That article is terrible in pretty much every way possible. The content is bad, the structure is bad, the voice is bad, the layout is bad. I hate it all. The way I read it, men are dumb and evil for liking big fake boobs on a video game character and she’s unattached above it all by only watching movies for the hot men, meanwhile, the hunger games is a good example of critical media because it’s so blatant you practically trip over the morals. (Which she still misses and admits that she’s an annoying theater-goer who can’t sit still and just watch the damn movie to boot!)
Frankly, I don’t buy her being a geek either simply because it seems like the only thing she’s being passionate about is knocking down other people’s passions and there’s already a name for that: assholery. But if she says she’s a geek, ok. I probably won’t hang with her, though.
Generally, these “fake” geek/nerds are doing this for commercial gain. They want attention, so they publicly say they enjoy video games are something, and have themselves videotaped playing a popular video game badly.
This is one of those things where “I know it where I see it”. The problem we are having in this discussion is there is no cut and dried, set in stone definition for what a geek or nerd is. So it is possible for people to be a “faker”.
Is a specific woman a faker? Given the lack of a clear definition, it’s impossible to prove. This doesn’t mean you cannot come to a reasonable, non sexist conclusion that someone is faking it.
I knew a woman who was faking it. She, for whatever reason, enjoyed the company of male gamers. She would thus attempt to play the same games and keep up in nerdy discussions. The trouble is, she was terrible at the games, and didn’t know enough about the subjects to keep up.
Maybe. It’s certainly legit to criticize the gender dynamics in all these. But her dismissal of the entire genre isn’t, I agree, very interesting.
Again, fair.
Here, though: why would anyone give a crap about what her “geek cred” is? This seems like an entirely uninteresting question, instead being part of a pretty pernicious tradition of trying to exclude women from geek culture. (How often do you hear guys’ “geek cred” being attacked?)
Well, see, the defenders of the fake female geeks are often people who want the females to “be part of the community” for this reason. This is how blatant fakes get in the door.
Here’s an example of a typical “fake”. Beautiful young girl who is near-supermodel good-looking. She plays some FPS game or something, badly, on a youtube channel. She calls herself a geek and dresses down to look more “legit”.
Her comment feed will be inundated with both hardcore nerd/geeks who point out obvious faults in her act (maybe she has never watched Star Trek, or doesn’t get basic Star Wars references, or play any game more sophisticated than a basic FPS) and people who suck up to her and worship her in the feed.
Of course, they will slam the critics of her with charges of sexism, and then of course there will be nasty trolls who say horrible things cloaked by anonymity.
I came to geek culture fairly lately. It’s not that I wasn’t a geek before that - it’s just that until the internet told me so, I have no idea it was a “culture”. As far as I was concerned, it was just stuff my friends and I were into. I mean, people picked on me in high school, but they didn’t do it because I read science fiction. They picked on me because of my looks and personality.
Anyway, my exposure to this so-called culture has taught me two very important things:
Geek culture is huge, too huge for any one person to command more than a fraction of. Saying “you don’t read comics so you can’t be a geek”, or something like that, is nonsense, because there simply aren’t enough hours a day. No matter how broad I think my knowledge is, there’s always some field I only have the most superficial grasp of. And that’s fine. It also leads to the second thing I learned:
No matter how much you think you know about something, there’s always someone who’s a bigger geek. Always. No matter how deeply I delve into Tolkien ephemera, there will always be someone who’s memorized Unfinished Tales in Quenya who’ll call me an amateur. So why worry? If nothing I do is good enough, then anything I do is just fine.
As for hot geek girls (like the one I’m married to), I feel about them the same way Jews felt about Sammy Davis Junior: God knows why they wanted to join up, but now that they’re here we’re not going to complain about it.
The definition of “nerd/geek” has evolved since I was in high school/college in the late 80s/early 90s. Back then, being labeled a nerd or geek wasn’t something particularly desirable. Mostly it just meant you were a social reject who didn’t fit with mainstream culture.
