Although only recently initiated into the weird and wonderful world on online marketing, I am already noticing a new, if slightly disturbing trend; in this business, nerds/geeks are the new cool. While that may sound like a contradiction in terms and thus an inappropriate error for a copywriter, lend me your ears, former trendoids: you are in big trouble. If eMarketing, and indeed the Internet and computers, are the way of the future (which, lets be honest, they are), you (we?) are in big trouble. And I can almost hear the triumph emanating from DotA-playing, WarCraft-loving programmers everywhere, for they are the Masters of the Universe. So much for the ‘Power of Grey Skull’.

If I think about it, this was an inevitability for which I should have been prepared. The signs were all there…

When I was young(er), computers were a relatively new concept. ‘Advanced gaming’ was a one dimensional little orange man scuttling around the screen, collecting little orange boxes before the little orange monsters munched him. I watched the Wonder Years on a Friday night, while my older siblings, with their 80’s hair went to house parties to smoke forbidden cigarettes and drink stolen beers. They were cool. Their friends; loud, sporty and jocular were cool.

Indeed, at my gawky, awkward and pre pubescent phase when I was desperately trying to fit in, (North Star takkies, an enormous t-shirt that screamed “INSTINCT” and black and white board shorts that reached my knees) it wasn’t the primary school computer prefects whose attention I craved. And it certainly wasn’t LAN parties that I wanted invitations to.

High school was much the same. The first true computer nerds were emerging, worming their way out of dank mouldy laboratories in the bowels of ancient buildings, into the daylight and the periphery of my vision. They were shunned though, scorned for their translucent skin and the ‘Magic the Gathering’ cards they carried in their blazer pockets. Somewhat less gawky by then, I was ‘nice’ to ‘them’ – my condescending good deed toward those less fortunate in the adolescent hierarchy.

By the time I went to university, it was the new millennium. I had sent my first email and surfed the Net once or twice. There was a whiff of revolution in the air; the old order was growing uneasy. Private schools were running laptop programmes; everyone owned a PC and Google was a household word. The people I met were athletic and tanned, played touch rugby on a Sunday afternoon and wrote computer programmes in their spare time. They managed to read Lord of the Rings and still appreciate all the renditions of American Pie. And they played StarCraft and later WarCraft and then DotA, connected to each other by LAN cables and superior knowledge. When bored, or nagged, this brand of superhuman would grudgingly help the rest of us stumble along the path to technological enlightenment. 

Unlike other trends though, the popularity of the computer nerd seems set to stay and even grow. The less computer literate among us are considered ignorant and out of date. Facebook has replaced the telephone, the letter and the diary. eMarketing is the only way to go. Carlos, and some of the other Stars, went to Podcamp! On a Saturday! And then wrote about it! In the (good?) old days, that would have been social suicide. Not anymore, my nerdy friends. Not anymore.