The tagline on this site claims “Geek culture ephemera”, but obviously there are many aspects of geek culture I don’t cover. I really only concern myself with a little corner of the subject. It’s just too broad, and any blog that really tried to write about all aspects of geek culture would be too unfocused. The world of geekdom is larger and more inclusive now than it was twenty years ago. Part of this is likely due to the fact that the term “geek” hs changed a great deal.<\/p>\n
The original geek was a carnival performer whose act consisted of bizarre or grotesque feats, like biting the heads off of chickens. The term was roughly analogous to the term “freak” as we use it today. It was often used as a cruel slur to denote someone who was socially inept, repulsive, or otherwise unlikeable. From there the term lost some of its “freak” overtones and came to mean people who were simply social outcasts. Then it came to mean a very particular type of outcast: someone who avoids or shuns others because they are too busy with a cerebral or esoteric pursuit. Now geek is a label applied to many differing types of people who have no other common thread besides their interest in using their brains to amuse themselves. The “outcast” meaning is all but gone, and all that’s left is the stereotype that geeks have trouble dealing with the opposite sex.<\/p>\n
\nGeekdom, once perceived as monolithic, is quite diverse:<\/p>\n
What I find interesting is that for the most part a lot of these groups have nothing to do with each other, aside from the fact that they are all called geeks. <\/p>\n
The problem is that the term geek is now arguably a compliment, and being socially awkward but technically capable is now accepable. This means a lot more people are willing to call themselves geeks, and so the term geek is expanding to include all sorts of people. I think we’re even getting to the point where some geeks are just posers. More than once I’ve heard a famous musician \/ actor \/ athlete try to pass themselves off as a geek because they happen to play Playstation once in a while. Rob Zombie is the only one I can name off the top of my head, but I know there are plenty of others.<\/p>\n
I find this facinating because geek is a term that began as an insult, and ended as a simple label like “jock” or “socialite”. It’s a positive label that people desire to apply to themselves. <\/p>\n
So what is<\/strong> a geek? I tossed out a quasi-definition above: A person who uses their brains to amuse themselves.<\/em> That’s really broad and would likely include all sorts of people that are clearly not geeks, but I’m having trouble coming up with a good definition. Dictionary.com<\/a> has one, but it doesn’t really match the useage we see today.<\/p>\n Here I am, claiming I write about something which I cannot even define to my own satisfaction. So let’s hear it: If you were to put geek in the dictionary, what would the entry say?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The tagline on this site claims “Geek culture ephemera”, but obviously there are many aspects of geek culture I don’t cover. I really only concern myself with a little corner of the subject. It’s just too broad, and any blog that really tried to write about all aspects of geek culture would be too unfocused. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nerd-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}