Nerds are at best a subculture, not a social class. And usually it's not even a subculture, but a collection of different subcultures and interests and archetypes and stereotypes, often mutually exclusive and conflicting.
The difference between a subculture and a social class is blurry at best. Many social classes are composed of different subcultures — like the nerd social class.
Because nerds are not a real class deserving protection, any more than amorphous arbitrary groups such as “SJWs” or “bros”. These are (pop) cultural designations based on folk definitions without any real basis in reality.
Furthermore, being scolded in Buzzfeed News now and then does not constitute bullying and is not actual persecution. The closest thing to actual violence against “nerds” (wrt the actual subject of TFA) were rocks thrown at tech company shuttle buses a few years ago in the Bay Area, which doesn’t seem to happen anymore. And those actions can be framed as relating to real issues such as tension between different economic classes and how localities change with economic development.
It’s ludicrous to claim that there’s such a thing as a “nerd class” and hold Bill Gates as an exemplar of one, when his time at Microsoft can be likewise framed as nerd exploitation- see everything about Microsoft’s monopolistic actions in the ‘90s impacting other “nerds”.
Unlike classes based upon religion, race, nationality, gender, or socioeconomic status, “nerds” are a tribe that don’t actually exist beyond the schoolyard. At least, it’s far more fuzzy, even compared to other identities such as “hacker”, the latter which is at least tied to specific technical professions and activities that exist in the real world.
Finally, if people are going to codify nerd identity, then we’re going to end up relitigating the tiresome “nerd culture is being appropriated” pop culture battles over comic book and sci-fi/fantasy movies and video games becoming mainstream, and that’s a very tedious can of worms.
