is there a consensus on the statement “being a nerd is more about announcing yourself as belonging to a particular cultural coalition than about announcing yourself to have certain personality characteristics”?
my cumulative exposure to the contexts in which it’s used indicates to me that it’s the former, but the giant thinks it’s more the latter
or is it both but people switch back and forth without indicating (or being aware?) that they’re doing so
Both meanings are definitely in use, and in use for different coalitions and characteristics at that. I’m not sure how much individuals switch back and forth but it’s definitely a case where there’s a cluster of related concepts and different people are picking different concepts as the “real” one.
All that being said: the line between advertising your personality characteristics and affiliating yourself with a cultural coalition is kind of fuzzy, because different cultures ascribe value to (and therefore attract people with) different characteristics.
I do think it’s something more substantive than the general “different cultures ascribe value to (and therefore attract people with) different characteristics.”
Nerd culture in particular, being a perpetually embedded subculture, spent decades conflating personality with culture – “this is the culture for People Like Us, and People Like Us are automatically drawn to our communities and our signifiers” – in a way that’s proving pretty tough to unravel even as broader social shifts are making that unraveling increasingly important.