The three founders of Chicago’s first-ever nerd social club unanimously agree that there is a longstanding stigma surrounding the term “nerd” —one that, almost without fail, revolves around argyle sweaters, wide-framed glasses sloppily taped together at their broken nose piece and weekends spent holed up in dark basements playing Dungeons and Dragons until dawn. But it’s this definition that has created an idea where anti-social and nerd seem to be sononymous—a myth that the Chicago Nerd Social Club is trying

to dispel.

Now, with the help of three self-proclaimed nerds—Rachel Baker, Jeff Smith and Scott Murphy—nerd-dom is becoming the new cool, proving that geeking out over HTML computer coding and online role playing games is quite the sociable experience.

“We wanted to create an area where different nerds could get together and really geek out on their conversations,” said Jeff Smith, co-founder of the Chicago Nerd Social Club. “We really wanted to dispel those myths that nerds are these anti-social, basement dwelling, neck beard-wearing creatures, because in our very nature, we are extremely sociable.”

Baker, Smith and Murphy fit the mold of standard nerds with their little techie, science fiction-inspired bits that unassumingly make up the stereotype. This is at least the case for Murphy, who, at the age of 24, found to his own dismay that Starfleet was nothing more than a work of fiction and that man had only traveled as far as the moon—quite the distance from the beloved Vulcan. But the trio’s commonality stems from all things video and computer related—all of them work in the IT industry.

From there, the three claim that the Chicago Nerd Social Club was hatched more out of necessity than anything else. After Baker, Smith and Murphy all met via Twitter, then began to meet other nerds through scheduled “Tweet ups.” After Murphy had thrown out a tweet that he was going to a bar on a Wednesday night, nearly 30 people showed up, proving that Chicago had a real need for some sort of social club where nerds could come together and mingle, Baker said.

The next morning, word spread, and a week later the domain Chicago Nerds was adopted—the very fact that the domain was even available seemed to verify just how long-awaited their group was in the world of Chicago’s nerds. In the four weeks since the club’s inception, their popularity has rapidly and increasingly made the most out of their small but mighty web space.

Since their kick-off in March, the group has been slowly churning the wheels to get themselves off the ground and running, though it seems their presence is nearly effortless—in just one week their Twitter account and Facebook group each gathered more than 400 followers, all filled with posts and comments of enthusiasm to set up events and meet-ups with fellow nerds.

“Part of starting this group is to sort of reclaim the term ‘nerd’ for ourselves,” Smith said. “All three of us are in the IT industry, but it’s more than just a job for us. We live it, we breathe it, we go home and play with the stuff and tinker with it because it’s just something that we really enjoy. We really want to meet more people like that through the social club.”

The Chicago Nerd Social Club has set up their kick-off event on May 7 at the Risque Cafe, 3419 N. Clark St., and within a week of the group’s inception, their huge Internet reaction led to a sell-out of all 100 tickets. In the future, the group plans to hold other social outings ranging from nights out at beer tasting events for beer nerds and gaming nights on the North Side for gaming nerds.

“Scott and I were at an iFight Dragons concert at Martyrs’—they’re the band playing at out launch event—and they mentioned our group. In the crowd you could just hear everyone asking about it and wondering how they could join,” Baker said. “Since then people just keep coming up to me or messaging me on Twitter asking about getting tickets. It’s just crazy.”

To the founders of the Chicago Nerd Social Club, many people fail to recognize just how much the term “nerd” has evolved. Social networking websites that constantly pop up, such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, were all created by nerds proving they aren’t strictly limited to the Revenge of the Nerds, pocket-protector wearing personas. In a more realistic and less straight-out-of-the-book sense, a nerd is someone who has detailed knowledge and is extremely passionate about a particular subject that is outside of typical mainstream knowledge, Smith said. Part of being a nerd is a passion for continual learning. Considering this more “agnostic nerd” definition that Murphy has coined, being a nerd isn’t so narrowly scoped—despite the negative finger-pointing that nerds historically have been subject to. Murphy says that the reality of the situation is that anybody can be a nerd, and considering that, most people are one whether they are aware

or not.

“It’s not just computer nerds or Dungeons and Dragons nerds, you can be an art nerd, a physics nerd,” Baker said. “In my mind, a nerd is someone who has this particular topic that they feel very passionate about and they never stop learning about it. If you’re an art nerd, you don’t just pick one class and stop. You want to know more. You have that hunger and curiosity.”

If the Chicago Nerd Social Club were to have its own mission statement, Murphy said the club’s purpose is to create a non-threatening social environment for like minded people with the simultaneous goal to dissipate any remaining stigma surrounding nerds about being anti-social, because, as Murphy said, the pop culture image isn’t exactly on target.

“You can say that a nerd is someone that has a neck beard and sits in their  basement playing video games by themselves—there is certainly that pop culture stigma that goes with it,” Murphy said. “But my experience has been different. You have people on Twitter, which is primarily made up of nerds and marketing people, and they seem to mix very well. You have these PR people who are typically trendy, and glasses pushing, video game nerds meshing really well. People never expect that.”

Chicago has its Windy City Social Club and Chicago Sport Social Club, and the hopes of the founders of the Nerd Social Club is that their name will be just as quickly rattled off when searching for social, geek-related things. But really, it’s also the anticipation of what unique collaborations will inevitably come out of the meet-ups when multiple, over-thinking minds are concentrated together.

“You’ve got all these passionate, intelligent people that all want to come together and interact and share ideas with one another. Team-ups and collaborations are bound to happen,” Smith said. “The Chicago Nerd Social Club is putting a concentrated group of people that are very knowledgeable about certain subjects and they’re going to gravitate toward each other. I’m really excited to see the creations that come out of connections that are made out of these meetings.”