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Since I wrote yesterday’s post about the Society for Geek Advancement during the commercials of Big Bang Theory, the video I showed you yesterday has circulated throughout the world and stirred up a lot of drama. The comments made here reflect the conversation that seems to be going on all over the internet. Wil Wheaton started out ranting on twitter, and quickly moved to his blog. His post regarding the difference between embracing and exploiting geek culture, seeks to address his discomfort at being associated with the finished video:
Having someone in a video that purports to celebrate our geek culture say that they don’t play D&D, like playing an RPG is something to be ashamed of, is profoundly offensive to me, because I play D&D. In fact, it’s the chief reason I am a geek. D&D isn’t anything to be ashamed of, it’s awesome. I don’t recall seeing that in the script I was given, and if I had, I never would have agreed to be part of this project.
I loved the idea of creating a video that celebrates our culture and shows that we’re proud to be in it. That’s what I thought this would be, but I feel like we ended up with some kind of self-promoting internet marketing thing that plays right into established stereotypes, and hopes that The Cool Kids will let us hang out with them.
I am a geek. I have been all my life, and I know that those guys are nothing like me and my friends. If we’re going to celebrate and embrace geek culture, we should have geeks leading the effort, not popular kids who are pretending to be geeks because it’s the easy way to get attention during the current 15 minute window.
I’ll admit, even though I enjoyed the video, that bit rubbed me the wrong way. And I did cut out a snarky sentence that my proofreader commented on wherein I had been a bit judgmental about the poseurs. Certainly, I don’t want to be a hypocrite, implying that newcomers aren’t welcome. I gladly cut it out, because my overall joy overshadowed the rough edge of jade that tried to poke through.
Maybe I really am a hypocrite, though. I know I tend to dichotomize nerd from geek. My husband and I have discussed this many times, because he isn’t a nerd, and I’m not really a geek. The difference would be simply picking nits to most people, and clearly the two groups are fairly fluid socially. He was on the football team in high school, which is auto-disqualification for nerd. “Nerd” is a badge you have to earn. Nerds put in some hard time learning to accept who they are, and choosing to stay true to themselves. As an example, I remember breaking the curve on many math tests. My teacher even made a point of it, holding up my test as proof that she had taught everyone the material adequately. That history of mortification and social stigma doesn’t just appear with a lot of gadgets and a lot of followers on twitter. So, if someone had made that exact same video, but claiming all those people were “nerds,” I know I’d have been rubbed the wrong way. But mostly this video was about techy people, and I don’t identify as strongly with that label.
Of course everyone knows that MC Hammer and Shaq aren’t real geeks! The geeks know it, the cool kids know it, and they know it. But if they want to play in our sandbox, then a lot of cool things can happen. Maybe they’ll learn from a new point of view and quit stigmatizing some of the very people that make the world go round. Social media, and things that were previously “geeky” and bringing them into the mainstream really helps us all out, doesn’t it? That’s part of why I like Big Bang Theory, because yes, the guys are quirky and socially awkward, but they’re also awesome! Geek culture isn’t ever going to genuinely be co-opted by the mainstream. I do think it’s actually pretty awesome that for the moment, being a geek is a badge of honor. To see some of the cool kids trying to jump on the geek bandwagon just tickles me.
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6 Responses to More on Geeks. Plus Nerds!
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- The Inklings
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One book a month for 2012.
Why can’t Shaq be a geek? I’m not saying he is, but I’m also not going to say that he’s not. I don’t know the dude. He could spend all of his free time browsing geeky websites for all I know. He might be obsessed with computers. He might love reading cheesy science fiction and watching lost episodes of Star Trek. Isn’t that sort of exclusivity inherently at the root of all of this geek/nerd/jock/“Cool Kid” crap? That’s what really bothers me about all of this. I can understand being irked at the ‘I don’t play D&D’ line. But Wil Wheaton just sounded like a whiny, elitist bitch today. If saying, “I’m a geek,” can really be considered bandwagon posturing then being a geek is now cool which should make geeks everywhere happy.
You’re absolutely right, Apollo! Shaq could be a geek for all I know. Ironically, I’m going totally on public image. I think that might be the heart of the matter — a benchmark of geek culture is not allowing social stigma to get in the way of geek interests, so someone with a cultivated public image doesn’t seem to get it. The whole point is that stuff doesn’t really matter, right? Sarah’s ptsd comment has a lot to do with it. It does matter. There is some real pain involved in dealing with the exclusivity that keeps geeks as a “lesser” subculture. What should happen, is geeks should learn from that and do better, and rise above all that crap.
