We nerds are the whipping boys (and girls) of society. Just like when we were in school, everybody feels free to pick on and abuse us. We are easy targets. Everyone knows we are fat socially awkward virgins who live our parents’ basements and wear our Spock ears to bed every night. We get kicked down all the time. We even do it to ourselves.

So why, then, should a self-respecting media star court such an audience? After all, stars are like everyone else. They don’t understand those nerdy types and never had anything to do with them growing up and going to school. And being celebrities who make their money largely on their public image and who are extremely sensitive to how they are perceived, so why on Earth would they want to associate with the social lepers and risk contracting their socially awkward disease?

Plus, they have likely heard that as a group, we are weird, embarrassing, demanding, and frighteningly knowledgeable about the shows they like, and expect you to be the same. Otherwise, they mock you and make you a laughingstock of the Internet.

Wouldn’t they just be better off leaving us well alone? Like everyone else?

Some of those rumours have a grain of truth to them. Others are total misapprehensions based on bad information and people interpreting our actions and reactions through the dark and dirty lens of their own prejudices and jaundiced judgements. But that’s not what I want to talk about in this article.

Instead, I want to talk about the great advantages we have as a fan base. A smart star looks past the prejudices and tries to find the fans that others haven’t claimed. And having nerds as your fans has a lot of advantages.

For one, there are a lot of us. Granted, we are not the majority of the population. But there are a lot more of us than people think. And we are amongst the highest consumers of media out there. Movies, television shows, video games, DVDs, music, and of course merchandise… we nerds spend a great deal of our considerable disposable incomes on the very industries that let a star be a star.

And we are also a highly intelligent and surprisingly influential group. It may not seem it when you see the stock footage of us dressed up like Klingons at a Star Trek convention, but being an academically gifted demographic, an awful lot of us are doctors, lawyers, computer professionals, scientists, and so on. We wield great influence on media via the Internet, and increasingly, we are the taste-testers and king-makers of society. Where nerds go, society is sure to follow. Odds are, we were there first.

But of all our assets as a fan base, perhaps none other outstrips our least obvious one :

When nerds like you, we like you for life.

If you make it into the hearts of nerds by being in something that appeals to us, you will be there forever. You will be part of our lives till the day you die, and beyond. We might not have social approval, but we have excellent memories, and what we lack in numbers we more than compensate for in longevity.

No matter how far your career slumps, you will still be a big star to us. It might just be for one thing you did many years ago just to pay the rent, something most people in fact have completely forgotten, but that won’t matter to us. You will still be, in our excellent minds, that person who was in that thing we liked, and we will be eternally loyal to you for that very reason.

If you appeal to us, there will always be a minimum to how non-famous you can get. Even if the rest of the media world has abandoned you, we will still be there, welcoming you to our conventions, lining up to get our copies of your book signed, treating you like a great big star, because to us, you are, and you always will be.

There is only one caveat : you can’t say anything against us. Being the victims of abuse all our lives, we are intensely sensitive to disparagement, so if you want to keep our good favour (and you do), simply refrain from participating in public nerd-bashing. Otherwise, our eternal love can turn in a moment to eternal hate, and our sharp minds and long memories will no longer be your friends.

But really, how hard is it to just not participate in the hate?

And in return, you get millions of lifelong fans who will always love you.

Doesn’t that sound good?