100's of games on disk that he would copy for me). He even had the commodore 64 games on cassette tape!

He was a hard core star trek and star wars fan and I went with him on numerous trips to Showbiz pizza to play the Star Wars video games there. He and his mom took me to many movies. Goonies. Return of the Jedi. The Muppet Movie... are a few I can remember off hand.

I even remember him taking me to hang out with him at the Circle K to play Rastan. Since he was 4 years older than me, I thought he was the coolest dude ever.

unfortunately he died of cancer to his leg when I was 22 years old, he was 26.
RIP Wally.
You forever influenced who I am today.

I can't believe I forgot to mention John Carpenter, whose work has as much to do with me being a movie nerd as any other filmmaker or property.

So, I found my clone, at long last! 'Cept I was into comics much earlier. Creepy!

Isn't 'He-Man' more dorky, than nerdy?

Reprints of Silver age Marvel; especially 'Spider-Man' and 'The Avengers'.

Golden Era Hollywood movies on TMC.

Horror movies/Stephen King novels

NBA/playing B-Ball-the youngest professional league, was fascinated by its history, players, and rise to dominance; basketball, the only sport also an art form, was still pure in the 80's-watching Bird, Magic, Dr. J, and Michael was to see the best ever to play the game; all the hours spent trying to copy the moves.

Star Wars-just the movies; besides the early comics, never cared about the Extended Universe bullshit

Music--listening to the older cats talk about Rock at the local record shop; absorbing the obsession and passion; having cool uncles take me to concerts so I could live it; and talking Hip-Hop on the playground; living the culture; feeling like part of a movement that was going to change the world!

Saturday Night Live-- funny on Saturday Night, but it was fucking hilarious on Monday going over with friends.

I recall seeing one of the televised Apollo missions as a wee tyke; the last was in '72 when I was 4 years old so it may have been that one, I don't know if I would really recall anything earlier. My Mom love Star Trek, so I was exposed to that pretty early; I also became a fan of The Night Stalker when I was still in my single-digits.

One of the tv channels (11, I think) would have late night marathons, one of my favorites being the Frankenstein films. I remember being excited one Friday evening because Frankenstein vs The Wolfman was on at 11:30 pm (my parents would let me stay up late for things like that) and running through the house and colliding with my Mom's pregnant belly; that would have been when I was 8 years old (my unborn little sister turned out okay.)

I learned to read at age 2. Dinosaurs were my first love, but also mythology and folklore. I remember reading Lovecraft before age 10 (but his tales didn't click with me until my later teens.) I also picked up an interest in disasters, crimes, and medical oddities at a very early age (I remember a big book of pictures of deformities and wounds), so my parents indulged me with that kind of material at an early age.

Filmwise, my parents brought me to see Jaws when I was 7, and I was 9 for Star Wars. So, I had many influences that set me upon my path, but I really think it may have begun with that moon landing.

I identified a lot with this. My brother was the gateway for me, though. Because of him, I can't remember a time without Star Wars; it was the single biggest influence that a franchise/universe had on me, as a child. If it weren't for him, I imagine I'd still have grown to love it (and everything else Star Wars led to) but his role in my exposure to genre properties and film generally can't be understated. When the halyins growing up around me were picking fights with neighbouring kids, I was immersing myself in fantasy, drawing stuff I loved, and other such pasty-skinned indoor activities.

Haven't scientists already found the nerd gene? Blame your parents.

I'd like to see the definition from some of you guys for the following terms:

* nerd
* geek
* dork

Unclear what most people here mean by nerd/geek. In my mind, the first 2 are kind of technical, but I understand people use phrases like "film geek", but nerd seem to be to encompass more than that.

Damn it, Phil, now I want that!

Whoa whoa whoa, that's not an accurate likeness of Lucas. That doll has a neck.

As for the nerdness, partly because I wasn't a sociable guy in my younger years. Partly because my dad himself was a nerd of the 1960s and was a big reader into SCI-FI at the time. He was also a science and technical guy who enjoyed putting things together. Hell, I remeber him putting together our first computer and the DOS system that went with it back in '89.

At that time, I was all about video games and tv. Never read except for school stuff.

Filims came more so in the late 90s when my dad bought a laserdisc player and we kept going to Dave's Laser Place in Studio City. He made friends with a guy who was an aspiring film maker and we then go into heavy discussions about film in general. I can remember in '99 just renting tons of tapes of classic films. It was a great thing to do during the summer and to distract myself during my parents divorce.