GeeksThe ShallInherit theBars Penn alumni are at the forefront of a growing movement to make socializing safe for the world’s nerds. By Caren Lissner Matzner

nside a dimly lit bar near the Brooklyn waterfront on a ably even kissed his live-in girlfriend (Sarah Brockett C’99), blustery October night, young professionals are sitting who plays bass guitar in an indie band. Iat small tables, drinking and checking each other out in But Wasowski is a nerd. More than that, he is officially the two reflecting pools near the front of the room. A young man “nerd boss” of New York. with a master’s degree in digital media walks onto a stage to Over the last decade, Wasowski has been part of a group of give a slide presentation on the history and utility of info- Penn acquaintances who helped pollinate America and then graphics—and the crowd goes silent. the world with a series of events called Nerd Nite (nerdnite.com) For 20 minutes, the man presents charts covering everything that urge participants to “be there and be square.” The monthly from worldwide farm production of soybeans to why there aren’t nights of learning (and drinking) have launched in nearly 30 enough single datable black men (just to mix things up a little). cities around the world, from Amsterdam to Wellington, New When he finishes presenting and departs the stage, Matt Zealand (though most venues are still in the US). Wasowski C’96 walks on. Tall and blond, he is lit by the stage Nerd Nites in New York and San Francisco have routinely lights and appears again in the reflecting pools. lured as many as 300 attendees, leading many to ask why “Before the presentation, I asked how many of you knew people are willing to pack rooms on weekend nights in order what an infographic was, and six people raised their hands,” to learn from scholarly presentations. Some credit the Internet he says. “How many of you feel like you know what info- with making it easier for formerly isolated brainiacs to find graphics are now?” He pauses to survey the raised hands. each other. Others point to computers, but in a different way— “That’s way more than seven people!” they note that yesterday’s tech-nerds have become today’s Wearing a button-down shirt, his hair cut boyishly short, Fortune 500 billionaires, so it’s become more acceptable to be Wasowski looks professional and eager, but he’s not what smart and weird. Still others find it enthralling to simply con- one would think of as a nerd. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary sider the evolution of once pejorative terms like nerd, and to defines a nerd as “an unstylish, unattractive, or socially wonder what it says about the direction of society. inept person, especially one slavishly devoted to intellectual So how did an insult that once typically accompanied or academic pursuits.” Wasowski not only follows sports, being shoved into a school locker become a term with which he’s written a book on the subject. (True, the title is It’s Okay people proudly self-identify, and what does it mean for the to Like Sports: How Women, Intellectuals, and Artists Can future of community and communications? And, well, is it Find Cultural Value in Athletics, but still.) And he’s presum- still an insult?

40 JAN | FEB 2012 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Illustration by Graham Roumieu THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE JAN | FEB 2012 41 The first Nerd Nite was held in Boston Bar trivia, in fact, is the likely father of Besides infographics, presentations in 2003. Chris Balakrishnan C’97 used to Nerd Nite—perhaps the first hint that have focused on the iconography in hang out at a bar, the Midway Café in the young professionals wanted to do some- Michael Jackson videos, hunger and Jamaica Plains section. He was earning thing in a social setting besides drink and obesity in Harlem (that one by JC Dwyer his PhD in biology at Boston University strike out with the opposite sex. “Quiz C’00, who works in policy for the Texas and often took trips to Cameroon to nights” began at pubs in the United Food Bank Network and also runs Nerd study the evolution of birds. Kingdom and exploded in bars in Philly in Nite Austin), and something called “I’d disappear from the scene for the late 1990s, drawing players from the “sexual robotics” that became an three months at a time every year,” colleges nearby. Penn students could play instant classic—at least as far as Pasles explains Balakrishnan from his cur- in a different bar almost every night. was concerned. rent home base in Illinois, where he is The practice was a bit slow to catch After this presentation, in which NYU doing post-doctoral work. “They’d be on in New York; there were only a few medical anthropology scholar Laura curious about what I did, the owners such nights when The New York Times Duncan touched on items such as and the bartender. One owner said I wrote about the trend in 2001. In 2000, “drilldos” and women’s health, Pasles should give a slide show at the bar. So Wasowski, who had come to New York was intrigued. In true