Sorry if this has come up before, but it struck me recently how incredibly Nerdly Voldemort was.

Seriously, he was Head Boy and top of his class. He was obsessed with ancient Dark tomes, teacher's pet (Slughorn) and he collected historical trinkets.

Worse yet, he spent (who knows how many) hours coming up with a 'super secret villain name' that was AN ANAGRAM OF HIS OWN NAME. Even worse, it was FRENCH!

NNNNEEEEEEERRRRRRRDDDDD.

Anybody know of any descent stories that make jokes about this?

Really, he's the kind of guy who'd write fanfiction for a popular set of childrens' books.

*coughs*

Not that it makes him any less evil. Modern history is filled with evil nerds. Mousalini was an elementary-school teacher who copied the mannerisms of a popular film star. Hitler was a tea-totaling fail artist who had a deep fascination with the occult. Bill Gates is... Bill Gates.

-KakfaExMachina

 

That is an interesting point, but if I remember correctly he was always portrayed as a charsmatic, and handsome young man. Who although had high nerd-like ambitions was quite popular in his year. How many nerds do you know can frightened a quater of his class into submission in high school?

 

Let's examine this, shall we?

Succeeding in school = nerd?

Confusing fanon (Slytherin library in CoS filled to brimming with Ancient Mesopotameregyptumerian Tomes of Lore) with canon = fail.

Ah. So developing the skills to manipulate your teacher into the start of the knowledge needed for immortality is nerdy?

Trinkets? If you found out George Washington had a pocket watch he wore everywhere and often pulled out to check the time during the Continental Congress, well-preserved, would you call it a trinket? Or yourself for wanting it?

Disregarding the easy jokes about French military prowess and the masculinity of their males, French is actually a very distinguished language with an extremely prominent historical role. French was the lingua franca of Europe for a long time, and it is easy to see how a wizard not blinded by the Muggle pop-culture perception of France's wartime performance would choose French for his alias.

And the anagram of his own name - arrogant, narcissistic perhaps, but not nerdy.

Voldemort was not a nerd. Your definition of nerd seems to be 'smart, knows education is good for something.' That, and you by association, fails.

And I spent way more time on this than it deserves.

 

Like Nefar said, learn what a Nerd is.

A quick search on google wins once again.

 

Nonjon did something like that.

 

Now I'm going to disagre with nefar here.

Though personally I don't see anything wrong with being a nerd, voldemort does fit the role.

I'll come back to the head boy bit later...

He was obsessed with learning all he could about magic. Which I suppose could be metaphorical science for the wizarding world. and I think Rowling, no mater how much I disagree with it, said that he learned about horcrux's from that book hermione stole from dumbledores office in DH.

That is a point in the nerd collumn under both counts.

For the teachers, he wasn't just manipulating, though i see where your going with it. He was sucking up to them going so far as to get slughorn gifts. I'm sorry but when was the last time you bought your teacher a gift. We know what we know now, but back then that was gratuitous nerd behaviour, atleast to the everyone else. Worse as he was brown nosing it.

He did collect historical trinkets, he got obsessed with a specific group of people and decided to seek out things they possesed. Not unlike a star wars fan would props. You could even go so far as to compare this to stamp or coin collecting as he wants the entire set.

The horcrux's are very nerdy... he's tryign to bring himself close if not in the same league as the founders. Thats like self insert fics in a way.

The anagram is nerdy, simply because its an anagram. Thats like me trying to mix up the letters in my name to come up with a good sith lord name. Theres no way to go about makign that seem less nerdy. Its on top of that, a little weird, narcisitic, and of course obsessive.

Back to the head boy deal. Yes that is nerdy, I'm not saying every one who is at the top of their class is, but in this case voldemort is. He gained the teachers favor and presumably the headmasters through brown nosing, I can't see him socialising outside of class and becoming a role model to the student body, so the only other avenue he has is his grades which he would have to be superb at.

Thats the difference between a percy weasley head boy and a James potter. Both were talented, but one earned the respect from his peers and teachers through beign actually charismatic. And the other through being a snob and suck up. Voldemorts more of an evil Percy in that regard.

 

Once more: a passionate desire to learn, with the increased opportunities and power education prings, = nerd? Where are you guys getting this? Rabid anti-intellectualism?

Once more yet again: he manipulated his teachers into giving him priceless knowledge. I would certainly buy my teacher a gift if it would lead me to immortality.

There once was a group of people responsible for the establishment of the premier school of supernatural education in an entire country. These people each had a treasured possesion that, a long time after their death, has entered popular culture as a near-myth. You are a boy who was given the opportunity to become one of the most powerful men on Earth at this school. It is easy to see how if the opportunity presented itself, you would snatch at the chance to collect these items. What is not easy to see, though, is how it is neccessary to mutiliate the cold, calculating personality of pre-Horcrux Riddle by shoving 'nerd-ness' into the mix.

The anagram point is probably your strongest in favor of nerd!Voldemort, and in light of how weak and subjective it is, that's saying something. Personally, I find the fact that he was able to fit the letters of his own name into a small sentence containing both French and English words impressive.

