regarding the difference between embracing and exploiting geek culture

I've gotten a ton of criticism from people about the I Am a Geek video that launched yesterday, and I feel the need to respond to it.

After watching the video yesterday, I was impressed by the production values, and I thought it was really awesome that it was just one small part of a larger project. I love that the whole thing is supposed to encourage literacy (if you really look for the links) and intends to support a good cause. As a writer, I certainly want more people to be readers!

But as I watched it a second and a third time, something didn't feel quite right to me. I couldn't put my finger on it, until e-mail started flooding in from people who could: this was supposed to be about refuting stereotypes and celebrating the things we love, but it ends up feeling like we're trying to convince the Cool Kids that we're really just like them, and a promotional opportunity for celebrities who don't know a damn thing about our geek culture, and don't care about the people who create and live in it.

I was under the impression that this video would feature actual geeks who are important to our culture, like Woz, Felicia Day, Leo Laporte, and Jonathan Coulton. Instead, I saw a lot of entrepreneurs who have good marketing instincts, joined by a bunch of celebrities who are attempting to co-opt our culture because it's what their publicity team is telling them to do.

When you're speaking to people who read TMZ and People magazine, getting contributions from MC Hammer, Ashton Kutcher and Shaq is a logical choice. But when you're speaking to geeks, it's insulting to us to pretend that they are part of and speak for our culture. Those people are not geeks; they're celebrities who happen to use Twitter. Featuring them as "geeks" undermines the whole effort, because they aren't like us. I've been a geek my whole life. I've suffered for it, I've struggled because of it, and I've worked incredibly hard to remove the social stigma associated with all these things we love, like gaming and programming. It's like a slap in the face to be associated with these people who claim to be like me, and want to be part of our culture, but couldn't tell you the difference between Slackware and Debian, a d8 and a d10, or how to use vi or emacs. In other words, they haven't earned it, but they're wrapping themselves in our flag because their PR people told them to.

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 want to be clear: I wasn't misled, I think that the project just changed from conception to release. I think their heart was in the right place, and I think their fundamental idea was awesome. But what I saw isn't what I thought I was going to be part of. I thought I was going to be part of something that said, "Hey, I am a geek, I'm proud of that, and if you're a geek you should be proud of it too!" What I saw was more like, "I am using new media to reach people. Yay!" There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't mean the people doing it are geeks, and it's not what I thought I was contributing to.

There was a great conterpoint on Twitter just now, while I was wrapping this up. Wyldfire42 said: "Seems to me that we shouldn't be deciding who is or isn't a geek. If we start passing judgment, we just become the bullies we hated." I can't disagree with that, at all, and after reading that, I feel a little grognard-y. Who knows, maybe these celebrities who have recently shown up in our world love these things as much as we do. Maybe it's not their fault that they bring hordes of celebrity-obsessed non-geeks with them wherever they go. Maybe they're as upset about people telling them they're not "real" geeks as I am about marketers pretending that they are.

Maybe I'm overreacting, but I care deeply about my fellow geeks and there is a fundamental difference between embracing our culture and exploiting it. Please, come and be part of our culture. Read our books and play our games and watch our movies and argue with us about what is and isn't canon. But if you try to grab our dice, and then don't even know or care why we're a little touchy about it … well I cast Magic Missile on you, dude.

ETA: I've been pretty active in the comments of this post, because I see the same misconception over and over again, largely the result of me being unclear when I wrote part of this post.

Somehow, a bunch of people have turned into "Wil Wheaton says you have to do a, b, and c or you're not a geek, so fuck him because he's a dick."

That's not what I meant, at all. Most people seem to get that, but there's enough who don't that I feel a need to respond, in case you don't feel like digging through hundreds of comments to find my replies in there.

I never meant to say that unless you do a or b or c even ∏, you don't "qualify" for admittance to some super secret clubhouse where I am the gatekeeper. When I said, "…couldn't tell you the difference between Slackware and Debian, a d8 and a d10, or how to use vi or emacs…" I didn't mean that unless a person does know what these things are, they don't pass some kind of test. I was making an example, picking out some things that I happen to be geeky about, in an attempt to illustrate a point, and I did that poorly.

