Are Fake Geeks Dooming Real Ones? 492
mattnyc99 writes "In the wake of the Best Buy 'geek' trademarking and Miss USA calling herself 'a huge history geek,' writer (and self-proclaimed geek) Eryn Green has an interesting piece for Esquire on how so-called 'geek chic' is pervading the culture so much that no one appreciates an actual geek anymore. From the article: 'The difference between brains and beauty is that you're more or less born into good looks — entitled, if you will. Intelligence? That takes work. If the hallmark of real geekiness — of America — is determination, then we seem too determined to have an entitlement problem.'"
When I think of the prototypical geek (Score:5, Interesting)
I think of someone who is socially awkward, who also has an unnatural, maybe unhealthy knowledge of some subject in depth. Most often it is something on the outskirts of popular culture (Star Trek/Wars, Anime, 14th centuray blacksmithing techniques). I think the later part of my perception is the more important one.... passion for something not too many people really care about. I don't see why you have to be socially awkward to be a geek.
Personally, I'm well adjusted, good looking, have friends, a girlfriend, no problem performing or public speaking. Yet I program microcontrollers, buy a Kinect (or 3) just to hack it, watch anime, and here I am on Slashdot. I would absolutely consider myself a geek, and I have no problem considering someone a geek just because their unhealthy obsession isn't tech related.
Re:Nothings changed (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. Despite what navel-gazing corners of the internet have tried to convince ourselves, the only people who think geeks are cool are geeks. The average person still thinks of "geek" as a derogatory term. Just a few years ago, I referred to myself as "such a geek" for something ridiculous I had done and the goth girl I was seeing at the time looked sympathetically at me and said (in all sincerity) that I wasn't a geek and I shouldn't be so hard on myself. It was like I had slammed my head against the wall repeatedly while saying "I'm such a loser! I'm SUCH a loser!" and she felt compelled to assure me that I was not this terrible thing I was calling myself.
Of course, the number of people who currently self-identify as geeks is large enough that it can still help someone have a career if they ride the wave just the right way and at the right time (and especially if they have breasts - it seems to work for every female who has ever been on G4TV, for example).
Re:Are we assuming (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure there's a little bit of misogyny mixed into these responses, but I think it's mostly because most of the people assuming this imagines that every participant in a beauty pageant is dumb-as-rocks. (See: Miss South Carolina's response about maps & education several years back.)
Comically, many of the same people who make that assumption will also turn around and express their titanic levels of outrage over being stereotyped when people generalize them based on a comparison with a single data point about the neckbearded computer geek they once knew.
Having been to a 15-20 pageants as a member of the color guard presenting & retiring the national colors when I was in college, I had the opportunity to meet quite a few pageant participants (and yes, it was pretty great being a 19 year old in uniform surrounded by a bunch of 18-25 year old pageant contestants). Some of them were pretty dumb, and talking to them was tremendously un-fun. Others were quite sharp, and a lot of fun to talk to - quite a few were college students trying to win some scholarship money for school.
Re:History geek, uh huh..here's a translation (Score:2, Interesting)
Slashdot-speak: "I'm a geek."
English: "I'm a sexist prick who works for a financial company and because I program, I consider myself a geek, even though I'm contributing nothing to geekdom."
Seriously, I'm a fucking neuroscientist with a PhD and _no one_ I know considers themselves a geek, including physicists, chemists, and computer scientists. It seems only suburban assholes who work with computers for a living at corporate bullshit jobs are "true geeks."