Sigh. So you are suggesting Riddle didn't deserve the Head Boy position? He was the single most impressive Hogwarts student since Dumbledore, yet you claim his 'brown nosing' was what got him all the recognitions and awards and the Head Boy? In Dumbledore's own words, "He was one of the most brilliant students Hogwarts has ever seen."

Moreover, this brown nosing you love to speak of is something we have seen exactly once: with, as I will no doubt need to say again, a teacher who could help Riddle gain immortality.

And you can't see him socializing? He was incredibly popular in school, and was a model to the student body.

Comparing Percy Weasley to Voldemort is like comparing Hermione to Dumbledore: not even in the same league. Percy became a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Magic; Voldemort conquered said Ministry.

 

~from Wikipedia.

Check.

Ah, ad hominem attacks, the last bastion of net-nerd. Allow me to fire back. What, pray tell, is your avatar? Is that from Star Wars? Hmm... methinks a you are feeling a little defensive.

Nerd.

=)

 

I've gotta agree with QuaziJoe and the OP. Too much about Tom fits the nerd label.

Scientist-analogue? Nerd.

Anagram fixation? Major nerd.

No evidence that he got laid in seven years at a school with a one-hundred-to-one faculty to student ratio and where broom closet copulation is the unofficial sport? Colossal nerd. Especially since he's purported to be charismatic, physically attractive, and intelligent.

Constitutional inability to come up with any snappy comebacks or quotable lines in seven books? Hell, that's even nerdy among Dark Lords. (The "there is no good or evil, only power and those too blah blah..." was cliché when Nietzsche got to it).

 

Your taking this way to seriously I think the point of this thread was to create/find parody fics under the theme.

I personally consider myself a nerd. Nothing wrong with it.

But you gotta admit when you put it into context it all does spell out nerd.

This is an angry pre-teen/teen with a single minded goal to become a immortal dark lord because he has father issues.

Sure he succeeded but really thats like me changing my name to Max powers because my real name isn't cool enough for my life long ambition of becoming a secret agent. Though to be fair they'd probably change my name again, but you can't have a crappy name to start out with, think of the laughter if your true name came out.
I'm getting side tracked...

Your, doing it for the future speech sounds like a joke. I mean it sounds like the cliche angry nerd after he gets picked on by the jocks.

"One day I'll be powerful and rich and I'll be super succeful, you'll all be workign at walmart and i'll laugh... "

If I was in the magic world, sure I'd try and learn as much as I can. Magic would be cool. But such things can be said about learning in school. Because it give you more knowledge about the world around you and other fascinating stuff. If people became single mindedly obsessed with it like that they would be called nerds. Even if they were doing it for lofty ideals.

Slughorn didn't tell him anything he didn't already know or suspect, he only bounced an idea off him. He had already heard about horcrux's and gotten the idea to make more than one himself.

There is a certain connection between nerdhood and intelligence though the two aren't mutually exclusive.

As to the Founders and their objects...

Sure if it existed yeah it would be awesome to have. But you know what, so would the staff of merlin, excalibur, or maybee supermans tights. There are any number of items that woudl be cool to own, but he got obssesed with a certain few and tried to brign himself to original owners level by using them to make him immortal, to prove how great he was.

Thats nerdy, and also creepy.

As to head boy, sigh, no I'm not sayign he didn't deserve it, but the way he attained it made him slightly nerdy. And there's nothing wrong with my Percy analogy. Its actually quite accurate considering what we've read about him.

I speak so much about the brown nosing because thats whats prevalant. Dumbledore states even though he says he's charismatic and popular, that he has no true friends. Only followers. While impressive, that doesn't speak volumes about his social skills, more about his leadership abilities. Which I will concede puts him above percy.

And there was nothing wrong with becoming a beurocrat, Everyone already expected him to become a beurocrat after hogwarts which only adds to my point.

 

...Personally, I think he was an emo.

"Oh, daddy didn't love me! I'm going to go kill him and rip my soul in half!"

Bet he was a cutter.

 

And yet he was destroyed by the ultimate disarming charm...

 

I'd say he has nerdish tendencies.

But Tom Riddle definitely wasn't the stereotypical nerd as we view it today.

Along with the book-smart/suck-up/odd-hobbies traits that define a nerd, there's also the important characteristic of harmlessness. The stereotypical nerd general tends to be a good person, if socially awkward, and well-meaning, rendering him harmless (Picture one of the guys from Beauty and the Geek).

The young Voldemort was anything but harmless and was evil from very early on. If I had to classify him, I'd argue total sociopath! I bet Tom Riddle had Anti-Social Personality Disorder


On a side topic, Harry Potter wears nerd glasses.

 

yes but harry aint smart enough to be a nerd... he's just a four eyed freak baby.

Lynodon makes a good point his sociopathick tendencies push him out of nerdom, but before he heard about horcrux's and found the chamber, I can't imagine him as anything but snapeish...

Unpleasent, a little weird, socially awkward...

