Nerds Reveal The Most Embarrassing Nerdy Moment They've Ever Had

Nerd and geek culture has taken over. Just ask any of the Marvel movies in the theaters on any given week, or the Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook hitting the New York Times Best-Sellers list nearly 4 years after publication. While it's never been better than ever to let your geek flag fly, nerd and geeks now find themselves under a particular spotlight where we're forced to examine themselves a little but more and find those moments where we're a little but too nerdy. Reddit user, r/rp4187135, asked:

Nerds of reddit, what was the nerdiest moment of your life?

I went to the international [Dota 2] championship in Seattle last year as a spectator and I got to meet some people that I play the game wth all the time. We called each other our online handles [instead] of using our actual names.

aboxofhotdish

Didn't realize I was a nerd about anything until I walked past a guy in the office watching a YouTube video that contained footage of a nuclear test explosion. "Aaah, Castle Bravo," I says. "One of my favorites."

The guy looks at me funny. I explain that Castle Bravo was the name of that particular explosion. "You recognize the explosion? And it's one of your favorites?" he replied.

Yep. I rattled off a bunch of other nuke test favorites--Storax Sedan, the gorgeous British Grapple X, Crossroads Baker, etc. I start describing the differences and nuances one can discern from watching hours of footage multiple times. I say something like, "The shape of each mushroom cloud is as distinct as a fingerprint," and notice that his eyes have glazed over, and that the room has gone silent. I look up at the room and see ten pairs of eyes staring at me like I've sprouted an extra head.

There's a long beat of silence, then a guy in the corner says, "You don't get to make fun of Star Trek ever again."

Irishzombieman

When my friend and I got invited to a party over the phone and had to lie about not being allowed to go out that night.

The actual reason we didn't go?? We were 25 Hours into a game of Civilizations V and desperately wanted to finish it up

toma0910

I was in the college dorms and lots of kids had gone home for a three-day weekend. Me and my friends decided we'd stay and play D&D. So we're playing, and laughing, and being all sorts of noisy.

My friend has his computer and we are simultaneously listening to funny .wav sounds on his computer (Remember "Thumper's World of Wavs"?) It was also pretty novel as it was to have a PC in a dorm at that time.

So we are being very noisy, laughing, rolling dice, and singing along at the top of our lungs to "It's log, it's log, it's big, it's heavy it's wood. It's log, it's log, it's better than bad, it's good!"

Then there's a knock at the door. It's the security guard at the door along with a campus police officer. They thought they were going to bust us underage drinking. Instead, they open the door and we're sitting around a table with the D&D screen up, and all our character sheets out, rolling dice, and one guy at the computer with a website so 90's it could have caused an epileptic seizure if we stared at it too long.

I thought they were going injure themselves they started laughing so hard.

NerdGirlJess

One girl I knew a few years back and I were fighting with foam swords over at a friends house because she had an interest in learning swordplay, but didn't like the idea of using real metal (fear of injury). Thus why I introduced her to what LARP was and told her I had taken some fencing lessons and could teach her a little with the boffers. She picked up on things real quick and we started going at it like mad, because I told her not to hold back and she said the same thing to me.

Apparently, our grunts made my friend think we were doing something else entirely and opened the door a bit before laughing. "Oh sh-t, man. I thought you two were having sex and I was so proud for a moment."

Yeah, we both blushed super hard.

TheNerdySimulation

...the day i realized i knew more about Bionicle history than i knew about WWI and WWII.

elSenorMaquina

This might be easy. I was visiting my friend in LA, we were playing a DBZ fighting game, while we had his DBZ soundtrack playing in the background.

At some point, I look at my phone and notice multiple missed calls from his wife, as did he. We were both confused since neither of us had our phone silenced.

Then we realized, we just didn't notice the calls since both of us had DBZ ringtones.

rgnysp0333

I was at a really big party and ignored a girl to talk to a guy about DnD and Star Wars.

ZeronicX

Once at my friend's apartment we had the cops called on us at 9:30pm on NEW YEARS EVE. We weren't even being that loud, but he lived down the hall from some old people who apparently did not gaf. Anyway, there was a knock at the door and as my friend opens it a Cop, looking at his note pad, sternly starts off with "Yeah, we got a noise complaint here for...." and then he looks up to survey the scene: 6 sober 23 year olds sitting around a coffee table with the TV on mute. And finishes his sentence with "Wait, are you guys playing UNO*?" We were like "Uh... Yeah?" and he looks around the apartment some more. And then he kind of just sighed and said "OK, well just try to keep it down a little. Have a good night. " and left. My friend was embarrassed about his neighbors, but we all thought it was hilarious. I'm sure that cop had some actual stuff to do that night, but I hope he got to tell his buddies about the "wild nerd party" he had to bust.

RocketGirl2629

This was the summer of 2004. I was actually at a summer camp for high school nerds at a college campus and we were allowed to use the computer lab during our free time.

We all had headphones on and it was silent until one guy says "The next Harry Potter is called 'The Half Blood Prince.'" And the room pretty much erupted into a nerdy frenzy of everyone theorizing who it could be.

proffessor-westside

The nerdiest moment of my life was when my housemate had to come up with a safeword to stop me talking about Star Wars. A few months later he agreed to watch the OT with me...he swiftly joined the Dark Side.

The nerdiest day of my life was when I completed Final Fantasy VII in a single sitting, just to prove to the back of the instruction manual that I didn't need a memory card.

GoodLordChokeAnABomb

I've taught my dog that when we say "we're going on a quest" he knows that means walkies.