I was not trying to be, and I don't want to be, some kind of exclusionary geek elitist. That's just the most incredibly stupid and offensive thing in the world.

As I said in a comment somewhere in this post: Creating a world where my kids don't have to grow up being picked on for loving RPGs is awesome. But what I see – not just here, but in general at this moment – is a bunch of marketing jerks trying to take the things we love and turn them into something from Hot Topic. I didn't mean "you're not geeky enough…" at all, and I hate that people seem to latch on to that, because it means I wasn't clear enough. If these guys I mentioned truly love what we are, and they have been here all along (and I've just missed them for my whole life) than it's great that they're not ashamed to love the things we love … but I haven't seen anything to indicate that they genuinely are interested in the things we love as much as they are riding a pop-culture wave that's driven by Twitter's explosive and pervasive popularity. It feels calculated and planned out by PR and marketing people, and as someone who loves this culture, that bothers me. I didn't mean to imply that you have to meet this list of criteria to come be part of our club (vi, d10, etc) as much as I was attempting to illustrate a point: we know what at least some of those things are, and Cool Kids have teased us for it our whole lives. It feels to me like those same people are now trying to take our culture away from us and make a quick buck off of exploiting it, and us. It was not my intention to create some sort of Geek Literacy Test. That's lame. Like I said, all are welcome, but at least make an effort to understand why we care about these things.

Finally, I've been trading e-mails with Shira Lazar, who had this idea in the first place. She says:

Well, I think the hornet's nest was stirred up a bit. But that's ok. I rather open, honest discourse than people to feel shut off or alienated. That would be ridiculous and horrible.

Anyway- from reading the post and comments it's important off the bat for people to know this isn't a marketing ploy or some evil plan to take over the world. ha

also, It sucks that the d&d line got misconstrued. It's important to point out that a lot of ppl besides you in the video actually do play the game- the line was more to say yes lots of geeks play d&d but you don't need to play d&d to be a geek.

It really started as a fun way to bring people together, geeks of all extremes. To break down stereotypes. I consider myself a geek. Yes, the level of geekiness changes depending on the context. Amidst developers and my gamer friends, I might not know a lot but with some of my friends I'm queen geek. While I might not know certain things in certain situations, I still have a yearning and passion to know and learn and a love of accepting those geeks who do know it all. I was the editor of my high school newspaper and the first person to make it digital. I would hang out in my computer room at school until midnight working on photoshop and quark while my friends were out and about doing their thing. I participated in my high school science fairs and went to regionals twice. My mom is also a coordinator for children with special needs- i've seen kids that are alienated from their peers who need to know it's ok and they have a place.

While some of us have struggled and some have not, some know more, some don't- this was simply a video that was supposed to be a fun way to bring everyone together.

281 thoughts on “regarding the difference between embracing and exploiting geek culture”

  1. Shaq is not a geek. Shaq cannot complete an entire sentence without a myriad of grammar and spelling errors, much less make any logical sense. Shaq is not a geek. Having him in there invalidated the entire video for me, sorry.
    But I would like to make one point: you do not have to play D&D or have anything to do with d10 or d20 in order to be a geek. I am a World of Warcraft/Guild Wars/Spore girl who learned how to program at 6 years old and who also reads quantum physics for fun. I never got into D&D, but I understand the addiction and why you like it. It’s like why I wear a shirt that reads “Rogues Do It From Behind” and don’t understand why other people don’t think it’s funny. Cheers to real geeks of any background!

  2. Well, it goes without saying that I’ve played Magic the Gathering more than once, although these days I use the alias mostly to play online poker.
    I think that there is a distinction to be made between nerd and geek, and the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Playing MTG in the back room of a convenience store is nerdy but playing Magic Online makes you a geek.
    Speaking Klingon is nerdy, but if you learned it using the online speech dictionary, you’re a geek.
    Some of us are more nerdy than geeky and others the reverse, but the geeks make more money.
    Not all geeks play MTG or DnD, and they ARE both fun. So I really don’t take offence to the video.

