Distinction: Geek vs. Nerd

I was going to post this on /r/mindcrack in response to this week's Mindcrack Podcast where the difference between geeks and nerds popped up during the AskCrack segment, but I went off on an incredibly ranty tangent that probably would have been downvoted to all hell, so I posted it here instead.  Also, having to edit it from being formatted with Markdown to being formatted with HTML kinda sucks lol.  I regex'd it and had 100 problems.

Also, I'm going to do something I've never done on this blog before, which would be using the horizontal rule tag.  HOLD ONTO YOUR BUTTS!

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In my mind, it goes like this:

Geek and nerd: both incredibly knowledgeable about something they have a passion for.

Nerd: Pedantic as fuck, and whether they realize it or not, everyone hates them.  These are the typical overachievers, the 5.0 GPA people whose entire life when not in school is spent doing homework and sucking up to people like a sad puppy.

Geek: Cool person.  Chimes in with facts as appropriate, saves corrections for when people are repeatedly completely wrong, otherwise stays out of people's hair.  These are the people you see in advanced-level or honors-level classes getting by with Cs, but they get straight As in their AP classes.  They may even drop down from advanced-level classes to regular-level classes just to get a workload they can handle.

Reference for non-Americans who don't like the fact that we have the gall to do things differently:

• regular-level class: course designed for anyone, high concentration of rednecks, pregnant teenagers, and troublemakers, weekly workload comes from a two-bag trip to the local grocery store.
• advanced-level class: course designed for intellectuals, weekly workload comes out of the back of a dump truck.
• honors-level class: course designed for intellectuals, weekly workload arrives via cargo plane.
• AP: Advanced Placement, basically a college-level class that can let you skip some freshman year college class requirements if you do well enough on the exam at the end of the year. You have to specifically enroll in these and the workload varies wildly by subject.  I did AP Computer Science and it was the best class I ever took in high school.  And I got that 4.0 on the exam.
• IB: International Baccalaureate.  The pretentious version of AP, offered in snooty northern-Virginia schools and nowhere else.  I actually had people in college ask me what AP even was, and they were surprised my school didn't have IB classes instead.  Meanwhile I was going "what's IB?".  I wish I was joking.
• College: Synonymous with University.  Did you like your 12 years of general education?  Congratulations!  Now you get to go tens of thousands of dollars in debt to get more general education, and without doing so, nobody will hire you!  *grumble*