WAli Almossawi is a San Francisco-based author of books on critical thinking and computer science education, and the creator of An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments. He is also a principal engineer at Apple and was formerly employed as a data visualization engineer by Mozilla. He has stated that his day job helps his writing by constraining his time.
WAnime and manga fandom is a worldwide community of fans of anime and manga. Anime includes animated series, films and videos, while manga includes manga, graphic novels, drawings and related artwork.
WBeauty and the Geek is an American reality television series that premiered on The WB on June 1, 2005. It has been advertised as "The Ultimate Social Experiment" and is produced by Ashton Kutcher, Jason Goldberg and J.D. Roth. The show's title is a parody of Beauty and the Beast. This was the first show produced by the Fox Television Studios sub-division Fox 21.
WThe Big Bang Theory is an American television sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, both of whom served as executive producers on the series, along with Steven Molaro. All three also served as head writers. The show premiered on CBS on September 24, 2007, and concluded on May 16, 2019, having broadcast a total of 279 episodes over twelve seasons.
WComic Book Guy is a nickname for Jeff Albertson, a recurring fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons. He is voiced by Hank Azaria and first appeared in the second-season episode "Three Men and a Comic Book", which originally aired on May 9, 1991. Comic Book Guy is the proprietor of a comic book store, The Android's Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop. He is based on "every comic book store guy in America" and represents a stereotypical middle-aged comic-book collector. He is well known for his distinctive accent, disagreeable personality and his catchphrase, "Worst [blank] ever!"
WCrash Course is an educational YouTube channel started by John and Hank Green, who first achieved notability on the YouTube platform through their VlogBrothers channel.
WKathryn Felicia Day is an American actress, writer, and web series creator. She is the creator, star, writer, and producer of the original web series The Guild (2007–2013), a show loosely based on her life as a gamer. She also wrote and starred in the Dragon Age web series Dragon Age: Redemption (2011). Day was a member of the board of directors of the International Academy of Web Television beginning December 2009 until the end of July 2012.
WDungeons & Dragons is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. It was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TSR). It has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997. The game was derived from miniature wargames, with a variation of the 1971 game Chainmail serving as the initial rule system. D&D's publication is commonly recognized as the beginning of modern role-playing games and the role-playing game industry.
WEscapist Dream is a science fiction novel written by Louis Bulaong and published on July 26, 2020. The novel is set in a near future where virtual reality has become a norm and where geeks can use it to gain superpowers and extraordinary abilities. It was written by the author as a homage to geek culture from comics, films, anime and video games. Upon its release, it garnered positive reception from critics and became one of the best pop culture fiction titles to date.
WFantasy fandom is a fandom and commonality of fans of the fantasy genre.
WProfessor John I.Q. Nerdelbaum Frink Jr., is a recurring character in the animated television series The Simpsons. He is voiced by Hank Azaria, and first appeared in the 1991 episode "Old Money". Frink is Springfield's nerdy scientist and professor and is extremely intelligent, though somewhat mad and socially inept. Frink often tries to use his bizarre inventions to aid the town in its crises but they usually only make things worse. His manner of speech, including the impulsive shouting of nonsensical words, has become his trademark.
WWilliam Henry Gates III is an American business magnate, software developer, investor, author, landowner and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He is considered one of the best known entrepreneurs of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.
WThe word geek is a slang term originally used to describe eccentric or non-mainstream people; in current use, the word typically connotes an expert or enthusiast obsessed with a hobby or intellectual pursuit, with a general pejorative meaning of a "peculiar person, especially one who is perceived to be overly intellectual, unfashionable, boring, or socially awkward".
WThe Geek Code, developed in 1993, is a series of letters and symbols used by self-described "geeks" to inform fellow geeks about their personality, appearance, interests, skills, and opinions. The idea is that everything that makes a geek individual can be encoded in a compact format which only other geeks can read. This is deemed to be efficient in some sufficiently geeky manner.
WGlossary of Broken Dreams is a 2018 Austrian/American documentary film directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner. The essayistic feature film tries to present an overview of political concepts such as freedom, privacy, identity, resistance, etc.
WThe Green brothers, John and Hank, are two American brothers, entrepreneurs, social activists, and YouTube vloggers. The two extensively work with each other in their lives and careers, having started their collaborative popularity with their "Brotherhood 2.0" project in 2007. The Greens' portfolio of online work, which Hank describes as "a small YouTube network with about 15 channels," includes their main "Vlogbrothers" channel, SciShow, and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, among several others.
