When I was in school there were three things I was bullied for; my lack of skill in sports, a surname ripe for the berating and my apparent disinterest in anything at all.

But of course, I was interested in things. Things like good television, fantasy books and video games. Now I’m not saying I was alone in these interests, I just made the conscious choice to keep quiet about them because any attempt at making friends using these items was rewarded with said friends throwing me to the wolves whenever the ‘geek-heat’ from the aforementioned wolves got too hot.

Ahh, smells like childhood.

In college I found out that you can indeed talk about The Legend of Zelda, you can quote the IT Crowd, you can even go into long conversation diversions about the obedience of zombies when faced with red velvet rope but best of all you can do this without being immediately silenced and later kidney punched in the changing room.

Because the truth is geek, or nerd culture, at this point the semantics of both words have become synonymous, call it what you like, is popular now. It’s not only popular it’s also a driving force in today’s media. Comic book movies absolutely dominate the big screen; earlier this year Iron Man 3 became the fifth highest grossing film of all time. You know what’s above that? Harry freaking Potter and The Avengers, another comic book movie.

And the best thing is, with Man of Steel looking to challenge Tony Stark’s latest outing and about a million Marvel films in the works, the comic book cinema freight train isn’t stopping any time soon.

Even on the small screen the geeks are inheriting the earth. Game of Thrones, which consists of the fantasy holy trinity; dragons, swords and magic, holds HBO’s top two spots for most watched episodes of all time. The highest rated sitcom in America last year was The Big Bang Theory. Now my thoughts on that show could fill another article, but in essence this is a show which praised the geek culture, pop into HMV and you’ll see posters and shirts dedicated to Sheldon Cooper, the geekiest of these geeks.

Beware, Posers hide in Skinny T-shirts,

But you can’t always rely on T shirts. I’m sure I’m not the only of us who has become infuriated by those running around with GEEK and NERD plastered over their chests. Now having lived through an adolescence hiding my true form, I can’t help but question their true commitment. A real geek wouldn’t parade it around, that would run the risk of the kidney punches from that other paragraph. No, a real geek would proudly wear a Tshirt with a thinly veiled pop culture reference and hope that people would recognise it.

But despite my annoyance these shirts do prove one thing; apparently it’s cool to be a geek. Look at all those idiots out there with thick rimmed glasses, they look great, the only issue is that they’ve forgotten the prescription lenses and the years and years of breaking, bending and snapping their frames.

I have never been happier, nor more socially lucrative than when I have been my absolute self. When I admit that I’m a nerd, when I acknowledge my obsessions and hobbies I am far more comfortable, which makes socialising a whole lot easier. And let’s face it, there’s a whole acre of us you’re never too far from another pop-culture enthusiast; I even accidentally ended up living with three of them for my university years.

What I’m saying, if I’m saying anything at all, is this; to be a geek is no longer to be scared and nervous, it’s in the mainstream now. So we should wear our colours proudly, shout our bizarrely specific references to prematurely cancelled scifi westerns loudly and confidently say ‘frak you’ to anyone who uses geek in a pejorative manner, because, in the words of Park and Recreation’s Ben Wyatt; ‘when you use the word “nerd” derogatorily, it means you’re the one that’s out of the zeitgeist’.

And we can say stuff like that now, because it’s cool.