Are you a geek or a nerd? I’ve spent most of my life believing I was a geek, but have just been told that I am, in fact, a nerd.

You can imagine my shock.

What’s the difference? The jury’s still out on whether there is a big one, and the definitions of what exactly a geek is or nerd is seem to vary a lot from person to person (and dictionary to dictionary).

But the consensus around the Stuff newsroom (see? we’re not working either) is that I am definitely a nerd. A geek, according to my fellow Stuffers, is someone interested in a particular thing, to the point of being boring and obsessive about it, particularly stuff like sci-fi movies or music. So you can be a Star Trek geek or a hard rock geek or whatever.

A nerd is someone who is interested in and knows a lot of stuff about the real world, or one part of it, like history or quantum mechanics.

A geek, according to my fellow Stuffers, is someone interested in a particular thing, to the point of being boring and obsessive about it, particularly stuff like sci-fi movies or music.

Nerd then. I don't generally discuss my interests in military aviation and simming except with those in the forums.. mainly because those close to me don't share these interests.

Plus I've been around folks who go on and on about their obsessions. I find it annoying.

i thought it was the other way around. geeks still have a life outside of their 'obsessions'; but nerds are engulfed by them and it pretty much runs their lives

I postulate that if you instantiated a Venn Diagram modeling the two sets, one would observe a distinct and significant intersection.