Over the decade, the rise in popularity of technology as a viable and lucrative career path, the increased mainstream popularity of devices like the iPhone, the mainstream success of various science fiction, fantasy and comic book franchises has led to “nerd” or “geek” essentially becoming it’s own subculture.
It is, however, still a fridge and unconventional subculture. Similar to punks, goths, metalheads, stoners and others, nerds and geeks are almost never considered the top of the social food chain. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in school, but I’m willing to bet the prom king is still a conventionally good looking jock.
So like any unconventional fringe subculture, they are defined not only by their eclectic interests, but also by their rejection of traditional bourgeois values and pop culture. They are also extremely resistant to being coopted by traditional subcultures when their traditions and values suddenly become “cool” (or at least interesting enough to appear on mainstream radar).
Also because they’d get the crap beat out of them.
When does this ever happen, though? The only example I can think of is Colbert mocking Franco for not knowing the names of some Tolkien character, and I think Franco was really being mocked for being a massive tool.
Oh ferchrissakes. If blatant fakes get in the door, what are they going to do, eat all your Doritos? How incredibly insecure do you have to be to worry about people joining a nonexistent club?
OH NOES! She plays a game badly! First, why on earth are you watching a video of someone playing a video game, and second, why on earth are you watching a video of someone playing a video game badly, and third, why on earth are you worried about the person playing the game badly being “fake,” whatever that means, instead of worrying about the existential crisis that has brought you to the point of watching a video of someone playing a video game badly?
What act? Is she acting like a Stormtrooper? Is she impersonating John Cormack? What are you even talking about? This is ridiculous nonsense.
Well, yeah: sexists get called sexist, film at 11.
I think the assumption is that the “fake geek girl” is doing it because she sees the geeks/nerds as an easy source of attention. So the offense is partially based on the idea that “If I just put on a Superman t-shirt, all these guys will fawn all over me”. Not that the theory is entirely without merit (as referenced by above comments about YouTube channels and comments).
I think “fake geek guys” are treated with less hostility because there’s less benefit in it for them and therefore less reason to think that guy who doesn’t have encyclopedia knowledge of Batman is out to play you. They’re given more benefit of the doubt that they’re just new to Batman.
I don’t suggest that there’s fairness to this but I suspect it’s a good part of the mindset.
Important distinction between nerd/geek guys and girls.
A nerdy guy is typically perceived as intelligent, but also un-athletic, socially awkward, pedantic, physically unattractive and weird (at least outside their social circles).
A nerd girl is as attractive as any other woman. She might just wear glasses and have a penchant for going to conventions dressed as some comic, sci fy or fantasy character in a skimpy outfit.
IOW, a nerd girl can be Princess Leia in the golden bikini. But most nerd guys aren’t Han Solo.
I think it’s pretty common for any marginalized culture to resist when people want to co-opt some aspect of the culture for their own use. To use a personal example: I am a poet. Poetry won’t make you money and won’t make you famous and a lot of people hate it. And then there are the people who don’t read it, who know nothing about it, and who spend fifteen minutes jotting down something about their pain and the darkness of their souls and then proclaim that they are a tormented poet. This makes poetry sound idiotic and becomes the face of the art for many people.
Frankly, most people who really care about poetry rather want these people to shut up and go away.
There’s the aspect of taking credit for something you can’t do, of being fake about who you are, about making a mockery of people who are serious, and of being lazy.
None of this justifies the hatred. Nothing really justifies that. But I understand the annoyance.
But writing poetry well is a skill. Your awesomeness as a poet can be objectively measured through quantity and quality of publications, the kind of props you receive from others, and whether you are a professional or an amatuer.
Is “geekery” really the same? Seems to me being a geek is just about how intensely you consume “geek culture”. You dont have to produce anything. You are expected to know stuff, but it’s not like this knowledge can be “certified” in any meaningful way.It’s all relative. I can pass myself off as a “geek” amongst my coworkers just because I’m probably the only one who knows her favorite Star Trek NG episode off the top of her head. But I’d look like a poseur if I went to a Trekkie convention.