As I continue to view the vid, it strikes me that what Wil Wheaton says is “I speak Python and CSS, not Klingon.” Anyway, I’m pretty sure that’s what he says. I know that the line was given to him because he played Wesley Crusher, but it’s a statement of disassociation with something extremely geeky. Whether he knew about the other lines in the script or not, he knew what his lines were. It seems he’s saying it’s cool to play D&D but imply it’s not so much to speak Klingon. Yeah… I don’t like where that road leads.
That’s why I wrote the post, because I saw where Wil was coming from, and even empathized some. Despite having some of those same emotions and thoughts, I think that indulging that mindset is really wrongheaded. How the heck can geeks working for literacy be anything but cool?!
This is a lot of what I got out of it:
But then there was Samm Levine. It wasn’t so much that MC Hammer was telling me he was a geek. Really, he could be. It was all the people I didn’t recognize. They were really beautiful people and I’ve never heard of them and it’s not like I’m super isolated here in my spaceships-and-wizards-and-fanfiction outpost. He talked about the 15 minute window of what’s hip now, and I really resent that tastemakers might be coming at this/us with a sort of “We never realized how awesome you could be reflecting our current trends and values!” attitude.
Similarly, man, all I need in a fellow geek is GEEK. Some of those people are not now, nor will they ever be geeks. They never had to confront isolation and learn to live as someone whose enthusiasms are outside the, and shunned by the, mainstream. Can’t be part of the culture without the experience.
In the end, yeah, the video really co-opts what being a geek is. But when geekdom’s 15 minutes is up and the mainstream decides that whatever is cool and starts making videos and tweeting about them, we’ll still be awesome. It’s not like we don’t know exactly how to cope when the cool kids ignore us.
Okay, here’s my take on this whole thing.
Like most controversial topics everyone is trying to generalize based on their personal definition of a geek. In the definition THEY supply, their first, and thereby implied most important, aspect is “A person who is interested in technology, especially computing and new media…”
In my opinion everyone is interested in computing and new media, after all, it’s on every cell phone that is purchased, and it’s not really interest. It’s ‘cool’ to have the latest and greatest. Now what would make them a geek, in my opinion, is whether or not they can tell me how it works! Can they tell me what happens behind that button they pushed? I’m not saying you have to know the specifics,to be a geek, but can you give a general description of what’s happening? If they can, well then, they have some real interest, not just ‘Hey, look at the cool new phone I got. I can text now.’
“who has chosen concentration rather than conformity;” That sounds kind of vague to me. Everyone concentrates on different things. Are they trying to say, ‘has chosen individuality over conformity’? I mean, watch Shaq on the freethrow line. He concentrates pretty hard, (lol, no offense Shaq, you are definitely better than you used to be), but, how is that effecting geek status?
“one who passionately pursues skill and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance.” I think this is where Wil and most geeks went crazy, let’s face it, D&D is the main place most geeks learn to use and increase their imagination, and until recently, it was certainly not mainstream, not that it is really now. It doesn’t take a lot of skill and imagination to text, or have your agent/publicist set up a facebook, or twitter account to keep you ‘connected’ with your fans.
Also, for me, the entire beginning of the vid is actually pushing geeks out of ‘Geek’dom. They are telling us what THEY don’t do, BUT that they are geeks anyway. Well, if you are a geek, and I play D&D, and I play Magic, and I speak Klingon, and I do all those things you don’t.….Who am I? What am I??
For a good long time I’ve had a clear demarcation between geeks, nerds, and dorks, and other folks. It seems that it was about five years ago when I heard so many folks saying the phrase, “Yeah, I was a nerd in school.” After talking to them about their nerd-dom, it turned out they didn’t understand what a “nerd” was. I made a few simple statements like, “Oh, yeah honors and APs were pretty tough at the time.”
“Oh, no, I wasn’t in honors classes.”
Then you weren’t a nerd. Period. You might have been an outcast, but nerd is a very special class, all to itself. Part of being a nerd is meeting a specific objective requirement — being booksmart.
Being booksmart is the first step of nerd-dom. That booksmartiness is what procures the social stigma that allows these folks to be nerds. People who claim nerdhood when not meeting this first step fundamentally misunderstand what it means to be a nerd. If they seem to align with the social stigma then that’s fine, but they aren’t nerds, but rather dorks — stigma without the smarts. Since no one likes to be called a dork, they grab onto nerd, because once you leave high-school, being a nerd isn’t so bad. In fact, the things that alienated you in High School are usually seen as assets outside of that social pond.
