Wil Wheaton - Why it's awesome to be a nerd

My transcription on the following answer by Wil Wheaton on the question "Why it's awesome to be a nerd?"

Hi Violet, my name is Wil Wheaton. It’s 2013 and you have just joined us recently on planet Earth, so welcome. I’m an actor, and I’m a writer, and I’m a dad, and your mother asked me to tell you why it’s awesome to be a nerd. And that’s an easy thing for me to do, because that’s who I am.

I don’t know how the world will be like by the time you understand this. I don’t know what’s going to meant to be a nerd when you’re a young grown woman. For me, when I was growing up, being a nerd meant that I liked things that were a little weird, that took a lot of effort to appreciate and understand. It meant that I loved science and I loved playing board games and reading books and really understanding what went on in the world instead of just kinda [riding] the planet through space. And when I was a little boy, people really teased us about that, and made us feel like there was something wrong about us for loving those things. Now that I’m an adult, I’m kind of a professional nerd, and the world has changed a lot, and I think a lot of us have realize that being a nerd, or being a geek is another word you’ll hear and I should use the words interchangeably. It’s not about what you love, it’s about how you love it.

So there’s gonna be a thing in your life that you love. And I don’t know what it’s gonna be. It might be sports, it might be science, it might be reading, it might be fashion design, it might be building things, it might be telling stories or getting pictures. It doesn’t matter what it is. The way you love that, and the way that you find other people who love it the way you do is what makes being a nerd awesome. The defining characteristic, of us, the people in this room, and I’m gonna ask your mom to turn this camera around in a minute. Go there go on. The defining characteristic that ties us all together is that we love things. And some of us love Firefly, and some of us love Game of Thrones, and some of us love this things you’ll be able to go to see in your history books. [] Star Trek, or Star Wars, or anime, or games, or fantasy, or science fiction. Some of us love completely different things, but we all love those things, so much, that we travel for thousands of miles, which is probably easier for you but it’s still [] for us. We’re still on fossil fuel, I don’t know what are you going to be []. And it’s difficult... we come from all over some cases all over the world so we can be around people who love the things that we love the way that we love them. And that’s why being a nerd is awesome. And don’t ever let anyone tell you that that thing that you love, is a thing that you can’t love. Don’t ever let anyone tell you “You can’t love that, that's for boys. You have to love this because you’re a girl.”. You find the things that you love, and you love them the most that you can.

And listen, this is really important. I want you to be honest, honorable, kind. I want you to work hard, because everything worth doing is hard. And I want you to be awesome. And I’m going to do my very best, to leave you a planet that you can still live on.