nerd fashion, he you can imagine, it’s kind of a dive bar, from Philly a year earlier to work for an emailed her in the middle of the night and they have a stage, so usually there educational software company, brought and expected not to hear back. Two are kind of terrible bands, noisy rock trivia to a bar on the Upper West Side. years later, they live together. and roll. I went home and I thought, ‘I Over the next few years, he also visited “She asked me out,” Pasles maintains. could get people to tell about the weird Balakrishnan and attended the Boston Of the propensity for sex and scatol- things they do with [their] lives.’” Nerd Nite, but thought, “No one in New ogy in otherwise intellectual presenta- Balakrishnan—who is listed on the York would ever go to this.” The nights tions, Wasowski says, “Sex is popular group’s website as “Nerd Nite guru”— set up in Boston were scientific, fueled largely with everyone. In scientific terms, you the first Nerd Nite. He expected only a few by graduate students. But Balakrishnan can say ‘procreate’ and ‘masturbate’ of his graduate school friends to come out. kept trying to convince Wasowski. So with more of a straight face. We’ve had “I was like a nervous teenager who Wasowski debuted the New York ver- cephalopod sex presentations. Fish tried to have a party,” he says. “I wasn’t sion in 2006, and added side attractions and birds. Insects. Name the species sure anyone would show up. We got a like speed dating and jugglers. and there has probably been a presen- good crowd. Probably around 30 people Since then, Wasowski—who also holds tation about it having sex.” showed up the first night. The bartend- the title “big boss”—has trained a cadre He also noted that in New York, peo- ers and audience members felt com- of fellow “nerd bosses” who have taken ple are “notorious for having four-sec- fortable asking questions, cracking the event to cities around the globe, ond attention spans,” so a base topic jokes, heckling. We try to keep that using an “official Nerd Nite starter kit.” certainly piques one’s interest. going at all the Nerd Nites now, really Though he ranked seventh in his class of But perhaps there’s something more casual and light-hearted and funny.” more than 700 at Lakewood High School at work. Joking about sex or toilet hab- In fact, there is an element of low cul- near Cleveland and was president of the its is a way to show that you’ve grown ture in the Nerd Nites, with the present- National Honor Society, Wasowski didn’t out of your awkward adolescent shell. ers and audience members often invok- get bullied in school due to his smarts— ing either excrement or sex in otherwise unlike some of the other Nerd Nite fans. Lucy Laird C’96 runs the nights in San scholarly presentations. The most popu- “I always thought Matt was cool,” says Francisco, where they debuted in 2009. lar subjects have mixed high and low George Pasles C’97, who reveals that he Attendees pay an $8 cover charge. They culture, like the history of the world as was beaten up on the bus as a kid because have lured 150 to 350 people per night. seen through barbecuing, or the sociol- he spent his quality time with comput- “It was just really awesome and it had ogy of sex robots. Animal sex is a fre- ers, and who has frequently attended the a great vibe and so many people showed quent theme. New York Nerd Nites since the premiere up,” Laird says of her first Nerd Nite. “My presentation was on indigobirds, in March 2006. “We’ve had so many good presenters. A which is one word, and they’re an unusu- The idea quickly got noticed by local guy last year was a specialist on the al kind of bird,” says Balakrishnan. publications and gained a big enough atmosphere of Mars. He was very nerdy “They’re known as brood parasites, so following to outgrow its first home in and sits in an office all day, looking at instead of raising their own, birds lay the East Village. Wasowski moved it to numbers. But he was just hilarious on eggs in the nest of another bird and the Galapagos, a large art space among the stage. He had a great sense of humor other bird raises them.” brick-lined waterfront streets of the artsy but deep, deep nerdiness, and he was Nerd Nites began running monthly in Brooklyn neighborhood known as able to draw the crowd into that.” Boston. Balakrishnan knew Wasowski DUMBO, short for Down Under the Man- Michael Nierenberg C’05 actually had from Penn and encouraged him to hattan Bridge Overpass. The monthly no idea that the Nerd Nite concept came bring Nerd Nite to New York, where event began selling out, with 300 peo- from Penn grads when he gave a presen- Wasowski had been running team triv- ple buying $10 tickets to see three slide tation on predicting mortgage perfor- ia nights since 2001. shows and socialize. mance last February (he learned about