Sam0n

I once redid the Fresh Prince theme in my classics class as "The Fresh Princeps of Manliana" using parts of Cicero's oration against Cataline...

VatriHerself

I'm currently working on a watch-through of every Star Trek show in chronological (release) order before I watch Discovery.

Matt872000

I was dating a pretty girl in HS. She didn't quite comprehend how nerdy I was.

So I had planned this 16 person Halo 1 lan party. She wanted to hang out that Sunday. I told her I had plans and she should not come, as it will be 16 nerds in my house and I will not be paying attention to her. She shows up an hour early, all the while I went on a 72-0 soul caliber run against any takers as guest arrive. She is already getting mad. I proceed to play Halo for like 6 more hours as if she is not there. So she is real mad at the end and we broke up like a month later.

Cut to about 10 years later we reconnect and we are married and she has over 200 hours on stardew valley.

241416

Maybe a bit late, but I went to the midnight release of Wrath of the Lich King (a WoW [World of Warcraft] expansion). Whilst I was queued up outside, some yobs in a car drove past and shot fireworks at us, there was probably a good 30 people in the queue outside.

As they drove off, one of the people in the queue said "Don't you just hate mages and their Arcane Missiles" That's when I realised I actively enjoy being a nerd...

Kokushi

My family had a get together not too long ago. We were playing Apples to Apples while Big Bang Theory was playing in the background.

Now, my family (for some reason) LOVES BBT. I personally find the show kind of stupid, but I digress.

At one point in the show, Sheldon is carrying a Green Lantern... um... Lantern around with him. He recites the chant a couple of times.

Now, as a die hard fan of GL, I scream at the TV: "It's BLACKEST NIGHT! NOT DARKEST NIGHT!"

My whole family broke my balls over it for weeks, because I'm apparently nerdier than a fictional TV nerd.

Chingparr

It has to be the time I ran a game of live-action Star Wars Battlefront for thirty middle school kids and got /really/ into it.

I worked as a camp counselor at an academic summer camp (affectionately called "nerd camp") for the last three summers. For an after-class activity, I planned out a version of Battlefront for the kids to play in an outdoor 15 v. 15 battle. They each got about 1.5-2 feet of pool noodle as their "lightsaber" and had to capture command posts by tying knots in a string / untying the other team's knots (this gave them control of nearby respawn points I marked with sidewalk chalk). If you controlled more than half the command posts for three consecutive minutes, you win, and if you get touched by a pool noodle, you have to go back to a respawn point.

So, those are the mechanics of the game, but I got really invested in the presentation of it. I wore my full Jedi robes for it, and another counselor wore my graduation robes that we were able to pass for Sith robes. I hooked up a speaker system and blasted "Duel of Fates," "Jedi Temple March," "Clash of the Heroes," and a few other Star Wars soundtrack pieces for background music. I even had an "opening crawl" spiel setting up the background story for the battle (using the Battle of Ruusan from the EU), which I rehearsed and timed with the music of the opening crawl from the movies.

Whenever the game was getting too unbalanced, one of the counselors would join in... and I just so happened to do this while the camp photographer was nearby. So, there are about a hundred consecutive shots of me shouting, "Jedi Master /u/Aegon_Targaryen_VII has joined the battle!" and charging into crowds of middle-schoolers with pool noodles to lightsaber-duel them while I'm in full costume.

It was glorious.

_Aegon_TargaryenVII

Tbh, when playing Dnd about a year ago in a dorm, we ended up getting a noise compliant from 3 floors up because someone got 3 nat 20s in a row.

GladTree

The first time a girl sent me a naked picture on snapchat I panicked and replied with a picture of the game of Magic the Gathering I was playing

PintsOfCream

Epic. We must know more. IE did you eventually score

slapuwithafish

I scored very highly in that game as I recall. I used my elf deck.

PintsOfCream

It was March 4, 2008. The day Gary Gygax died.

Gary invented Dungeons & Dragons, and since that game is such a big part of my life I decided I had to do something. I got my gaming buddy Duane, gathered our supplies and headed to the woods.

We found a small group of five trees and scrawled a shoddy pentagram in between. In the center we built a small pile of twigs and atop the ghetto altar we placed a bright orange D20. As we set the pile ablaze, we solemnly filled a Burger King promotional Lord of the Rings collectible goblet (it was the Frodo one) with Mt. Dew and drank until the tiny fire went out. We scooped up the melted plastic and it sits to this day on a shelf with all the dragon miniatures I own.

Mathwards

Moved to England to try to work on Star Wars Episode 1. Was not successful, but I came close. Went to Italy. Visited La Reggia Di Caserta to see Amidala's throne room (which is really just a connecting hallway in a government building).

Moved home. Camped, over night, in tents, in costume, to get SW: Episode 1 tickets. Got tickets. Camped, over night, in tents, in costume, to see SW:Episode 1 (because back then, the theater didn't have online ticket sales, or reserve seating). Interviewed in costume by several local news stations.

Got in, got an okay seat. Very excited to see the movie, had stayed successfully spoiler free the whole way. With about an hour to wait, I walked outside to enjoy the moment as my friends were there to save my seat for me. Guy walks up, asks for a light. I used to carry a zippo even though I didn't smoke. He goes, "Can you believe they kill Darth Maul in this movie?"

Slapped a guy I didn't know in the face for ruining a Star Wars plot point, knocking the cigarette I had just lit for him out of his mouth. We both looked at the cigarette for a second, when I stomped it out. "I guess I deserved that," he said, before walking away.

He did deserve that.

I still can't believe I once took Star Wars so seriously that I moved to another country and then smacked someone over it.

HobGadlingson

H/T: Reddit