We share our planet with lots of weird species like nerds and geeks. As normal humans, we should make some effort to reach out to these folks so that we may understand their language and their culture. And so, to promote harmony with the nerds, I have managed to establish contact with one of them. To protect the identity of this Alien, we have to call him by his secret name, “Archisman Dhatra“. The following is an interview I conducted with Archisman.

Me: Hello Sir. Before we start, let me say that you look remarkably human. Do nerds always take the human form so as to not cause panic among regular human beings?
Archisman: “Please call me by my proper name: geek. Not nerd. There is subtle difference between a geek and a nerd and calling us nerds is a disgrace to our great forefathers. It has been statistically proven that geeks have 31.18% more chance of getting a date than nerds. I like to keep my chances optimal. But I am still single. I wonder why. Anyway, I digress.

Coming back to the point: Yes our goal is to try and not standout like a lone Lisp programmer in a JavaScript convention, but to blend in the way C blends into C++. This way, we can observe and study humans without causing too many compiler warnings, because, as our good old friend Atif would say, “The geeks will inherit the Earth.”

Me: My sources tell me that you got the 2nd Rank in 12th standard. That is 100% worse than 1st Rank. Is that a criminal offense punishable by death on your planet?
Archisman: Worse than that. We get a lifetime of community service on your planet, which explains why I am here. Painstakingly, we educate you masses about our alien culture so that you do not resist when we will take over your primitive society. So much for one small mistake!

Me: Us normal humans sleep with books under the pillow to make the knowledge from the book diffuse into our brains. What do the nerds do? Is it necessary to keep the book open for optimal transfer?
Archisman: This is where you kids go wrong. Reading a book is the process of aligning neurons in your cerebrum for knowledge persistence, and it is very essential to open the book before you start. Also, knowledge is power and

In other words, knowledge is basically forcing yourself to read lengths of boring text wasting your time. But remember that the lack of knowledge could be disastrous (You may recall your ‘I read Russian literature‘ incident) and the only way to amass this knowledge is to actually open and read the book.
But sometimes, when this is not possible, we just read the summary of a book and act as if we read the whole book. This works because it is impossible for a normal mortal to tell the difference.

Me: One last question. My sources tell me you are known as the super-nerd. Are you friends with super-man? You seem to be from the same planet.
Archisman: Pretty much. But unlike him I prefer to wear my underpants inside as a means of camouflage. This is aligned with the C-in-C++ principle that I mentioned before.

Me: Thank you, Sir for taking the time to talk to us normal human beings. We are glad to make contact with the geeks and hopefully we can live peacefully together.
Archisman: Thank you. And we’re going to take over your planet soon, so the peace thing might not work out.

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