Edit desk: Don’t forget to be awesome

Brian Reiff

I am a nerdfighter.

For those unfamiliar with the term, it doesn’t mean I fight nerds, nor does it mean I am a nerd who fights others.

Rather, I am part of a community created back in 2007 by those who watched the videos that brothers John and Hank Green made back and forth on their YouTube channel. Since then, it’s evolved into so much more than that, but those videos will forever serve as the roots of Nerdfighteria.

That’s not to say I’ve been a part of the community since the beginning. I had more important things to worry about when I was 11, like why my brother got more chicken nuggets on his plate than I did.

It was 2013 when I first started identifying as a nerdfighter. Back then, my involvement in the community was limited to essentially catching up on videos that I had missed over the previous 6 1/2 years.

Now, after having spent a few years in the community, if I had to choose one takeaway, it would be this — it’s OK to be yourself.

Admittedly, that’s probably something I should have learned back when I was 11, but I was a little too preoccupied with counting chicken nuggets to worry about finding my own identity.

The real reason I hadn’t followed that message as closely as I should have, though, is that I am an anxious person.

Since middle school, I have been afraid of standing out. I avoided talking to people because I didn’t want to seem weird or embarrass myself. I didn’t do things I liked in case people thought I wasn’t cool.

While I know I haven’t completely fixed this part of myself, being a nerdfighter has undoubtedly helped me start to embrace it.

The nerdfighter motto is “Don’t forget to be awesome,” or DFTBA. When I first heard the phrase, I wasn’t quite sure what it meant. What did being awesome even mean?

Now that I’m older and debatably wiser, I’ve come to understand a little better what DFTBA means. What makes us awesome is everything that makes us who we are. That includes the good and the bad, the common and the unique, the nerdy and the embarrassing. What we need to do is embrace all of it rather than shun it.

We need to remember that we are awesome.

If you talked to me a few years ago, I probably wouldn’t have said much about myself. I might have talked about my favorite sports teams, or something else I knew wouldn’t call attention to myself. If someone asked me who my favorite band was, I would lie, rather than explain to them that yes, that’s the name of a real band.

Now, when I’m asked about myself, I feel comfortable answering truthfully. I tell people with pride that I am a nerdfighter, despite how silly the word sounds and the blank looks I receive upon telling them. I have flags from my favorite bands hung on the walls in my room, inviting others to know a certain part of me that I used to do anything to keep hidden.

Unfortunately, accepting who I am doesn’t solve all my problems. My anxiety still prevents me from starting a conversation with others, no matter how hard I try to overcome it. I still struggle in school, often working late into the night to finish an assignment I procrastinated on for hours beforehand.

But being a nerdfighter has definitely changed my life for the better. Even more than altering my outlook, Nerdfighteria has given me an outlet where I can be completely myself. Granted, the community is mostly online, but I still know that whenever I’m participating in it, I won’t be judged. It almost acts as a trial for the real world, where I can practice being myself before I actually have to be.

In the end, it’s all about being yourself. Everything about all of us is awesome — we just have to remember that.

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Brian Reiff, ’17, is an associate sports editor for The Brown and White. He can be reached at [email protected].