42 JAN | FEB 2012 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE the event from a non-Penn alum co- geologic record, to figure out future care about certain parts of their life. worker at his financial firm). He says warming scenarios that would affect the But that’s more acceptable nowadays, that San Francisco is the perfect place East Antarctic ice sheet.” that you don’t have to have everything for Nerd Nite because so many people Willenbring says the meaning of nerd together if you are attached or moti- are in technology and academic fields. has definitely shifted. “I think that it vated to work on one specific thing.” “Even if they’re not a nerd, they’re refers to people who really get into one nerd-curious,” he says, without a hint specific topic quite a bit, and other There are various theories about where of irony. things take a back seat. Steve Jobs the term nerd came from. Dr. Seuss could be considered a nerd, but in the mentioned a character called a “nerd” in Author and commentator Stefan Fatsis last 10 years or something like that, his 1950 children’s book If I Ran the Zoo, C’85 says the popularity of Nerd Nite is people have just started to value get- although there was nothing special about a sign of changing times and changing ting into one specific line of work,” she the nerd (it was just part of a rhyming sen- technology. says. “I don’t really know what consti- tence). A year later, Newsweek said that He gave a presentation at Nerd Nite tutes a nerd, but it seems like you get among teenagers in Detroit, “Someone DC in 2010 about the history and cul- so into something that you let other who once would be called a drip or a square ture of Scrabble, which was also the parts of your life sort of flounder. is now, regrettably, a nerd.” The slang got topic of his best-selling nonfiction book People don’t dress very well or they reprinted elsewhere, including in an about competitive Scrabble, Word Freak, have odd [habits] because they don’t Associated Press story three years later. which came out in 2001 and was repub- lished in its 10th edition this year [“Man of Letters,” Sept|Oct 2001]. “It seems to me there is a natural curi- “Everything has osity that a lot of media don’t satisfy, to be able to listen to interesting people who have eclectic passions talk intelli- an opportunity now gently with a sense of humor in a collec- tivist setting,” Fatsis says. “I think that’s to find a community.” incredibly appealing to a culture that can marginalize and discount and make fun of unusual interests. And it’s fun to get together in a cool environment and have a beer and just learn about something you didn’t know about. “It’s not just journalists. It’s actually people who are in these worlds. It’s a wonderful reminder of how diverse and colorful life is outside of our own little bubbles,” he adds. “We are more willing to learn about something we wouldn’t have considered in the pre-digital age. We’re more open to this vast trough of ideas and information we can access instantly now. Maybe what Nerd Nite does is take people who have become accustomed to seeing and reading and learning about disparate subjects and bring them together in a physical place.” Jane Willenbring, an assistant profes- sor of earth and environmental science at Penn—who says she was picked on in school in North Dakota because “I was a good student … and I also had odd teeth.”— presented at Philadelphia Nerd Nite in October. “What I did definitely notice was it was a packed house. I couldn’t believe there were so many kindred spir- its out there,” she recalls. “I was talking Nerds gone meta: Matt Wasowski tells how Nerd Nite began … at Nerd Nite. about how we can use the past, like the

THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE JAN | FEB 2012 43 Some believe it’s not possible for the tions where people have taken a word but because of activities that were publi- Seuss character and the Detroit term to applied to them that’s negative and cized or popularized over newsgroups, be linked because the terms were too turned it into a positive by kind of tak- Facebook, and social networks yet to close in succession. Ben Zimmer, the ing it over. I was at the [MIT] Artificial come that allow people with unique inter- former New York Times “On Language” Intelligence Lab in the early ’70s and ests to find each other. columnist, wrote in August in an essay the word people used to refer to them- “You hate when something obscure in The Boston Globe, “Speculation about selves in the same positive way was and cool like a band no one’s ever heard the word’s origin began brewing in the ‘hacker,’ which originally meant some- of becomes a catch phrase,” says Lucy 1980s. [Some believe] nerd had some- thing quite positive. Then it became a Laird. “I hope kids these days understand thing to do with Mortimer Snerd, the quite negative word.” what being a nerd is about, rather than dummy used by ventriloquist Edgar These days nerd is mostly used “with a thinking it [only] means being really Bergen beginning in the late 1930s … heavy dose of irony,” Fatsis says. “My nerd smart and making a lot of money in tech- Nerd has also been explained as a varia- passion, Scrabble, is something easily nology. It means being very passionate tion on nert, surfer slang for a nut … And mocked. If you