  3. I think maybe the point would have been made better if we’d replaced the “I don’t” statements with “I do’s” or “I play” statements, and replace the ‘it’s A, not B’ type statements with something informative that doesn’t try to make it seem like knowing the difference is what makes a geek.
    I’m not going to say who is, or is not a geek just because of the image I might have of them from the media, but simply focusing on the wide range of things that are considered ‘geeky’ and the unexpected people who do them would have gone further to embrace geekdom.
    Of course, I’ve just gone back and watched it again, an noticed the statement in the video description that they are ‘satirizing the Web 2.0 / social networking, gadget lovin’ phenomenon that is now sweeping the globe’. So maybe I’m just missing the point.

  4. You(or anyone for that matter) don’t need to decide or declare who is and who isn’t a geek, people know who is who and what is what and the majority of the world knows a real geek from a pseudo geek. They know the difference between those who know what they are or someone just trying to create an image of themselves to capitalize on a new market for self promotion.
    Geek chic isn’t chic because it’s geek, it’s chic because someone is just trying to make themselves appear different or outside the mainstream when they really aren’t, they try to portray the image of marching to their own drummer when it couldn’t be further from the truth.
    In the end, a geek is who he is, and doesn’t do anything because they think it is advantageous to themselves, they do it because they want to and they truly don’t care what anyone else thinks because it doesn’t matter.

  5. Wil –
    In a somewhat unrelated post: thoughts on the recent Family Guy take on Stand By Me, or Peter Griffin in your lead role?

  6. Right on, Plainsong; sounds exactly like my tale of geek woe.
    I grew up a self-professed Trekkie (mom gave me presents at Christmas from Mr. Spock for several years), loved all sci-fi books, series, etc. Band geek, Biology teacher’s pet. Got to college, and never located the D&D folk, unfortunately, so I joined a sorority (go fig – I wanted something to do!)
    So, by the time I met my current husband (at a convention…both of us dressed as Klingons), I was in my 30’s and was solidly self-identifying as a geek (duh), but there was still no gaming in my life. He and all his gaming friends had moved on, he was no longer doing D&D or other games like Fulda Gap (although he still had all the game pieces, etc.), and they were now playing Magic. I tried that for awhile, but just felt like I was too much behind the curve, and just couldn’t get into it much.
    So yeah, geek? Absolutely. Gamer? Not so much. I’ve learned the language along the way, but I admit that I’ve only created a character once or twice. If people around here had more time, I’d be interested in doing a Firefly campaign, but now that we’re all becoming old geeks, things like jobs, kids, and advanced schooling (my personal affliction) have gotten in the way. We’re lucky if we can get together to watch something geeky, forget about roleplaying it!
    I love geek culture, wish I had grown up with some of the great gaming experiences and other activities that many of you share. I came a little late to the party, but it wasn’t my fault. At least I came, and am more than willing to represent. wØrD.

  7. I don’t think *any* group or subculture likes to see people who were in some fashion above or distanced from them embrace facets of teh culture later on as a means of jumping onto a trend because there is a popular movement in that direction. Whether it’s rich suburban kids aping a gangsta style and bumping NWA in sedans their parents bought them on their way to private school in their freshly-pressed do rags thinking how hard they are; or seeing kids kitted out in whatever Hot Topic is selling that month unable to tell you the first thing about Minor Threat or Bad Brains but wearing the patch/shirt/whatever. It’s the people who latch on to the superficial trappings as an image thing when something gains popularity and acceptance, without experiencing or even knowing what the people who were there at the time and actually had to put up with what went along with it. Seeing it boiled down to style, cleaned up, and marketed at the people who gave you crap growing up is simply not gonna go well for many people.

