The Sports Fan Guide to Nerdfighting (Vol One)

If you are a Kentucky Wildcat basketball fan and fairly into technology, you have no doubt been involved in a nerdfight or been privy to one. If the concept of nerdfighting is foreign to you, let me bring you up to speed and go to the technical definition of “Nerd Fight” as provided by Urban Dictionary:

A pathetic attempt by two or more people to fight over the internet, usually while playing a video game. Since they cannot harm each-other physically, they attempt to harm each-other emotionally with name-calling, excessive swearing, and trying to act tough. Sometimes it is amusing and other times simply pathetic. Sometimes these ‘fights’ can last for over 30 minutes and serve no purpose other that to annoy everyone in the game/chatroom.

For all intent and purposes, this definition is correct, although for our purposes we shall substitute “playing a video game” with “discussing sports” and just delete the ending “in the game/chatroom” and we have a working definition. Now nerdfighting has been around since a little after Al Gore laid the framework for what would eventually be known as the world wide web, or interwebs as it has been called. I think the first nerdfight actually occurred when two guys in their mother’s basement loaded their “Free 30 Hours of AOL” disc and started a rather heated discussion on “Spock v. Kirk”.

Times have changed and nerd fighting has found it’s way to the sports arena instead of Star Trek. The field of combat has also grown from the dark, dank, moldy solitude of a parental unit’s basement to … everywhere. The most common arena for nerdfighting is Twitter and the battle has gone mobile and taken over iPhones, iPads, Droids, laptops and any smart phone. So be careful. You could be nerdfighting with the guy in the line in front of you at Starbucks without even knowing it. With that in mind, I have put together some FAQ’s  should you venture into the world of nerdfighting.