mention that you memo- and consumed by knowledge, and taking then there are the acronyms, always a rize tens of thousands of words to play a everything to the next level.” popular source of faux etymology—for game, you get lots of looks. Or, you used to example, ‘Neurotic Engineers in R&D.’” get looks. But I wrote a book about that. It October’s New York Nerd Nite, While the term’s origin may be dis- made people appreciate a world they didn’t Wasowski announced that a puted, most agree that it caught fire in know about. Hundreds of thousands of At small publishing company the 1980s, an era in which pop culture people now play Scrabble because it’s easy had made a deal to start a bimonthly exploded. Cable television expanded, to do it digitally. Nobody sort of laughs Nerd Nite magazine—the old-fashioned, computers became accessible to the about this game anymore, except the printed kind—so that people in one part average youth, and suddenly, there were recent news about some guy who asked of the world can learn the same things shows and movies focusing on those [officials] to strip search his opponent as those in another. Subscription cost teenage computer users. TV programs because he was accused of hiding a tile.” is $40 annually, according to the Nerd like Whiz Kids and Square Pegs and Most of those interviewed agree that Nite website. Promised for the first teen films like Sixteen Candles and The Nerd Nite is a sign of the Internet mak- issue, scheduled to appear in January, Breakfast Club highlighted different ing it acceptable to love one unique are articles on Stomatopods (aka “man- social groups in schools, including thing. But Pasles says he was still tis shrimp”)—“thumbsplitters of the jocks, cheerleaders, and nerds. And of taken aback by hearing the term used briny deep”—and “Jumpsuits! The gar- course the Revenge of the Nerds film in a positive way. ment of tomorrow, today.” franchise—the original appeared in “That’s one of the things that’s hard to “We think every single person on 1984, followed by sequels in 1987, 1992, get over,” he says. “As someone who had Earth, in some form, is a nerd,” Wasowski and 1994—put nerds front and center. a Commodore 64, I was brutalized for says. “Every single person knows one By the time the generation of 1980s being a nerd. A few years ago, Time Out thing at least more than anyone else nerds grew up, they began having a sense New York or New York Magazine had a does. Probably someone like [New of humor about their youthful struggles picture of a hipster with the words, ‘Nerd England Patriots quarterback] Tom to fit in, and perhaps a sense of pride of is Cool.’ It was hard for me to take. Now, Brady, the typical definition of an anti- having overcome the taunting. Even everyone is using a computer; all movies nerd or jock, could tell you how to run Hollywood icons like Nicole Kidman and are based on comic books. Nerd is not a the exact pass route to avoid a safety 12 Sharon Stone started claiming they had putdown anymore. It’s a word that has no yards from the line of scrimmage. No been outcasts in school, while it was the meaning beyond describing someone Trekkie or scientist can tell you that. rare starlet who would admit to having who is interested in something.” “The big point the publishing company been Homecoming Queen. The ease of communications, and the made is, most things now really do tend to Brainy outcasts had been around for accessibility of technology, has changed skew and cater toward the lowest com- decades, including Dalton Doiley in the worlds in more than one way. Pasles mon denominator,” Wasowski adds. “This Archie comics (who was an inventor), might not have had the courage to go shows people want to be challenged.” but nerds represent something new in right up to the dark-haired girl who pre- Fatsis sees a bigger picture, that the the culture. “I don’t think [the word sented a slide show on sex and technol- evolution of the word nerd reflects shifts nerd] was around even when I was a ogy, but e-mail was the great equalizer. in the way people communicate, learn, grad student,” says Mitchell P. Marcus, (For those wondering, his missive said and meet. Future generations will look at the RCA Professor of Artificial Intelli- something like, “Your presentation was knowledge differently. “It’s exposure,” he gence in Penn’s Department of Com- shocking to most of the people there but says. “Everything has an opportunity now puter and Information Science (and an I wasn’t shocked.”) to find a community. The Internet serves A-list nerd based on that title alone), Future generations of Penn students that very democratizing effect.”◆ who has been teaching linguistics and will likely be filled with many whose par- Caren Lissner Matzner C’93 lives in Hoboken with computers here since 1987. “It really ents met, in some form, because of the her family and writes novels. See carenlissner.com has changed. It’s one of those situa- Internet—not just from computer dating, for more nerdery.

44 JAN | FEB 2012 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE