Who are nerds

This is a very fascinating bit on this guy that lives not too far from me. In fact I may end up going to see him in the near future if the desires strikes me.

Other than the fact that he's an example of a "white guy with too much expendable income". I don't have anything against him. He seems like your typical geek that has a hobby. To be honest, I've been inconsolably jealous of anyone with a lot of money lately. I don't even know why. I saw a site with several pictures of Dubai and suddenly had this fit of rage over how much freaking money is pouring into this city.

So the question is this, is being a nerd merely an extension of the culture of consumerism, or is there something more. Are you still a nerd if you don't have a lot of "stuff"? Does this stuff define you as a nerd? Are you a bigger nerd if you have more stuff? I'd like to think not. I'd like to think that being a nerd merely means interests in things, and not the collecting of things. I knew this guy who specializes in selling rare and highly sought after comic books. He was telling me that he was selling "Amazing Fantasy 15" to an NFL team owner. I know nothing about this guy, and I'm sure he is quite a fan of Spider-man and all, but the question is, does it make him a nerd?

I consider myself a big nerd. I know that there are two Dr. McCoys, (Dr. Hank McCoy, and Dr. Leonard McCoy) I read Gizmodo and Kotaku almost on a daily basis, and learned Japanese to be able to read manga in Japanese. I own a fair amount of nerdy things including a boxed copy of Final Fantasy 1, a Wii, a 9 inch figure of symbiote suit Spider-man, and a Principality of Zeon flag. But I have this nagging feeling that there is more to it. A more central reason to why I do all these things, and these things are merely products of that.