I was never a nerd, because I crossed over into the popular realm of sports. I was a scholar-athlete, so could never be a nerd, because I never had the stigma. I hear horror stories of maltreatment by my friends, and, at the time I had to put a stop to such treatment of my friends, and I got along better with nerds like Von and Virgil, or Tim and Jeff. I honestly had similar social footing, though, with booksmart-non stigmatized folks like Rhonda, Matt, and Tracy, even if I didn’t have as many interests in common with them.
The term geek has always, therefore, been a little confusing to me. It doesn’t mean “smart outcast”, or even “outcast”, really, because the one thing that a geek has is community. The Web is filled with a testement to geekiness. Many of the folks I talk to who are geeks have a very specific thing in common — marching/concert band. That was a huge community! There were dorks who were in band, and there were also nerds, but there were not very many non-stigmatized folks there. Band was a cementing social more for the outcasts, and gave some common ground to folks that otherwise might not have had such commonality.
I can consider myself a geek through my passion with gaming, not because there was any stigma with it. In fact, the only problem in school I had with being a gamer was from a very nice young lady who was concerned with my soul, and we had a few excellent conversations about it, but the guys on the football team didn’t care if I was a gamer. Geek = impassioned. You can be a Harry Potter geek, or a science geek, or a stamp collecting geek and never be a nerd, because being a geek does not mean that you are smart.
I’m a D&D geek, and I have friends who are Anime-geeks, Word-geeks, and Civil-War-Geeks. I think that this hits on something important. I’d never call Vash a nerd, but he’s all about his anime — he knows a lot about the subject. He’s who I consider an authority on the subject. That love of anime is a passion that can be shared by others, and he can find (and has found) a sense of community among other anime geeks. Folks who love Star Trek enough to wear their Starfleet polo shirt to work on the day of the film opening aren’t nerds, they’re geeks.
Specifically, you can’t buy into being a nerd. You either were a brain who was shunned or you weren’t. If you weren’t smart, but you were still shunned, then you were a dork (not discounting the myriad countercultures a la skaters, stoners, etc.). Being a nerd is exclusive, because of the stigma. Being a dork, likewise, is exclusive, because of the stigma.
Being a geek, however, is anything but exclusive. It is the cement that brings people with specific interests together. I will say, though, that just because you’ve watched a bunch of summer blockbusters that it doesn’t make you a film-geek. Geeks have a narrow focus, but a depth of knowledge in a particular subject. Again, that doesn’t automatically make them super-smart, but they are often experts. This, right here, the expertise, is where the line between nerd and geek becomes blurred. There are some geeks who know their stuff, and what they know is impressive. Now then, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are smart, and by the same token, if they happen to also be smart, it doesn’t also make them nerds. Many geeks that I know and about whom I have read are exceeding socially ept, and always have been, smarts or no.
All that to say is that there is no reason to hold onto your geekiness like it is a member’s only club. If that were true, you’d be the only member, because you’d have never been able to find out that another person was so interested in Star Wars or WWII or coins. Likewise, the term “geek” can’t possibly be a catch-all. A person may be a geek, but know nothing of the pop-culture stereotype of a geek. I’ve known a geek that could write a multi-volume bio on The Carpenters, and wouldn’t ever assume that she knew anything about another band, much less geek hallmarks such as Trek or Jedi.
Geek might be mainstream popular, as it were, but that is, in part, because it is being misused. Being familiar with tech does not = understanding how it works, nor knowing the details back to its first inception. However, that familiarity can breed a love for the tech, and with it, the depth of knowledge to become a geek. You can buy into being a geek. Anyone whose love of Harry Potter extends past the movies and just the words on the page was not a Harry Potter geek before 1998. Does that discount the folks who picked it up in 2001? 2003? Does playing D&D since 1973 mean that the kids who can quote the rules backwards (but only in 4th edition) aren’t geeks?
Well-written, Chris. I like, and partially agree with, the idea of ‘geek’ implying some sort of passion. I don’t, however, like the idea that any social group (i.e. ‘nerd’) has a rigid set of requirements. We’re all too concerned with classifying people and grouping folks for ease of definition. If someone told me they were a nerd in high school I probably wouldn’t argue semantics with them. “Nope, you didn’t take AP Calculus, can’t be a nerd.” That just reeks of exclusivity and elitism. Is that really the direction that social outcasts (or anyone, really) should be taking once they’ve moved beyond the school years?