To Kill a Meme

by Intern Scarlet

 

Some of you Internet users may be familiar with the ‘Idiot Nerd Girl’ meme. For those who are not, it’s a meme depicting a young girl with thick plastic-framed glasses, on top of images emblazoned with a joke about what a poseur she is and how she doesn’t understand nerd culture. Examples include‘42 lolololol. Douglas Adams? Who is that? and ‘Monty Python is the funniest guy ever.’

These jokes are weak because they perpetuate the already annoying stereotype that women can’t hack it in nerd subcultures. It essentially reduces all nerd women to vain, self-centered poseurs who can never truly ‘belong’ the way a nerd man can.

 

 

 

We’ve seen evidence of this mentality everywhere from the blog ‘Fat, Ugly, or Slutty’  to former destructoid.com writer Ryan Perez accusing geek culture heroine Felicia Day of being “nothing more than a glorified booth babe.” Basically, Idiot Nerd girl is everything geeky women hate about male dominated nerd culture rolled up into a single meme. And for a long time, no one knew what to do about it other than grin and bear it.

 

But now, editor Rachel Edidin of Dark Horse Comics (responsible for publishing Buffy, Star Wars, Hellboy, and Sin City), has formed the perfect rebuttal. She’s taken the picture of the ‘Idiot Nerd Girl’, and instead written empowering phrases poking fun at the stupidity of the meme, and the amount of crap women take from nerd culture on a daily basis. You can check out some of her genius reboots here and read some of her thoughts on the “Idiot Nerd Girl” meme here. My personal favorites of the rebuttals are ‘Enthusiastically explores new media and related subcultures, driven away by territorial assholes’ and ‘Hasn’t read all 900 issues of Batman, neither have you.’ These funny, subversive, insightful jokes have quickly made me her ultimate fan girl.

 

 

Thanks to TheMarySue.com for turning us on to this phenomenon.

You may also like

Get the print magazine.

The best of BUST in your inbox!

Subscribe to Our Weekly Newsletter

About Us

Founded in 1993, BUST is the inclusive feminist lifestyle trailblazer offering a unique mix of humor, female-focused entertainment, uncensored personal stories, and candid reporting that tells the truth about women’s lives.

©2023 Street Media LLC.  All Right Reserved.