Recently and friend and I got into a conversation about geekdom and what its all about these days.
There seems to be a common misconception about what being a geek really means. People talk about “blogging,” “being apart of the twitter stream,” “loling at lolcats,” and “being an oldfag” but really I’m starting to feel like geek is just a new word for ‘trendy’ these days.
What kind of Geek are you?
Wil Wheaton, former child actor turned awesome high god of geekdom recently did a great post on this very subject. In his post, Wheaton talks about how the video I Am Geek was less about geekdom but the exploitation of this “new subculture” that is accessable like never before to advertisers and promoters.That in some ways its ‘cool’ to be a geek, to be an outcast- but really I think what they’re trying to say is that technology is cool and if youre pretty its o.k. to be ‘geeky.’
Ugh. Makes me wanna go get my Batleth and start cuttin bitches up.
Trend setter often believe that being against the grain is cool. And for many that includes being well endowed in technology or movies or music- but in no way does that make them a geek.
And geeks aren’t a new subculture, advertisers, promoters and the like have just figured new ways of selling products for us (and probably desinged by us) better than before. Those kids who watched the original Transformers/GI Joe/Thundercats grew up and started writing screenplays, not to be cool but because they wanted to (being a good writer of course helps too). People have embraced these things not because they themselves have become geeks but because geeks thought of these awesome looking summer blockbusters that needed to be shown to the masses.
Now I’m not trying to be an elitist, I just know that my people are better than this, and that these newbies are ruining it for the rest of us.
I know in my heart of hearts that I’ve been a geek since as long as I can remember: glasses, bad haircut, Superman/Dragonball Z t-shirts in 8th grade. Not because it was cool but because its what I liked, what I wanted to be and what I hoped to be (in my dreams…). None of my friends like comic books, my friends like Kid Rock and Korn, no one molded me into this- its what I chose to be, and not because I saw a Judd Apatow movie.
The day I went to the Atomic Comics superstore in Mesa, AZ when I was twelve I was hooked. I walked through those doors with $50 for my birthday and went to town. I remember having my breath taken away over books, comic books but they were still books! I was reading and that made my mom so proud- little did she know that it would lead to two giant boxes of comics in my room and hopes of hunting down original Jack Kirby art (which i did recently: OMAC #1, at an antique store of all places).
I have never felt that way about anything else in my life, not winning a race in my eight years of track, not my first kiss and even hearing that the Beatles were going to be in Rockband earlier today or that Final Fantasy 13 was going to be XBox 360 about six months ago. Never. It cemented what I was, as much as I might want to fight it being in athletics for most of my life I knew what I was and I knew what I did on Saturday nights when other kids my age were drinking, partying and living it up- I was on-line writing Buffy Fan fiction playing the original Team Fortress and planning on what issues to pick up next Wednesday at the comic shop.
I guess its just like a recent episode of South Park for me- like the lifelong goths of that wonderful Colorado town I’m being classified in the same category of people who think this old meme is still funny. And its like slapping the real deals in the face and telling us that this is what we are like or that we’re different so we’re cool.
We’re not cool. Any true geek has never been cool at any part of his/her life. Used by the jocks for answers on tests maybe, had the cheelearder talk to him at tutoring but never cool.
We read books that aren’t best sellers, some collect d-10’s, d-20’s and d-8’s, others LARP and the horrible horrible few call themselves ‘furries.’ Some fight about who’s better: Kirk or Picard and even those groups will defend the Federation against that “really stupid Star Wars bullshit.”
So there, I said it. I’m sure I’m not the first but, well, posers get out.
And if you can’t get out well get comfortable, I just popped in Bablyon 5 season 3.
~Sean
Single/White/Geek 