I grew up in New Mexico. I know nerds. You, sir, are not a nerd... and likely never were.

Guy I went to Odyssey of the Mind with (three times!) programmed the graphics on his HP 48GX to show an animation of a cumshot. Definitely a forward-thinker. Then? Pantsed and abused all the time. Now? Does Reddit AMAs and book tours. Was he a nerd? Mos Def. Is he a nerd now? Tell that to the hundreds of people who pack auditoriums to hear him speak.

But has HE changed?

Nerds were the ones who couldn't socialize and wanted to. The guys who could tell you why a big-block Chevy was awesome were also the guys most likely to beat the shit out of you and the most likely to have cigarettes, chew, and beer. They had friends, they had enemies, they had people who feared them. The music nerds? I mean, they were nerds to someone sure but they also had the hottest chicks.

If you're calling yourself a nerd, that means that you're so fucking isolated that there's no one else to do it for you. I suspect the term has been diluted because society has become so fractious and disengaged that different cliques no longer engage, let alone fight each other.

Into that loneliness flies consumerism.

Girl in my CNC class has an Order of the Deathly Hallows sticker made up of a light saber, Gandalf's wand and some other fuckin' thing.

I liked her a lot better when I thought it was an AA symbol.

Is she a nerd? Yer damn skippy. Why? Because she has no friends and the only fucking thing she aligns with is that "buy me friendship" consumer culture. Does she have to be a nerd? No she does not. But it's the easy choice and one that makes somebody rich, so she's encouraged.

Who are you enriching? Celestron? Unless you're giving your social allegiance to Disney, nobody cares.

By the way, I hope you will choose to enrich Synology. I will say it's because I very much enjoy having two servers under management that work 100% of the time without fail but in no small part it's because I know if you build a hotter one than mine, I'll have someone to ask questions of when mine gives me headaches.