He became popular it doesn't mean he was always popular. he could have become popular the more he integrated himself into hogwarts. say maybee third or forth year.

first two years he was probably a nobody.

 

Okay, we've looked at the pro-nerd characteristics but not the anti-nerd ones. So shall we?

1) You say that his study habits make him a nerd. I say that his study habits do the exact opposite because what he is studying is magic. In the real world knowledge doesn't amount to nearly as much power as in the HP world where more more knowledge literally makes you a more powerful wizard. It's part of the reason Voldemort was so feared, because he had so much powerful dark magic in his head that most people couldn't fight back against him.

2) Charisma. It's a fact that Tom Riddle was very popular in school, so much so that he attracted a band of amazingly loyal followers who would later become his first Death Eaters. I don't know about you but the idea of a charismatic nerd sounds like an oxymoron to me.

3) Brown-nosing. You say he sucks up to the teachers and that makes him a nerd. I'll admit that it does kinda look that way, except when you put it in the greater context of it allowing him certain privileges when it comes to things like the Restricted Section in the Library and the ability to point a finger a poor, innocent student like Hagrid and implicate him in the death of a student. By this point Tom was already in the good graces of all the Hogwarts staff, barring Dumbledore, who was the only person to suspect him.

In light of this we can say that Tom was merely using the teachers, especially Headmaster Dippet, in an effort to cover his own tracks as he came into his heritage, or I imagine would be his belief.

4) Founder-obsession. I'll admit that he went a tad overboard in his obsession with the Founders, but you're also forgetting the fact that he was descended from one of them and believed himself to be the greatest thing since Salazar Slytherin. He was a parselmouth, he joined his ancestor in his hatred of muggles and he was an orphan (or so he believed) who wanted to know who his family was.

He saw Salazar Slytherin as a great wizard, someone to look up to and maybe try to surpass and he probably saw it the same way with the other Founders. His making horcruxes out of their former possessions is basically a giant 'Fuck You, I'm better than all of you put together'. His obsession was basically him trying to make himself feel important, and he turned out to be very important indeed.

 

Heh. Thanks.

It was as much self-deprecation (my day job is physicist) as pimping.

 

As Aekiel pointed out, learning something (magic) that allows you to basically become a god among men isn't what I would consider nerdy. In our world there are differences between humans, some are smarter or more beautiful, others are born with more potential then others, then there are people with an higher education then others, yet still this gap is not that large. However magic means the end of the concept of equality, as for example the gap between Ron and Hermione alone would be enormous.


In a world without magic someone like Ron would probably become some manual worker, while Hermione would either land in a higher administrative position somewhere or (if she could get around to think more for herself and rely less on someone else's positions or value system) even in a leading political position. Now both would of course not be equal, but still, Hermione's power and higher social status would stem from a system established and carried (either actively or passively) by the majority of the population. Without this system, say in a world suddenly plunged into anarchy, the chances of survival would probably not be that different (maybe even in Ron's favour, being more prone to bodily work etc...), hell even with this system in place a desperate downsized Ron would have some chance to kill -insert some governmental position here- Granger because he somehow blames her for his misfortune.


Now with magic one's power need not stem from anything else but oneself, to continue above example, Hermione, just by memorizing everything she could is vastly more powerful then Ron, just out of her own right, if all of society came crashing down, who would you believe to be more prepared for survival? As I perceive it, Riddle realized this (few wizards seem to do), so even if we would not know that he was charismatic and popular in his days, but a friendless, ugly and obese kid, I would never consider him nerdy for trying to basically achieve independence from society, a freedom many grave (at least at some point) but few have. Instead he does what every sane person would do, because if you can either have a dead end job in some ministry (Arthur Weasley) or travel around the word or in general do what you want because you are self-sustaining (you can't conjure food but you can i.e. transform something into an animal, kill, and then cook it), what would you do? You have seven years, at the end you could be free of all restraints (even dead!) wouldn't you strive for this? It's not just merely about a higher social status or knowledge about the world as QuaziJoe said, it's about ultimate freedom.


Concerning the founders' heirlooms, why wouldn't you collect them even if you where not personally involved so to speak, why do people collect art, old tomes etc...? It is not only about what you feel about them, but what others do as well. We see that one heirloom (the sword of Gryffindor) is important enough to merit the attention of the head of state(or government, we don't know for sure) of the magical United Kingdom, this allows the conclusion, that these artefacts are very prestigious. Now if you are a wizard bent on collecting loyal servants to you and your cause and you try to do so in a social circle proud of their ancestry, especially while being less “pure” then them, then control of such symbols would be helpful, it gives you credibility and prestige. Another plus is, that few established authorities would try to destroy your insurance against death if there was even the shadow of a doubt about you actually using them as Horcruxes (a part of magic seemingly forgotten or so obscure that it is probably only considered an urban legend), as it would involve destroying a prized national symbol. Think about it, would the US destroy the Statute of Liberty on the off chance that it would hold off a future alien invasion just because one, albeit respected, persona (Dumbledore) would say so?

 

Voldemort is mary-sue...

 

Good lord... Dark Lord Percival?