‘King of the Nerds’ season 2 spotlight: The journey begins with Brian Davidson

As someone who claims to know the world of nerds and geeks very well thanks to being a former “Beauty and the Geek” contestant, we feel like it is almost a civic duty that we must profile the cast members of “King of the Nerds” this season. This show is very entertaining, and we feel as though these people are worthy of a little extra examination prior to it starting, just to figure out who has the most potential to go far.

This is why, for the sake of the spotlight articles henceforth, we have come up with the Nerd Scale. On a scale of one to ten, we try to rate the contestants on some of the following criteria:

1. Their sense of style, and whether or not they include facial hair as a part of that.

2. Their knowledge of not just common video games, but also slightly obscure ones that even we have barely heard of (and trust us, we’ve heard of almost all of them).

3. Confidence, and even at times cockiness about how smart they are.

4. An appreciation of new technology, but a refusal to embrace it on the same level as stuff from at least three or four years ago.

5. Proficiency in a second language, real or fiction (this includes binary).

6. Someone who picks a third answer as a response to an either / or question.

7. Costumers are required for Halloween, but acceptable on any other day of the year.

8. An unfamiliarity with interpersonal communication, to the point that it leads you to pursue isolated occupations.

9. Whether or not you speak in a dialect built mostly of inside jokes and references that only .1% of the people you run into would understand.

10. A reasonable amount of ignorance when it comes to sports, cars, what quinoa is, Kardashians, and selfies.

Since we are going in alphabetic order of the contestants in order to satisfy our own geeky need for control, we are going start things off here with Brian Davidson, a great candidate to go pretty far this season based on what we’ve read about him in the TBS bio and introduction video.

Nerd pros – A master in European literature, and a library nerd who has the fashion down for it already. He satisfies language proficiency, a love for classic video games (bonus points for liking “Chrono Trigger”) and books, and also has a beard like nobody’s business. What we really look for are people who just naturally have that sort of nerdiness about them, and are not just trying to pursue it because it’s trendy right now. Brian fits that, and note that all of this is a compliment. He goes to Yale and is obviously incredibly smart, and may be one of the most scholarly contestants this season.

Also, he has this quote as a response to whether or not aliens exit: “If aliens did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them.” Amazing.

Nerd cons – Mostly, they are little things. He is not familiar enough with either “Doctor Who” and “Game of Thrones,” which are things that we have over him. Also, not enough mentions of costuming, and a man is in need of more convention experience. He also does not come across as cocky in any way, but he is not engaging in a conversation about literature in the video. We’ll see how that goes if something comes up on the show.

Nerd scale – 9 out of 10. Still, a very impressive start to the “King of the Nerds” cast series that we are putting on. Given that we were labeled the sort of literary geek on our show, we probably feel a little bit like Brian is a kindred spirit, and we will want to root for him along the way. The most important thing is, as mentioned, that he feels completely genuine about everything in his bio, and it’s not just a case of him wanting to accentuate some of his nerdy qualities to get on TV. That is what geeks who watch geeks really look for, since they don’t want to feel like anyone is stomping around on their territory. Well played, Brian.