How a Non-Nerd Can Enjoy Comicon

Are you one of the few people left who identifies not as a nerd? Tired of feeling left out of the joy everyone else derives from new film adaptations of comics? Do you reluctantly keep track of them just to have something to talk about at work outings? And now that Comicon has taken over your city for the weekend, your options are 1) Go to Comicon with friends or 2) Sit on your faded paisley couch and remember all the embarrassing thing you've done while eating baby carrots and turning the light on and off. Are you tired of having to siphon your friends' joy from the holes on their faces?

Well good news! You can stop sharpening your hollow, glee-sucking tooth, because I went into the field with friend and comic aficionado Kevin Patterson to devise a list of non-nerd activities so you can have a creamy wedge of fun all to yourself!


-Try to discreetly photograph people discreetly checking themselves out in windows. Start a Tumbler account for this. Get Twitter-bombed for "narcissism shaming". Be unemployable for 3 years. Learn to play standup bass.

-Wonder if anybody has tried to patent a sort of neck cone to prevent cleavage glaring.

-Punch yourself in the arm until you stop having feminist thoughts.

-When passing the badge checkpoint, cover your friend's badge with your hand and tell the usher "You don't need to see his identification". They proceed to tear up your badge as a crowd gathers to pick you up and wordlessly pass you crowd surfing style out the door, each set of hands knowing exactly what you did. For several months, you will keep noticing shadowy figures in brown robes in your peripheral vision that will never be there when you turn to look, and that your internet is running slowly.

-Finally deploy the "personal space invaders" pun in live action!

"When I grabbed a pen and wrote "I HAVE LOCKJAW", I figured you'd take me to a hospital, but this also works"

-When you're walking towards the convention center, try to see how far away from someone you can stand and discern their sweat beads because they're wearing three layers of robes.

-If attractive, do the speed dating session, then proclaim non-nerd status and see how many people try to downplay their nerd-ness. Then when there's 45 seconds left tell them that you really are a nerd and that you are paid by ComiCon to test nerds for authenticity, and that they can leave quietly on their own or you can have the nerd authenticity agents escort them out.

-Side eye all the clever t-shirts you'll see this year at once.

Warning: If you zoom in on these and read them, you'll expend the one laugh they are good for, leaving only groans for when you see one attached to a person, who might be really attractive or saving you from drowning.

-Realize that every possible dystopian and utopian future has been speculated and elaborately drawn, so you can go ahead and stop coming up with those.

-Wear an elaborate costume that means nothing and let people guess what it is, giving them vague but enthusiastic hints, as though you want them so badly to get it so you can emotionally abscond to your remote cultural cache and bond over your niche-ness. This is the Comicon version of talking about made-up bands with scenesters.

-Check out all the steam punk costumes and crafts and realize that you don't actually need to throw anything out anymore!


You can enjoy Comicon any way you like, but remember: if you think intentionally mixing up Star Trek and Star Wars is still funny, you probably also make archaic jokes about the virgin comic book nerd, both of which can be safely deployed at work on Monday.

Quiz: Are You Into Science?

1) Are you into... science?


2) If there were trading cards featuring pictures of science, would you have the complete set?


3) For first dates, do you have a science joke that you tell, and if the person doesn't get it, you don't pursue the relationship?


4) Do you end up explaining the joke regardless?


5) If a procedural drama series called "Ann Hydrous" came out, about a no-nonsense judge who won't allow water in her court room, would you watch it?
A) No
B) Stop stealing my ideas!


6) Did you move to St. Louis because the area code is 314?

7) When you see two letters in a row, do you greedily rub your hands together and think "MMMMMMHmhmHMMmm, these would look great on the Periodic Table..."


8) Speaking of the Periodic Table, are all of your friends saved in your phone by their initials, the first one capitalized and the second not?


9) Did you used to have a friend named Allison Burns whom you called "Pallison" for this reason?


10) Did you kill "Pallison" and then bury her in St. Louis?


11) Ok, forget that I asked that one. Is that a tattoo of Nikola Tesla? Are you totally into him?


12) This question is so you can tell us more about Tesla.


13) We're going to show you some pictures of people who don't science. Please relax and don't mind the electrodes, they are hooked up to some monitors. Monitors are science. If you are someone who sciences, they are your friends and you can trust them.


14) Interesting.


15) When you overhear someone saying they don't eat gluten, do you become friends to gain their trust, then sneak concentrated gluten into their food supply to see if they really have Celiac's Disease?


16) Do you have your own periodic table, but with different letters?


17) You look surprised. We searched your apartment and found your periodic table; got the warrant right here. Hey, calm down! We looked at your periodic table and were very impressed. In fact, we were so impressed, we showed it to our good friend Neil Degrasse Tyson, and he has a few questions for you. Send him in!


18) Hello. Yes, I am in fact Neil Degrasse Tyson. Thank you. Thank you, that means a lot. This periodic table is one of the finest I've seen. I just have one question for you. Where are they buried?


19) Come on now, you have carefully arranged abbreviations and numbers on a table with 18 columns and 7 rows of varying height. Well, the figures must mean something, right? Otherwise that wouldn't science, and I think I know what sciences and what sciences not. And well frankly, as it stands, in my eyes, you science not. So what will it be? Are you really into science, or are you just another poseur?


20) Nothing? Ok how about this: Question 16 is worth 100 points, and the rest of the questions are worth 0 points.


Score: 0
Well, I guess the humanities are more your speed.

Score: 100
Congratulations! You have the right to remain science. Come with us. We're taking you to your new laboratory.