  8. I wouldn’t worry too much about the clique types. I wove around them for years.. I never LARPed, never been to a Ren Faire, never been to a con. There are all sorts of different definitions of “geek”. Its when people start thinking “Hey, I’ll be a ‘geek’ to make money and be ‘cool’ and get guys (or chicks)!” thats’s asinine. Geekhood, if you want to call it that, in all it’s glory, is abut being independent, enjoying what YOU enjoy without a lot of people being all hairy-assed snotty on you. The ones that are, I always figured, were just as bady as any other social “group”.. the whole ESSENCE of it all is “be yourself”. Just do what you enjoy, you know? Hell I don’t even own any geeky T-Shirts except an old DVD CSS shirt with the code on it I bought to protest the studios and help defray cost of those lawsuits. No .. I just wear plain ones. I don’t hang out at a lot of “gekky” websites.. though I like a couple for the news on new movies. I don’t really feel the need to show my geekhood or not show it, I just feel the need to be incredibly comfortable in clothing. That’s what it’s about, for real. Not this new sort of cultish stuff that’s sprung up lately (sorry Wil, if you’re trying to move some T-Shirts ;> )
    And if you lived near me and I had a current gaming group (I’m gonna have to DM for my kids, I just know it.. damnit), I’d invite you in any old time.. this is not an exclusive “Club”.. and the folks that think it is? Not real geeks. Just saying 😉 Independent minded people are just way better than those trying desperately to fit into some label.. and those trying to achieve some sort of geek “superiority” are a little weird. Like I said, I’ll take “Nerd” because I love computers and whatnot and gaming and know what a dwarf nuna is.. but I won’t fit myself into ANY mode.. and that’s always been the true calling of any awesome people I’ve ever found.. “geek” or not 😉
    There are friendly folk out there, is all 🙂 Just be yourself and someday you’ll find some gamers who aren’t a bunch of elitist jerks. 🙂

  10. FYI – This doesn’t come off as “geekier-than-thou” to me. Wyldfire42 had it right, though. It’s fine to be insulted, but not so much to say “you’re not a geek, *I* am a TRUE geek!”
    I don’t think you’ve done that here, but I can see why some might read into it that way.
    (@tsalaroth on twitter)

  11. This post just makes it all worse. You’re not geeky enough to belong to my cool-geek club, so get lost? Ugh. Talk about turning into the monster you fought.
    What happens when the rebels have nothing to rebel against? And identify crafted by defining yourself -not- something is inherently flawed. Just celebrate what you love, and if that attracts other people…isn’t that the point?

  13. There are so many different flavors of geek, it’s rather silly to try to keep it narrow to define just ourselves. I’ve never played any RPG, hate vi and emacs (prefer pico, joe, or ee), use fBSD rather than Slackware or Debian, etc etc, but I’m very much a geek. I wear it as a badge of honor. But people see me as “cool” so don’t call me a geek. I’ve been called a “techy” to avoid the apparent insult of geek. I’ve been to Trek cons (helped organize one for charity) but never costumed (the one time I did dress up for a costume contest at a Stargate con was because the girl I crushed on wanted me to).
    There are Trek geeks, there are general sci-fi geeks, there are computer geeks who aren’t Trek geeks, there are astro geeks who don’t “worship at the altar of Roddenberry” (name that reference!). There are chemistry geeks, biology geeks, physics geeks, who don’t do D&D or Quake or Doom. There are the geeks who were into LotR only in writing and geeks who read the books because of the movies (which made geekery cooler long before Twitter).
    You can’t appropriate something that, by its very definition, can be appropriated by anyone. Granted, most obsessive football fans won’t call themselves football geeks, but that doesn’t mean (by definition) they aren’t geeks. Is Obama cooler because he’s a Trekkie or are Trekkies cool because Obama’s one? Geekdom has become cooler in recent years (several popular characters on tv are geeky, and there’s a popular television show centered entirely around geeks and nerds). “Protecting” geek “culture” is about as useful as hardestcore Trekkies ripping down all of the new film. Let people have their thing.
    (And as a political blogger, I could certainly provide other examples of the emotional connection to protecting something you love just for yourself, but that’s just salt in the wound)

  14. Holy Krakatoa you set off a Geeknami with this one.
    “All your geek are belong to us!”
    I think it’s perfectly understandable that you and others have reacted with a wee bit of over sensitivity to this. After all – as geeks we’ve been programmed for years to react with the reflexes of a hyperactive lemur to perceived social threats. It’s only normal.
    But once this current “geek cool” fad has run its course – you will still be able to tell the true geek by talking to them for five minutes and I’ll still be able to kick your ass in Tecmo Super Bowl even if you have Bo Jackson. Yeah I said it! Bring it! Um…unless he’s in excellent condition…then its just impossible.

