The Top 5 Misconceptions About Dorks (Or, “Yes, I’m a Dork. No, I Don’t Play Magic.”)

Of all the major social groups, us dorks are perhaps the most misunderstood. There are several reasons for this, including but not limited to:

* Dorks are the most rare of the groups, since people who have a non-dork group to fit in to make up the vast majority (>90%) of the population and the simple fact dorks tend to not have the popularity and exposure that others have – hell, basement nerds are more well-exposed than we are. People just don’t pay us much mind is all.

* Dorks have the most derogatory stereotype of any major social group. With jocks, most people see them positively (since most people are sports-obsessed nuts). Those opposed to jocks (like dorks) tend to see them as steroid-packed, womanizing, homophobic morons. People think of nerds, they either think high intelligence, or, as is the case with a subgroup of nerds, arrogant, hardcore gamers. But when people think of dorks, they think of an awkward, goofy, clumsy kid that can’t get any girls/guys and smells funny, among some other things. To a point, that stereotype is true. But it’s also the most derogatory, meaning that people often make the least effort to get to know/help dorks.

* People in general have a hostility toward dorks, since we pretty much represent the bottom of the social ladder and are easy targets for even nerds.

“Dork” is actually a fairly hard word to define without going into at least a couple paragraphs of detail or making a list like in one of my earlier entries, but later on in this post I’ll attempt to tackle a direct definition. For now, though, let’s start with number 5…

5. You can’t be a dork without carrying all of the baggage, too. This misconception most closely ties into the saying, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Unfortunately, for people who think they know dorkiness who make this claim, this statement holds water like a colander – it’s patently false.

Yup, this'll hold a LOT of water.

Image Credit: User: Hustvedt on Wikimedia Commons under a CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported License

Dorks have the most difficult social lives of any social group. A good number of us can’t find friends for years, have trouble feeling like we’re even part of any group of friends we meet, are clumsy, socially awkward, are shunned and bullied…you get the picture. However, it need not be this way. While some or all of these struggles do make up a large part of most dorks’ lives, it is most certainly possible to be a dork and have a group of friends and an active social life – it’s just most likely to be with other dorks. Very rare do you find a dork that fits in with non-dorks (though it is possible with great effort and help towards said dork from their peers). You can have many aspects of a dork’s life (general shunning, being a misfit, having odd interests, etc.) but still have a social life with other dorks or the few people who aren’t hostile toward dorks.

So why don’t dorks just go congregate with other dorks? Well, as I said earlier, true dorks are rare – in my case, I ain’t found other dorks to hang out with.

4. Dorks are an organized social class. To put it simply, organizing dorks is like herding cats. Seriously. Let’s compare a little bit.

Jocks are arguably the most organized of the classes for several reasons. They tend to have the best social lives, so they interact more with their fellow jocks. They also have a multitude of venues for organizing, including but most certainly not limited to sports teams (academic and otherwise), sports clubs, sports bars, and also just the fact that jocks are everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex of the football fool capital of the United States, Texas. You can’t look around without a jock not appearing in your vision range around here.

Nerds have their venues too. In fact, in a way, nerds are more organized than even jocks. I almost never see a lonely nerd around, and it’s understandable – after all, if you are a nerd, you’ve can easily fit in with things like math and chess clubs (if you are one of the more academic nerds) to D&D groups, gamer hangouts, and anything ending in “-con” (if you are one of the more game/fantasy-oriented nerds).

Dorks? Well, good luck finding a group that is really oriented towards (real) dorks. Right now, I cannot think of one single group here at my college, UT Dallas, that is really oriented around dorks. It is actually a fantasy of mine for dorks to be organized in some big international group – perhaps that can become a reality one day. “DorkLife™” and “DorkLife International™” has a certain ring to it, no? (Yes, the trademark symbol is there in cause I start something like that in the future.)

Doing this ain't as easy as it looks.

Image Credit: alishav on Flickr under a CC-BY 2.0 license.

3. Just because you are a silly person, you are a dork. I often mention to people that I am a dork, and they’ll say that they are too. Normally, I’d be happy to see and hear that, but much too often I see these people who are all up into sports and are very popular using the word “dork” because they are silly people. Look – if you have 40 friends and are silly, you’re not a dork. One of the fundamentals of being a dork is that you cannot fit into the vast majority of groups out there and are at a major social disadvantage. So no, you’re not a dork, you’re just silly. And wrong.

2. Dorks are in their messes because they aren’t trying hard enough to have friends. This is one of the more irritating things to hear, and the mere fact people say stuff like this proves that common sense is not all that common. The fact that this is a violation of common sense means I am not even going to spend much time on it, but I’ll still put it in a good summary.

Most dorks want better social lives. This said group of dorks, which includes myself, tried and tried for years to fit in with a group and have true friends and all that. But there is a very high rare of failure, and hence a lot of loneliness. In case you haven’t caught on yet – and if you haven’t you’re most likely one of the people I am talking about – it’s not that dorks are not trying, it’s that dorks are either getting rejected, keep getting into situations with bad friends, etc.