WWilliam Henry "Hank" Green II is an American vlogger, science communicator, entrepreneur, author, internet producer, and musician. He is known for producing the YouTube channel Vlogbrothers, where he and his older brother, John Green, regularly upload videos, as well as for creating and hosting the educational YouTube channels Crash Course and SciShow. He has created and hosted a number of other YouTube channels and podcasts, released music albums, and amassed a large following on TikTok.
WJohn Michael Green is an American author and YouTube content creator. He won the 2006 Printz Award for his debut novel, Looking for Alaska, and his fourth solo novel, The Fault in Our Stars, debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list in January 2012. The 2014 film adaptation opened at number one at the box office. In 2014, Green was included in Time magazine's list of The 100 Most Influential People in the World. Another film based on a Green novel, Paper Towns, was released on July 24, 2015.
WJohannes Grenzfurthner is an Austrian artist, filmmaker, writer, actor, curator, theatre director, performer and lecturer. Grenzfurthner is the founder, conceiver and artistic director of monochrom, an international art and theory group. Most of his artworks are labelled monochrom.
WHollywood Zap! is a 1986 American comedy film written and directed by Canadian filmmaker David Cohen and distributed by Troma Entertainment, a company known for its low-budget exploitation films.
WHow To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems is a book by Randall Munroe in which the author provides absurd suggestions based in scientific fact on ways to solve some common and some absurd problems. The book contains a range of possible real-world and absurd problems, each the focus of a single chapter. The book was released on September 3, 2019.
WIntellectualism refers to related mental perspectives that emphasize the use, the development, and the exercise of the intellect; and also identifies the life of the mind of the intellectual person. In the field of philosophy, “intellectualism” is synonymous with rationalism, knowledge derived from reason. Moreover, the term intellectualism can also have a socially negative connotation about a man or woman intellectual who gives “too much attention to thinking” and who shows an “absence of affection and feeling”.
WThe IT Crowd is a British sitcom originally broadcast by Channel 4, written by Graham Linehan, produced by Ash Atalla and starring Chris O'Dowd, Richard Ayoade, Katherine Parkinson, and Matt Berry. Set in the offices of the fictional Reynholm Industries in London, the series revolves around the three staff members of its IT department: computer programmer Maurice Moss, work-shy Roy Trenneman, and Jen Barber, the department head/relationship manager who knows nothing about IT. The show also focuses on the bosses of Reynholm Industries: Denholm Reynholm and later, his son Douglas. Goth IT technician Richmond Avenal, who resides in the dark server room, also features in a number of episodes.
WJe Suis Auto is an upcoming Austrian social science fiction indie comedy film directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner and Juliana Neuhuber. Chase Masterson is voicing the title character "Auto", a self-driving taxi, and Johannes Grenzfurthner plays Herbie Fuchsel, an unemployed nerd critical of artificial intelligence. The film is a farcical comedy that deals with issues such as artificial intelligence, politics of labor, and tech culture.
WKing of the Nerds is an American reality competition series co-produced by Electus and 5x5 Media. It was inspired by the Revenge of the Nerds films. The show is hosted by actors and executive producers Robert Carradine and Curtis Armstrong, known for their roles as Lewis Skolnick and Dudley "Booger" Dawson, respectively, in Revenge of the Nerds. The series premiered on January 17, 2013, on TBS. The show features nerds and geeks with diverse backgrounds and interests competing in various challenges for a cash prize of US$100,000 and the title of "King of the Nerds". Following a three-season run, the series was cancelled by TBS.
WKing of the Nerds is a British reality competition series co-produced by Electus and Objective Productions. Based on the American series of the same name, the show features nerds and geeks competing in challenges for a £15,000 prize and the title of "King of the Nerds". It is hosted by television presenter and writer Konnie Huq. The series premiered on Sky 1 on 12 July 2015.
WLeet, also known as eleet or leetspeak, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. Additionally, it modifies certain words based on a system of suffixes and alternate meanings. There are many dialects or linguistic varieties in different online communities.
WA live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically portray their characters. The players pursue goals within a fictional setting represented by real world environments while interacting with each other in character. The outcome of player actions may be mediated by game rules or determined by consensus among players. Event arrangers called gamemasters decide the setting and rules to be used and facilitate play.