  15. I’ve played D&D, and MtG and a couple other systems as well, and I’m an immortal on a MUD where I code mobprogs. I grew up with computers and enjoyed working with my mother to program silly games in basic on our Commodore 64. We ran a BBS off our Amiga and had a stack of modems in the living room. I also have a Klingon dictionary, although the only phrase I remember is “Where do you keep the chocolate?” I also run a gaming convention.
    At any rate, I’ve always been classified as a geek and/or a gamer, and I really didn’t relate to that video at all. Of course, that’s nothing new to a geek, is it? The video didn’t describe geeks; it was an ad for social networking! Not only did it not describe geeks, it segregated certain kinds of geeks from this new cool geekiness. Again, nothing new to a geek.

  16. Attracting other *people* is awesome. Creating a world where my kids don’t have to grow up being picked on for loving RPGs is awesome. But what I see happening – not just here, but in general at this moment – are marketing jerks trying to take the things we love and turn them into something from Hot Topic.
    I didn’t mean “you’re not geeky enough…” at all, and I hate that people seem to latch on to that, because it means I wasn’t clear enough. If these guys I mentioned truly love what we are, and have been here all along (and I’ve just missed them for my whole life) than it’s great that they’re not ashamed to love the things we love … but I haven’t seen anything to indicate that they genuinely are interested in the things we love as much as they are riding a pop-culture wave that’s driven by Twitter’s explosive and pervasive popularity. It feels calculated and planned out by PR and marketing people, and as someone who loves this culture, that bothers me.
    I didn’t mean to imply that you have to meet this list of criteria to come be part of our club (vi, d10, etc) as much as I was attempting to illustrate a point: we know what at least some of those things are, and Cool Kids have teased us for it our whole lives. It feels to me like those same people are now trying to take our culture away from us and make a quick buck off of exploiting it, and us.
    It was not my intention to create some sort of Geek Literacy Test. That’s lame. Like I said, all are welcome, but at least make an effort to understand why we care about these things.

  17. Well, it is something of a sticking point.
    Now, the flipside of that coin is that you can also totally find the gems from those groups who actually are actively interested in learning what’s behind the surface of the culture they’re aping. So if this is what we’re getting, an influx of people who are superficially dipping into the Geek pool because it’s cool, wouldn’t it be awesome if every person who actually grew up a geek could find one of those teeming throng and actually pull them in? Okay, not like pull them into the pool, cause some people can’t swim. Or they’re in bulky costumes. Or just heavy boots (look, they’re comfy dammit). So while we may just have to grit our teeth, we can also keep our eyes out for the ones who are actually doing more than paying lip service.

  19. “I hope I didn’t imply otherwise.” –No you didn’t, don’t worry. I just
    wanted to make that distinction for any NON-geeks that happen to read your
    blog (hahaha?) So yeah, basically I just became territorial and wanted to
    defend my geekdom. 🙂
    BTW, I asked for a Wesley action figure for Christmas one year and I got
    Riker instead. Plz expln kthnxbai

  20. I’m still leaning pro-video on this one, I’m afraid. The issue I see with all these anti-video posts is that people seem to feel the need to create requirements for being a geek. Do you play D&D? Do you like Star Trek? Have you ever written a batch-file in DOS? I’m sorry, but thats getting too elitist for me.
    I’m a geek, I always have been, and I’m very proud of it. But if you start requiring that all self-proclaimed geeks to play table-top or pen and paper RPGs, to watch anime, to argue what the best sci-fi TV series has been, etc… then you’re just as bad as any other clique that segregates against people who don’t quite fit into their mold. And thats not what geekdom is about.
    *Edit* While I was writing this, others have made the same point I was trying to make, an Wil has responded. Move along, nothing to see here!

