Geekdom in its various permutations

[tritoneclarinet]

I will freely admit to anyone that I am a geek. It's fairly obvious if you know me even slightly, and I'm justly proud of that fact. And yet.... It's such a stereotypical term for something that spans a wide spectrum of interests

Comments

[avengangle]

Oh, lord, yes. I am driven crazy by, say, the channel G4, which seems to think that all 'geeks' are exactly the same: male gamers. I am not a gamer, although I certainly qualify as a geek. Also, I am not male. As a matter of fact, I heard that at one point in time, there were more women playing World of Warcraft than men, so their horribly sexist advertising is a load of crap. (Not WoW, although theirs is; I meant G4's.)

The guy who lives upstairs from us is a male gamer, but he certainly isn't a geek. He just isn't. (Takes one to know one.) Ben is a geek, and he might be a bit of a gamer, but his interests primarily lie in serious, crazy high-level computer stuff. Also in f/sf books. (And he's seen every single episode of ST:TNG, which means . . . something.)

I'm a music geek, and a sf/f books geek, and a literary geek, and a very little bit a computer geek . . . but I'm not a band geek (I don't live in my marching band uniform) or, as I mentioned, a gamer. (I like my Wii, but nothing that actually involves, like, long, protracted fantasy-role-playing stuff.) But I'm definitely a geek, as anyone who's ever met me would say. (Also that smart and not knowing when to shut up thing.)

But yes. I'm annoyed as crap by the concept of the One True Geek, because it isn't me, and yet I'm certainly a geek.

[tritoneclarinet]

Gamers are a category in and of themselves. Video games are so common as to be culturally accepted as the norm. Certain varieties are more normal than others, in my view. Consider a sports game versus an RPG, for instance. But even in that case, WoW has shown us that even MMORPGs are no longer the sole realm of the geek anymore.

I agree with you about the definitions of music geek versus band geek. I'm not so much into marching band (heh... My high school band sort of shuffled through the memorial day parade and my college didn't have football.), but I'm definitely a concert band geek, as well as many other genres.

Sometimes I feel like the concept of One True Geek was created by those geeks that are interested in less commonly accepted things that are often made fun of by the public, such as LARPing, or that become obsessed with their fixation to the point where it affects their ability to communicate with people not directly related with their interest. Thus they tend to hide behind that moniker. Sad, and frustrating at the same time because often if they weren't so superior about their geekiness, I'd actually want to talk to them and learn about what they like. It's been my misfortune to come into contact with some of these people in the last couple of years or so, and I haven't been impressed in general.