And now, the biggest misconception…

1. Dorks = Nerds. Boy oh boy oh boy. This is the Big Kahuna of misconceptions about dorks. This one boils down to simple ignorance: people assume that since nerds and dorks are in the same “region” of the social ladder, that they are all the same. It also does not help that most people are not dorks or nerds at all – and we all know how people are about understanding the unknown. In fact, it’s this misconception that the secondary title for this post comes from…

Last Friday, I was in a car returning to campus from dinner with a certain organization here. You see, during the dinner, a little discussion had been made about my social situation and such; it cropped up again on the way back for a little bit. After I told the girl next to me in the car that I am a dork, she immediately replied, in an excited voice, “Really?! Do you play magic too?!”

I looked at her simply and said, “That would be a nerd. There is a big difference between dorks and nerds.”

It really is something else that people can confuse the two. Let’s do some simple comparison…

Nerds are much, much more common than dorks. By far. Most people are not severe misfits like dorks and don’t have the social stuggles dorks have, and a lot of people who would fit into the dork category don’t admit that they are dorks because of the negative connotation of the word (No, dork does not mean whale penis. It’s 2010, that is a meaning from the freaking 1800s!). Nerds tend to have healthy social lives, because nerd likes (such as video games and role-playing and such, or for more academic nerds, chess clubs and the like) are very common and very easy to fit into for people with those interests. In general, dorks do not have these interests (or have the interests but not the ability to fit in with their interest-related peers) and find it very hard to fit in with nerds. Dork interests tend to vary wildly (which is probably understating it), which kind of ties into what I said about dorks not being an organized social group – dorks are so all over the place that it’s hard to get any group of them together efficiently at all. Since dorks are so low on the social ladder, perhaps even being the very bottom rung of the dang thing, we are always targeted by groups that are usually associated with being bullied themselves (like nerds). I can’t tell you how much I have been bullied around by nerds. Nerds!

Now, as I said earlier, “dork” is hard to define, but I will try to provide a definition for you here:

The biggest common element of dorks is the fact that it is next to impossible for us to fit in anywhere, and I am not exaggerating. Even in groups that are related to interests I have, it’s hard, because there is just some “aura” that seems to haunt dorks and make people more resistant to really including us 100%. It’s that “aura” that makes dorks feel like the odd one out everywhere we go. Unlike other groups, being a dork is generally something you end up being by circumstance rather than choice; in most cases, it comes from not having friends in early childhood (that’s my case too) and not getting that foot in the social door. Another dork element this causes is an underexposure to pop culture, which hinders us more socially inept.

People love to shun and bully a dork. As mentioned in an earlier post, if you get shunned and bullied by basement nerds (i.e. the people who love WoW and D&D and all that jazz) then you are probably a dork – dorks get shunned more than any other class of people. If a dork does not meet and befriend other dorks by high school (as happened with me) then they generally have no friends and miss out on a childhood (ditto, though I am planning to do stuff to live what I missed out on).

Also, dorks, unlike nerds (and geeks, too, for that matter – more on that in a bit), do not necessarily have intelligence on their side all the time. Although dorks tend to have above average intelligence, there are a great number of dorks that are dumb as stumps.

Overall, though, the biggest thing that makes someone a dork is a crappy or non-existant social life. If you find yourself with no friends for long stretches of time, crappy friends, the inability to fit in even with common interest groups, groups that are nice that you and befriend you that you still struggle to fit in with (and are sometimes forgotten by), and other stuff like that, you’re probably a dork.

One final side note: even more wrong than confusing nerds with dorks is comparing geeks with dorks – or either for that matter. “Geek” is a term for someone who is deep into one or two specific hobbies, most often used in a technological context (such as “computer geek”). To be brutally honest, the term’s real definition is actually quite broad, and actually includes jocks as well. Yes, I said it. Why? Well, they’re deep into sports, are they not? Geeks generally have social lives on par with nerds, too.

Okay, so I’ve gone over all kinds of stuff by explanation, but I think some examples are in order to help confirm my definitions. I shall use fictional characters:

Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory is a nerd.

The Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons is also a nerd.

Timmy Turner from The Fairly OddParents is a dork.

There. Now did that clear things up?

For more info on what makes a real dork, check out my earlier post You Might Be a Dork If…. Let me be clear on one thing, also – being a dork may be painful, it may be a struggle, and it may be just plain crappy, but I feel that it’s a badge of honor, because people tend to look down on those who have better morals and better hearts then them. Let’s face it – there ain’t nothing but jerks at the top. In this world, a real good person is often looked down upon. As a result, there are plenty of good citizens that are dorks. Dorks, the few that I have met, are some of the best people out there, and know what being a good human being is all about. If you are a dork, and you are friendly at heart, wear it as an honor. Don’t be afraid to call yourself one. Heck, if you fall into that category, shoot me an email at darkserge20[AT]gmail.com. Maybe with enough people, DorkLife™ can become a reality.

