About

Nerd World Problems is an advice animal image macro series and corresponding hashtag used to express frustrations and complaints unique to people who consider themselves nerds.

Origin

The first Nerd World Problems image macro was submitted to the /r/Funny subreddit^[2] on November 2nd, 2011 using one of the black and white images associated with First World Problems, depicting a teenager seated with her back to the wall. The caption expressed the inability to make good choices in the game Starcraft. However, the post only received one upvote.

Spread

The same month, the phrase appeared in the comments of a Manly Guys Doing Manly Things webcomic^[3] about Link's fairy companion from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. In early December, the phrase was used on the NeoGAF forum^[4] in reference to grinding in Skyrim and on Kotaku^[5] in reference to struggling to play both Skyrim and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword at the same time. By December 15th, it had spread to Twitter as the hashtag #nerdworldproblems^[1], which was soon used by actor Wil Wheaton (shown below).

Also in December 2011, a personal blog dedicated to nerdy content using the title "Nerd World Problems"^[8] launched, but was abandoned in January 2012. In September 2012, a single topic Tumblr titled Nerd World Problems^[9] was created to share photos from World of Warcraft games, but it has not been updated since December 2012. In October 2012, a blogger on the GSN PC Gaming Community made a personal post^[10] using the phrase to describe how his nerdy interests were harming his eyesight. In April 2013, a Nerd World Problems Facebook fan page^[11] was created, gaining 12 likes as of August 2013. That May, a number of Nerd World Problems image macros were featured on the Knerd Mom^[12] blog. In June 2013, the Nerd World Problems Podcast^[13] launched on YouTube (shown below) and has posted 10 episodes within two months.

Notable Examples

As of August 2013, 61 Nerd World Problems images have been submitted to Quickmeme.^[6] It can also be found as a tag on Tumblr^[7] for text posts describing problems deemed specific to the nerd community.

Search Interest

External References