Furthermore, bad poetry makes poetry look bad to the uninitiated. How does a fake geek give geeks a bad reputation? Are there casting calls for “geeks” where the fakers are crowding out all the authentics? Are tech firms hiring people based on self-appointed geekery, only to discover they fabricated their credentials?
That’s how it used to be. But is it still? To me, the most defining part of hipsters is trying not to be “mainstream” and taking pride in liking something before it was “cool.” With geeks, much of the same thing is happening. Sure, you might watch Dr. Who now, but where were you when it was a cult show? What’s that? You haven’t even watched an old episode? You don’t know who Tom Baker is? How dare you call yourself a geek?
Personally, I’m not a geek. Or a nerd. Or a jock, prep, or whatever. I’m me. In the end, we’re all individual people, and these cliques are a very rough way of drawing social divides. Humans have a need to form groups, and defend those groups against intruders. It’s been going on since the beginning of the species, and it’s been the source of almost all our problems. The new “geek culture” is just another of the countless examples of this phenomenon. But if we could look past cliques and groups, we’d be able to see that people are people; each one unique and each one’s uniqueness uniting them. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. Goo goo g’joob, I guess.
Geeks like to obsess over things that the mainstream has, at most, only a superficial interest in. Thus, there will be geeks who obsess over who counts as a geek and who does not. They of course will invent all kinds of criteria to make their beliefs appear logic-based, when really it’s all ego and emotion. I don’t think we’re talking about a trait common to all geeks, only an annoying subset.
In the context of the article, I think it’s important. Her argument is “I am totally a geek, but I hate all this geek stuff. Isn’t that weird?” Ok so she explains the second half - why she hates all this geek stuff. But she doesn’t put forth what it is that makes her a “geek” in that it would seem interesting/odd/awkward that she doesn’t like that other stuff.
She does admit to geeking out over Hunger Games. All right, but in my un-knowledgeable view of the Hunger Games, that’s not a geek thing that is a popular juvenile fiction book that turned in to a very popular juvenile fiction movie so if you were at all in the age range for liking the books, it’s not very geeky (in the sense that geeky = non-mainstream?) to be into the movies.
If she was in fact an adult who came to geek out on the Hunger Games, in the same fashion as the Harry Potter geeks, then ok that’s geeky. But still, with just one particular geek-dom, that hardly a geek makes.
Why would it be weird for someone who is obsessed with Hunger Games to not like Dr Who? It’s not. I don’t know. Should we be shocked that a Hunger Games fan would rather text than watch The Avengers? shrug
She does explain that she doesn’t appreciate the lack of women in Dr Who and in The Avengers and that Tomb Raider is too misogynistic for her. That is understood. But that is why a lot of people, or why femenists don’t like this geeky stuff and that makes sense.
It would be more interesting and more note-worthy if she explained why she is a geek and why it’s so weird that she doesn’t like this geek stuff. Otherwise she is just a normal, every-day, popular-stuff-lovin person who doesn’t like this geeky shit and that is totally normal and not worthy of writing down.
See what I’m getting at?
I’m not asking her to prove herself just so she can be in the club, I’m asking her to prove herself to let me know why it is interesting that she doesn’t like this geeky stuff.
Well, it’s funny with poetry. Lots and lots and LOTS of people don’t get poetry, so the stuff the “fake” poets put out is what many people think poetry is. And there’s a famous aphorism that people are vicious because the stakes are so low. (I can never remember who said it and what the exact words are, but it fits! Aha, the quote: Wallace Stanley Sayre: “The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low.”)
So, I’m not trying to say they are exact matches, just that I think some of the impetus is similar.
Personally, I tend to get all excited any time someone shares one of my interests, even if only superficially, but that’s because I’m a dork. Which hasn’t been elevated to the high status of geek or nerd.
