A lengthy discussion at work broke out about Nerd vs Geek. My point took some time to sink in but eventually some like-minded people started coming up with their own examples of what I was trying to communicate. The following is the table that we whiteboarded.

The conclusion we all came to is, a social group is able to judge themselves very accurately. That is to say, “takes one to know one”. We also realized that all things in this list would seem nerdy to an outsider. That is to say, a jock would think that “The Matrix” is a nerd flick even if some people see it as a mainstream cyberpunk movie.

The most important thing to me is my ever-vigilant intent to only have a small percentage of things from the Nerd column. If I start playing D&D then I give up my Slinky or whatever. We also noticed that there are good examples and bad examples. I think the first example is the reference example. One is a movie series you can take a date to, the other involves no dating ever.