Nerdfighter

English

Etymology

From nerd +‎ fighter; Nerdfighters was co-founder John Green's accidental misreading of the video game title Aero Fighters.

Noun

Nerdfighter (plural Nerdfighters)

1. A member of the mainly online-based community subculture Nerdfighteria.
   • 2008 August 10, Timothy Alex Akimoff, “Big Sky nerds: Brothers still speak for underdog”, in Sunday Missoulian, page B2:

     The experiment birthed the Nerdfighters, a nebulous group of self-described superhero geeks who follow the exploits of John and Hank Green religiously, and who claim to be “made of awesome” rather than flesh and bone.

   • 2012 January 28, Xander Wiersema, “A young girl slays inner demons while fighting cancer”, in The Vancouver Sun, page D6:

     John Green is possibly best known for Vlogbrothers, the YouTube channel he shares with his brother Hank. Together they have formed a large community of so-called Nerdfighters (note that Nerdfighters are not people that are against nerds but are in fact people who are for nerds). […] Twelve-year-old Xander Wiersema is an avid reader, gamer and Nerdfighter living in Victoria.

   • 2014 May 13, Caroline Vella, “Written In the Stars”, in HuffPost‎^[1], archived from the original on 20 December 2022:

     With the help of his brother, he is rallying Nerdfighters everywhere with the battle cry of "raising nerdy to the power of awesome."

   • 2014 June 8, David Lindquist, “‘Fault’ premiere draws adoring crowd”, in The Sunday Star, page E2:

     When lead actors Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort arrived, one 20th Century Fox executive was heard saying, “We could have filled Yankee Stadium” with Nerdfighters — the nickname of supporters of the pro-intelligence and good-deeds agenda of Green and his brother, Hank Green. […] “The Fault in Our Stars” producer Wyck Godfrey, known for his role as producer for four “Twilight” films, said Nerdfighters are making their presence felt.

   • 2020 November 15, Jennifer Burek Pierce, “Introduction: Reading John Green and Writing Anticipatory History”, in Narratives, Nerdfighters, and New Media, Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, →ISBN, page 2:

     Despite their affinity for new media, Nerdfighters are readers, many of whom have reported reading more than twenty-five books annually—an amount Hank once described as “a lot of frickin’ books.”