one of my longstanding interests i don't really talk about because it's very rude is "nerd theory," in the sense of having a theory of nerds: why do nerds have that voice? why don't nerds like sports? why do nerds have bad posture? why do nerds *look younger*?
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anyway i have a rough draft of a theory now, the one-sentence summary is not that complicated it turns out:
a nerd is a person who is tense all the time
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holding chronic tension in the body produces nerd voice, nerd face, makes posture bad, and makes physical activity subtly painful and unpleasant, hence avoiding sports
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("tense all the time" is a pretty succinct gesture towards what it feels like to have complex PTSD also, but we don't need to get into that here; having a story about where the tension comes from is less important than the raw phenomenology of it)
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i don't talk in these terms often because i think a lot of people don't like the framing but in my own mind i am sort of a complex PTSD maximalist; i think almost every serious psychological issue is basically a subtype of complex PTSD
pete-walker.com/fAQsComplexPTS
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(although otoh looking directly for the tension is complicated by the fact that at the beginning you'll likely have little access to a lot of it due to numbness)
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i keep expecting to feel like I'll be "done" (stretching my hips and hamstrings) but every couple of days it feels like I'm finding some new tenseness and tightness that I couldn't even perceive before because I was too numb
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"look younger" is the one i feel the least confident about but vaguely speaking i think holding chronic tension diverts bodily resources away from the physical maturation process, especially during puberty. it may specifically interfere with sex hormone production, idk
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not sure if anyone's studied it but there's a lot of talk about how autistics look young for our age
i guess the question is whether allistic nerds usually do too
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are there even allistic nerds??? idk man i'm starting to wonder if we're all slightly autistic but i really don't know
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the "broader autism phenotype" is deffo a thing, wouldnt be surprised if that applies to nerds by definition but hard to know as i've mostly self-sorted away from people who're unquestionably allistic
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