I'm not a scientist. I enjoy reading about science and make a real effort to understand what I can get through my thick skull. I don't do it for social brownie points or to attract attention from the opposite sex, I do it because I like to know how things work. I'm not an expert in anything because I listened to a podcast with Neil Degrasse Tyson speaking.

Hey you can be a science nerd without doing any of the hard stuff!

There's a trend among young "adults" to actually want to be seen to be nerdy. If you have lots of friends, if your genitalia has had more views than Nyan Cat, you're not a nerd. Nerds are generally highly intelligent, socially awkward people who get particularly obsessed by a few subjects and through hard work sometimes become experts in those subjects; often taking solace in them. That's why many nerds become scientists. Because science is actually bloody hard and time consuming.

If this nerd chic led to more people being actually interested in the sciences it would be fine by me. However, it seems to me the opposite is true; this interest is entirely superficial. We've now reached a point where using scientific terminology can see you branded as a racist or homophobe. Extremely Liberal Professor of Biology Bret Weinstein was admonished by students for using the phrase: "Put phenotype aside". This led to a situation where students were roaming the halls with baseball bats looking for him. It's also illegal now in Canada not to refer to someone by a chosen gender pronoun rather than their actual biological gender.

There is a growing trend of people who are not just ignorant of science; but anti-science. At the same time many of them will wear an I heart Science T-shirt. Like the classic gay Christian who covers up for his supposed sins by being extremely homophobic, these people attempt to obscure their ignorance and hypocrisy by shrouding themselves in retweets of superficial science articles.

If we're really interested in science, we could start by showing actual scientists some respect rather than imposing politics, post-modern theory and feelings on their field.