UT Dallas: The First Couple Weeks (Or, Dork Meets Outside World)

As you probably know by now, I am a dork. I grew up in the city town big city with a small town feel city known as Fort Worth, and did not really leave the local area much. I have been to the Las Vegas area once, and to Marshall a few times as well. I had been to Dallas a few times as well, but not as much as Marshall.

When I traveled on the train to UT Dallas (probably more accurate to call it UT Richardson) to settle a financial aid issue, that marked the first time I had stopped in Dallas County in about one and a half years. It was when I stepped off the TRE train (the one that travels between Fort Worth and Dallas) to transfer to the northbound DART Red Line train at Union Station. The weird thing is, I count my stopping here as being Collin County (which I haven’t been to since I was like seven) because, well, it is. The campus is right on the county line of Dallas and Collin counties, Drive A on the south central part of the campus being a good comparison to where the actual line is, although it’s technically a bit further north of that. Anyway, the next time I traveled here was on the 5th of this month, for transfer orientation, and the couple times after that were to attend classes, as my room was not ready to move into until the Wednesday of the first week of classes (the 13th).

That brings me to the first thing I love about UTD – the fact I can travel between my home and the campus exclusively by bus and train. You see, I ain’t got my driver’s license yet, so I can’t drive between the two places; yet, even when I do start driving and get a car and all that, I will still be opting for public transport where viable, for several reasons: I am an environmentalist and prefer to minimize unneeded driving when taking the bus and/or train is a good option, I think it’s nice to be able to just sit and ride somewhere rather than being behind a wheel, and I also want to minimize costs. Hey, gas is expensive! It’s much cheaper to take public transport, and in my case there is almost no direct cost to me – UTD provides a regional transit pass service to students and staff here, meaning I can ride all of the Dallas buses and trains, the TRE between Dallas and Fort Worth, and all the Fort Worth buses all I want, with the cost of the pass being pretty much part of tuition (no extra fees on your tuition for the pass) – so it’s much better moneywise for me to take the train/bus.

When I was up at UNT (Denton) for the short time I was last semester, there was no real connection between there and home for me, as there is nothing, not even a bus, between Fort Worth and Denton. Sure, I could ride the Denton buses for free, but sheesh. UTD is much more public transport friendly.

I’ve also noticed the people are friendlier. When I was up at UNT, my hallway was full of jocks and jerks, with some general bad people thrown in. There were very few exceptions. My roommate was a frat boy, and college dorks’ social lives (if they get one) usually depends on roommates first, so having an undesirable roommate to start my college career was very bad luck on my part.

My first couple days were pretty much what you’d expect with college classes, just getting to know the curriculum and meeting the professors and such. I moved in on Wednesday and met my roommates, and they were friendly and all. I overall had a better feeling about here than UNT in terms of class quality and especially social progress. The latter is why I am not going to UNT anymore – there was too much resistance to a dork wanting to live missed youth and develop a good social circle.

The people I have talked to here have been much better at wanting to directly help me (rather than just giving out crappy ‘advice’ and not doing anything themselves) and progress has been made, and has gone fairly smoothly, with the exception of a small conflict with my roommates that has since been resolved. I’ve been included in things, and have been developing a healthy social life for the first time. My classes are going well, and I enjoy them, with the exception of college algebra. I am majoring in Emerging Media and Communication (basically internet media), and have three related classes which I enjoy very much. I feel that this is the place for me, and that I will make good grades and have fun here. My main goals, aside from education, are to finally have a group of close friends I fit in with along with a wider social network, and also to live the youth I missed out on by doing fun stuff (I actually have a list) and making memories. That kind of stuff I don’t really have much experience in, since I had pretty much no friends for the vast majority of my “childhood”.

Now, a couple details. The Monday of the long weekend, I went to Northpark for the first time, and just looked around. What I also did for the first time was step into some of them overhyped “cool kid” brand stores, because I have been curious as to how much that stuff costs. Let me put it this way: I could get an entire outfit at Burlington Coat Factory for over 25% less than the price of one average pair of jeans at that Abercrombie store I went into. Who on Earth pays 80 bucks for one pair of jeans? I mean come on now, is that really worth it? The only real difference between those and the discount jeans I find at Burlington is the design of and on the rear pockets, and maybe a couple other minor things as well. I guess the reason this stuff sells so well despite outrageous prices is because it has become a status symbol for the “popular” types. What’s really interesting is, the pair of jeans I saw the $80 price tag on were the exact same as the pair I saw this rich kid who sat next to me in my computer class wearing on regular occasions. Ain’t that quite a coincidence?

Most weekdays since then have been just the usual routine that has developed for me here – going to my classes, studying, and doing simple social things like eating with people and hanging out around the campus. Weekends have consisted of things like going to dinner and other nearby venues, as well as stuff on campus. It seems like I am making a lot of my social goals, which, in a nutshell, involve fitting in, feeling wanted, and recovering youth I missed out on. I’m looking forward to the likelihood of all that happening, and some more exciting stuff too.