This Is The Nerdy Place

This is the nerdy place. No, really it is. There's stats and everything.

If you ask any of my friends and family about me, they’ll tell you I’m a bit of a nerd. I fell in love with Star Trek in elementary school. The first movie my parents took me to that wasn’t animated was Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier; I know, it isn’t the best of the Star Trek films, but I was in the height of my Star Trek obsession and really wanted to see it. I had, and still do, the trading cards, books, action figures and even went as a Star Trek officer for Halloween one year. I was also into Spider-Man comics and watched He-Man, Thundercats, and Voltron and can now add The Wheel of Time and Lore Olympus to my nerd list. 

As it turns out, I was born in the right state to nurture my nerdiness. In 2014 Utah was voted the nerdiest state by real estate website Estately. It happened at just the right time, as FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention put on their first convention that year. It seems that not much has changed since 2014. Checking the nerdiest state ranking for this year depending on where you look, Utah is still the nerdiest state or the fourth nerdiest state. Career website Zippia still ranks Utah as the nerdiest state in 2022 while real estate website Lombardo Homes ranks Utah as the fourth nerdiest state this year. The difference in rankings is mostly due to the Lombardo Homes ranking being more focused on home décor. 

Zippia’s rankings were put together by rounding up the most nerd-filled hobbies, like an interest in Star Trek, by looking at Google Trends to find state-level topic search volume. Lombardo Homes surveyed more than 1,000 people to ask them their home decorating habits and also analyzed more that 3,100 Google search terms relating to nerdy house decorations. Utah’s most favorite home decoration are blankets (I did buy a Lore Olympus blanket from Hot Topic), particularly Mickey Mouse blankets, while respondent's favorite fandoms in all states were Marvel, Star Wars, Disney, Harry Potter (they must have talked to my aunt), and Nintendo.  

Do you have nerdy interests? Let me know on the b92.1 app.