Nerds Analyze
Connor Christensen
AP Language
We Need Nerds! Anti-intellectualism is a slaughter house that is easily seen, but near impossible to escape. How can you show the billions of Americans that love sports that paying millions to a single player on their favorite team isn’t going to cure cancer? How can you influence thousands of “high-up” jocks that society would fall without the very nerds being squashed beneath their feet? It could very well start with Leonid Fridman’s work entitled, “America Needs its Nerds.” Fridman develops his argument through a mocking diction, a mild invective, and a powerful sweep of satire that just might convince the “socially savvy” that America needs its nerds. Fridman’s consistent use of intelligent, straight, and disapproving words conveys his point effectively and mockingly with every passing letter. As he is speaking on the importance of nerds, his use of higher-level and well-flowing diction brilliantly puts those who aren’t as smart, but still “better than everyone else” in a situation near equivalent to asking a large woman if she is pregnant and finding that she isn’t. . . You may think you understand something, but the reality of things is very different. Whereas jocks may make fun of people for being weird, smart, and even dumb (how witty of them), their own ignorance – and daresay stupidity – blinds them to the realization that they need nerds. Something Fridman makes comical since these very people might read this paper and not even fully understand it since some of the words are for nerds. On top of the mocking and intelligent diction, Fridman has a brief invective that positively affects his already brilliant paper. In an essay meant purely to show the wrong-doings of a whole country and change it, it was obvious that some form of insult or invective would be present within the paper. However, Fridman actually begins his paper with a mild invective that states simply, “there is something very wrong with the system
AP Language
We Need Nerds! Anti-intellectualism is a slaughter house that is easily seen, but near impossible to escape. How can you show the billions of Americans that love sports that paying millions to a single player on their favorite team isn’t going to cure cancer? How can you influence thousands of “high-up” jocks that society would fall without the very nerds being squashed beneath their feet? It could very well start with Leonid Fridman’s work entitled, “America Needs its Nerds.” Fridman develops his argument through a mocking diction, a mild invective, and a powerful sweep of satire that just might convince the “socially savvy” that America needs its nerds. Fridman’s consistent use of intelligent, straight, and disapproving words conveys his point effectively and mockingly with every passing letter. As he is speaking on the importance of nerds, his use of higher-level and well-flowing diction brilliantly puts those who aren’t as smart, but still “better than everyone else” in a situation near equivalent to asking a large woman if she is pregnant and finding that she isn’t. . . You may think you understand something, but the reality of things is very different. Whereas jocks may make fun of people for being weird, smart, and even dumb (how witty of them), their own ignorance – and daresay stupidity – blinds them to the realization that they need nerds. Something Fridman makes comical since these very people might read this paper and not even fully understand it since some of the words are for nerds. On top of the mocking and intelligent diction, Fridman has a brief invective that positively affects his already brilliant paper. In an essay meant purely to show the wrong-doings of a whole country and change it, it was obvious that some form of insult or invective would be present within the paper. However, Fridman actually begins his paper with a mild invective that states simply, “there is something very wrong with the system