WMagic: The Gathering is a collectible and digital collectible card game created by Richard Garfield. Released in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast, Magic was the first trading card game and has approximately thirty-five million players as of December 2018, and over twenty billion Magic cards produced in the period from 2008 to 2016, during which time it grew in popularity.
Wmonochrom is an international art-technology-philosophy group, publishing house and film production company. monochrom was founded in 1993, and defines itself as "an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science and political activism". Its main office is located at Museumsquartier/Vienna.
WRandall Patrick Munroe is an American cartoonist, author, and engineer best known as the creator of the award-winning webcomic xkcd. With a background in physics and robotics, Munroe has worked full-time on the comic since late 2006, publishing three times a week to a very large audience. Several of the strips, notably a visualisation of radioactivity levels, were also republished by other outlets. In addition to publishing a book of the webcomic's strips, he has written three books: What If?, Thing Explainer, and How To.
WNerdfighteria is a mainly online-based community subculture centred around interesting and attention-getting activities with the purpose of combating mediocracy and negativity, as well as decreasing "world suck". It originated on YouTube in 2007, when the VlogBrothers rose to prominence in the YouTube community. As their popularity grew, so did coverage on Nerdfighteria, whose followers are individually known as Nerdfighters. The term was coined when John saw a copy of the arcade game Aero Fighters and misread the title as Nerd Fighters.
WPirates of Silicon Valley is a 1999 American biographical drama television film directed by Martyn Burke and starring Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates. Spanning the years 1971–1997 and based on Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine's 1984 book Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer, it explores the impact that the rivalry between Jobs and Gates (Microsoft) had on the development of the personal computer. The film premiered on TNT on June 20, 1999.
WRisk is a strategy board game of diplomacy, conflict and conquest for two to six players. The standard version is played on a board depicting a political map of the world, divided into forty-two territories, which are grouped into six continents. Turns rotate among players who control armies of playing pieces with which they attempt to capture territories from other players, with results determined by dice rolls. Players may form and dissolve alliances during the course of the game. The goal of the game is to occupy every territory on the board and, in doing so, eliminate the other players. The game can be lengthy, requiring several hours to multiple days to finish. European versions are structured so that each player has a limited "secret mission" objective that shortens the game.
WA role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making regarding character development. Actions taken within many games succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines.
WScience fiction conventions are gatherings of fans of the speculative fiction genre, science fiction. Historically, science fiction conventions had focused primarily on literature, but the purview of many extends to such other avenues of expression as films, television, comics, animation, and games. The format can vary but will tend to have a few similar features such as a guest of honour, discussion panels, readings and large special events such as opening/closing ceremonies and some form of party or entertainment. Science fiction conventions started off primarily in the UK and US but have now spread further and several countries have their own individual conventions as well as playing host to rotating international conventions.
WGeorge Lucas's science fiction multi-film Star Wars saga has had a significant impact on modern popular culture. Star Wars references are deeply embedded in popular culture; references to the main characters and themes of Star Wars are casually made in many English-speaking countries with the assumption that others will understand the reference. Darth Vader has become an iconic villain, while characters such as Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, C-3PO, R2-D2, and Chewbacca have all become widely recognized characters around the world. Phrases such as "evil empire", "May the Force be with you", Jedi mind trick, and "I am your father" have become part of the popular lexicon. The first Star Wars film in 1977 was a cultural unifier, enjoyed by a wide spectrum of people.
WSteve Jobs: The Lost Interview is a documentary released to theaters in 2012. It consists of the original 70 minute interview that Steve Jobs gave to Robert X. Cringely in 1995 for the PBS documentary, Triumph of the Nerds.
WTeam Unicorn is a multimedia production team formed in Los Angeles, California, in 2010. Its current members are American actresses Clare Grant, Rileah Vanderbilt, Milynn Sarley, and Alison Haislip. The group is known for producing parody song videos such as "G33k & G4m3r Girls", a spoof of Katy Perry's "California Gurls", and "All About that Base", a Star Wars parody of Meghan Trainor's song "All About That Bass". The group had a pilot on Adult Swim called The Team Unicorn Saturday Action Fun Hour!, and have attended numerous science fiction and comic conventions.
WThing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words is a 2015 illustrated non-fiction book created by Randall Munroe, in which the author attempts to explain various complex subjects using only the 1,000 most common English words. Munroe conceptualized the book in 2012, when drawing a schematic of the Saturn V rocket for his webcomic xkcd. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, material from Thing Explainer has been incorporated in United States high school textbooks.
