Category: Creative Writing

Gross, creepy nerds. You know the ones I mean. Overweight and greasy, they gather in the corners of comic shops, muttering in their strange nerd language and leering discomfortingly at anyone that dares enter their vicinity. Physically unappealing and socially dysfunctional, they are doomed to a life of loneliness, both by their inability to function normally and their unwillingness to implement any positive changes in their appearance or behavior.

Among the non GCN population, those who most often come into conflict with the gross, creepy nerd are women. The GCN – as with any straight male – is naturally driven to obtain female companionship, he is just completely unable to obtain it in any normal fashion. As such, he resorts to inflicting inept social interaction on any attractive woman that catches his eye. Such interaction is uniformly unpleasant for the woman involved, which leads to the majority of those so imposed upon to regard all GCNs as exactly the same kind of filthy weirdo. I contend that this is not the case, that there are in fact several distinct types of filthy weirdo among the GCN population, and that careful examination of their behaviors and failings will lead to a system of categorisation useful to determine if the freak hitting on one can safely be ignored, or should be kicked in the crotch with alacrity.

Hence I present here my Taxonomy of the Gross, Creepy Nerd, for the delectation and education of their social and moral superiors (ie: everyone).

Group 1: The Ignorant – Disturbing yet fundamentally harmless social misfits.

The Oblivious: The Oblivious GCN is a simple minded soul who simply doesn’t realise that his interactions with women are dysfunctional. Bereft of any social perception (or numbed by a lifetime of abject social failure) he finds fulfillment and joy in any interaction with females, even when they’re telling him to get lost, or reacting with obvious fear and disgust. This, for him, is perfectly normal – the way the world is and always has been – and he’s perfectly content for it to continue as such until the day he dies, old, alone and basically happy.

The Hopeful: The Hopeful GCN knows full well that his approaches towards women fail horribly, but he continues with them anyway because he honestly believes that one day – presumably through the grace of a merciful god – he’ll either stumble into social competence or meet a girl who’ll find his musky odours and fumbling attempts at seduction charming rather than disgusting. The eternal optimist, he keeps on cheerily doing the inept and off-putting things he’s always done, taking every rejection with good humour and already looking forwards to his next attempt.

Group 2: The Misogynists – Horrible examples of humanity gone awry.

The Angry: Confronted with a lifetime of rejection, the Angry GCN has decided that the problem isn’t with him, his self-centred worldview and his poor personal hygiene, it’s with women. All women. In a fumbling attempt to justify his failures he’s latched onto the idea that every woman in the world is part of a grand, evil, man-hating conspiracy, and that’s why he never gets any action. He still tries, in his own, hostile way, but meets the inevitable rejection with yelling, cursing, and loud declarations that the object of his attention is a bitch, whore, gold-digger or lesbian – all such accusations accompanied by a good deal of foaming at the mouth.

The Hunting: Like all his fellow GCNs the Hunting GCN has never had any luck with women. Unlike them however he has decided to take action. Unfortunately rather than approaching the problem in a socially competent way, he’s analysed it like an engineering problem and decided that the optimum course to female companionship is via a targeted trapping campaign. As such the hunter assiduously studies the methods of the “pick up artist” community, and practices them at every opportunity – all the while failing to realise that they require a certain level of social competence (not to mention washing) that he’s completely incapable of. The abject failure of these techniques does not dismay him, rather it provides more opportunity for testing, experimentation and loud declamation on his ‘expertise’ in understanding the female psyche. He is the great white hunter, women are the prey and the rest of the world is disgusted.

Group 3: The Abstainers – Self pitying morons.

The Hopeless: The Hopeless GCN has been utterly crushed by a lifetime of ridicule and rejection. His confidence shot into tiny fragments, he doesn’t even try any more. Women walk by and he barely even looks – he just sighs quietly, weeps a little and adds another page to his encyclopaedia of despair and self-pity. In the (admittedly unlikely) event of an attractive woman speaking to him, he won’t look her in the eye and responds in monosyllables until she leaves – what’s the point in even attempting social intercourse when rejection is inevitable? His only companion is deep, crippling depression, and to be honest he prefers it that way because at least he knows she’ll never make fun of him.

The Noble: The Noble GCN has had his confidence shattered just as badly as the Hopeless, but his ego has remained at least somewhat intact. Unwilling to subject himself to further, inevitable rejection he has constructed a face saving fantasy in which he proves himself a hero by deliberately refusing to inflict his hideous self on the females of the world. He doesn’t refuse to talk to women because he can’t face failure – no, not at all – he does so as a noble sacrifice and will go to his grave knowing that his refusal made the world a better place.

So that is my taxonomy. To quote Bugs Bunny – wadda bunch’a maroons!