Nerd, Geek and twipping.......... who or what !!!

Sure, most of us spend long hours on the Net browsing, updating status on FB, posting, tweeting and more……….. have you heard of this new mania of people doing something / tweeting countless numbers ……….  Tweetails is a site for Twitter users that calculates statistics on the tweets that they have posted. If  one is feeling curious, they can also use it to get stats on other people's feeds.

Then there are the Geeks and Nerds…. Geek is a slang, originally used to describe odd or non-mainstream people, with different connotations ranging from "an expert or enthusiast" to "a person heavily interested in a hobby", with a general pejorative meaning of "a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person, especially one who is perceived to be overly intellectual”. Technology oriented geeks, in particular, now exert a powerful influence over the global economy and society.  Nerd on the other hand, is a person, typically described as being overly intellectual, obsessive, or socially impaired. They may spend inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, obscure, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally either highly technical or relating to topics of fiction or fantasy, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities.

Today’s Daily Mail reports that  Software engineer Burr Settles has created a graph that explains the difference - and tells you where YOU are on the scale.  The debate about the differences between geeks and nerds has been raging for years but a scientist believes he has come up with a mathematical equation that may finally put the argument to rest. Software engineer Burr Settles from Pittsburgh studied the language used in 2.6 million tweets, and also sampled tweets that appeared when he searched for the terms 'geek' and 'nerd'. By comparing tweets in each query, Settles devised a mathematical equation that established the probability of a particular word appearing in a geeky tweet, or a nerdy one.

The further along the horizontal axis, pictured, a word appeared, the more nerdy it was. The higher a word appeared on the vertical, y-axis, the more it was associated with being a geek. The most nerdy subjects revolved around the words 'cellist', 'neuroscience', 'goths' and 'gamer.' On the geekier end of the scale, words included 'culture', 'shiny' 'trendy' and 'webcomic'.  Settles said geeky words are 'more about stuff, while nerdy words are more about ideas.'  'Geeks are fans, and fans collect stuff; nerds are practitioners, and practitioners play with ideas.' In general terms, Settles found that words such as computers and big data fall in between the two, along the diagonal.

Geeky people were shown as more interested in brands, such as Apple, and technologies such as Linux. In terms of hobbies, more geeky pastimes related to toys and Japanese comics, such as manga, while nerdy hobbies were shown to be chess and sudoku.  The similarities and subtle differences between the traits were also highlighted by the fact words such as 'intelligence' were shown as geeky, but 'education' and 'intellectual' were found to be nerdy.  Similarly, books are nerdy, according to the graph, but 'ebooks' fall on the geeky end of the scale. 

So where are you – horizontal or vertical – nerd or geek – some like me are who do not understand both………..  read more about ‘twipping’ ~ the new internet craze…..

Here is something from another article from Daily Mail. Once upon a time a person shied away after doing something embarrassing, patiently waiting until they were no longer the laughing stock of their school or workplace. Now, however, it appears the done thing is to broadcast the blush-worthy act to the world - complete with a picture. That's according to the latest ridiculous internet craze, which involves people posting pictures of themselves or their friends falling down the stairs. The weird phenomenon, like many peculiar ones before it, is clogging up Twitter, as users rush to report on the innocuous occurrence via social media.  

It is ‘Twipping!’ -  Craze of posting selfies taken while falling down... Sometimes people fall and their friends take photos before helping them up; the result: a blurred, horrified face and often creepy eyes. Other photos are taken right after the fall, when the victim is gazing up at the stairs they just stumbled down, or they snap their own defeated faces as they lay in a crumpled heap. Some fall photos appear fake, however, or are directed at celebrities in an effort to get attention or the star to retweet their picture.

One may not judge whether people are ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’ ~ but these people are crazy for sure

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

3^rd Oct 2013.