WTolkien fandom is an international, informal community of fans of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, especially of the Middle-earth legendarium which includes The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. The concept of Tolkien fandom as a specific type of fan subculture sprang up in the United States in the 1960s, in the context of the hippie movement, to the dismay of the author, who talked of "my deplorable cultus".
WTraceroute is a 2016 Austrian/American documentary film directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner. The autobiographical documentary and road movie deals with the history, politics and impact of nerd culture. Grenzfurthner calls his film a "personal journey into the uncharted depths of nerd culture, a realm full of dangers, creatures and more or less precarious working conditions", an attempt to "chase the ghosts of nerddom's past, present and future." The film was co-produced by art group monochrom and Reisenbauer Film. It features music by Kasson Crooker, Hans Nieswandt, and many others.
WA Trekkie or Trekker is a fan of the Star Trek franchise, or of specific television series or films within that franchise.
WValley of the Boom is an American docudrama television miniseries created by Matthew Carnahan that premiered on January 13, 2019, on National Geographic. The series centers on the 1990s tech boom and bust in Silicon Valley and it stars Bradley Whitford, Steve Zahn, Lamorne Morris, John Karna, Dakota Shapiro, Oliver Cooper, and John Murphy.
WVlogbrothers is a video blog channel on YouTube. The Internet-based show is created and hosted by the Green brothers: John Green and Hank Green. The first incarnation of the brothers' online broadcasting was the "Brotherhood 2.0" project, preceding the establishment of the pair's regular vlogging activity through the Vlogbrothers channel.
WWeird Science is a 1985 American teen science fiction comedy film written and directed by John Hughes and starring Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, and Kelly LeBrock. The title is taken from a pre-Comics Code Authority 1950s EC Comics magazine of the same name, the rights to which were acquired by the film's producer Joel Silver. The title song was written and performed by American new wave band Oingo Boingo.
WWelcome to Eltingville is an animated comedy pilot created by Evan Dorkin based on his comic book series Eltingville. It was premiered in the United States on March 3, 2002, on Cartoon Network's late night programming block, Adult Swim, but was not picked up for a full series.
W"White & Nerdy" is the second single from "Weird Al" Yankovic's album Straight Outta Lynwood, which was released on September 26, 2006. It parodies the song "Ridin'" by Chamillionaire and Krayzie Bone. The song both satirizes and celebrates nerd culture, as recited by the subject who cannot "roll with the gangstas" because he is "just too white and nerdy". It includes many references to activities stereotypically associated with nerds and white people, such as collecting comic books and action figures, playing Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), going to Renaissance Fairs, playing Minesweeper, riding a Segway, programming computers, writing his name on his underwear, unnecessarily wearing braces, using an ergonomic keyboard, reading Stephen Hawking, memorizing pi, editing Wikipedia, owning a fanny pack, watching Happy Days and Star Trek, making a “web page for his dog”, and eating "sandwiches with mayonnaise".
WStephen Gary Wozniak, also known by his nickname "Woz", is an American electronics engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, and technology entrepreneur. In 1976, he co-founded Apple Inc. with business partner Steve Jobs, which later became the world's largest information technology company by revenue and the largest company in the world by market capitalization. Through their work at Apple in the 1970s and 1980s, he and Jobs are widely recognized as two prominent pioneers of the personal computer revolution.
Wxkcd, sometimes styled XKCD, is a webcomic created in 2005 by American author Randall Munroe. The comic's tagline describes it as "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language". Munroe states on the comic's website that the name of the comic is not an initialism but "just a word with no phonetic pronunciation".
WAlfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic is an American singer, musician, record producer, and actor who is known for humorous songs that make light of pop culture and often parody specific songs by contemporary musical acts. He also performs original songs that are style pastiches of the work of other acts, as well as polka medleys of several popular songs, most of which feature his trademark accordion.
WYoung Sheldon is an American period sitcom television series for CBS created by Chuck Lorre and Steven Molaro. The series, set in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is a spin-off prequel to The Big Bang Theory and begins with the character Sheldon Cooper at the age of nine, living with his family in East Texas and going to high school. Iain Armitage stars as young Sheldon, alongside Zoe Perry, Lance Barber, Montana Jordan, Raegan Revord, and Annie Potts. Jim Parsons, who portrays the adult Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, narrates the series and serves as an executive producer.
WMark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American media magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding Facebook, Inc. and serves as its chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling shareholder. He also is a co-founder of the solar sail spacecraft development project Breakthrough Starshot and serves as one of its board members.