  22. I’m sorry..the words “Amiga” and “BBS” just made me smile. Just sharing.. beig Oprah-fied. God.. that was nice. Thank you 🙂 LOL!!! My Dad taught me a lot on Amigas.. used a video Toaster.. remember those? Yeah.. oh those were some days! Using my old 2400 baud modem to dial up to the local BBS to grab Commander Keen 🙂 Oh.. wow. Smiles. Alright.. shutting up. Sorry. I’ll go now…

  23. You didn’t come across as “geekier than thou” and I enjoy your candor about this topic.
    Tacking on supposed non-geek “celebrities” to a project blatantly calling itself out as a geek is odd to me. I haven’t seen the video in question (damn work computer is massively sloooooooooooooooooow) but I get the gist. Why not just leave it with you and Woz and Day in it?
    I have never found myself searching out the like of Ashton Kutcher or Shaq for geek advice or fellowship. Of course I also do not actively only search out geeks to befriend, but it just so happens that when I look back on who I have befriended they have been in their own right and way geeks. This makes me smile. A lot.
    I haven’t played D&D since … uh, well, lemme just say a really long time but I’d welcome the chance to do it again. I just don’t know anyone currently into it.
    I did get lucky with my new job and found a fellow geek in my department (she’s a TNG fan to fullest!). And as I became more comfortable at work I personalized my space with geek paraphenalia (geekphenalia?) This is who I’ve always been. This odd female with no siblings, who enjoys being alone just as much as being with friends, who can immerse herself in comicbooks for hours on end while “watching” marathons of X Files and/or Star Trek. I feel my interest sought me out.
    Well can I ramble or what?!
    Don’t answer that. :o)

  24. True story: they put one Wesley in each box, and like 12 Rikers.
    If it makes you feel any better, I NEVER got the Chewbacca I wanted when I was a kid.

  25. I am hard pressed to identify myself as a geek. I think this video may have been done in part for people like me who aren’t exactly sure where they fit in. I have used twitter since November 2007, so I definitely didn’t jump on the band wagon. I follow “geeks” such as you, Levar, etc, but I also follow MC Hammer, Nicole Ritchie and Oprah. I have always dated geeks, and have started reading graphic novels recently. But I also just absolutely love pop culture and social media. I think this video was trying to say that there are different parts of everyone’s personality. I feel like a geek on the internet, a chef in the kitchen and an athlete when I am exercising. We all have different parts of ourselves.

  26. Frankly, using “grognard” correctly in a sentence is all the geek cred this blog needed. 🙂
    I’m of two minds on this issue: as Wil said, I’ve suffered for being a geek. I was bullied, shunned, even beaten just for being different. Seeing this mass-market, sanitized version of what high-paid celebs (not you, Wil) think “geek” is, I find distressing. It’s calculated, cold, and shallow.
    On the other hand, having gone through all that, it’s nice to think that there might be some measure of acceptance at long last. We would be foolish to defensively hide the things we love from the “n00bs” in geekdom.
    That being said, I cordially invite Ashton, Hammer, Shaq, Wil, and other geeks and pseudo-geeks to come to Ohio to play some D&D. We can even snicker at the LARPers, if you really want. BYO Jolt.

  27. Also, there seems to be kind of a bias online that geekdom is primarily or entirely a function of being deep into tech–well okay, fair, all using computers–and closely after that, RPGs, genre fiction, and comic books, and pretty much nothing else.
    But aren’t there legitimately all manner of geeks? History geeks, film geeks, art geeks, what have you? I can easily cop to tech, sf, and to a lesser extent gaming and comics, but those are hardly the only things I’m a geek for. If Marina Orlova is in fact a geek (D&D cracks aside), it’s not because she uses Youtube, it’s because she’s a philologist, which if you ask me is one of the geekiest professions you could possibly pursue.

  28. How about we stop labeling everyone and just be. I am me and I like the things I like. You should be you and not me. Maybe our paths will cross in places or maybe they won’t.
    I have always hated being identified as nerd, or geek, or GenX-er, or “engineer but not a business person”, or “academic but not an artist” or “coder but not a designer” or whatever little (by which I mean “diminutive”) boxes people like to put me in. I refuse to be contained by the artificial constraints put around me by people around me (I have enough self-imposed constraints thank-you-very-much).
    Once a long time ago, Wil asked what name Doctor Who fans preferred to be called. I think the most common answer was
    Doctor Who fan”. If anyone ever calls me a “Whovian” I will bitch slap them so hard they will wake up in E-Space — and trust me — no one wants to go back there (actually I’ll probably just roll my eyes because while my CHR is probably 8 or 9, I did not take the “inappropriate violence” disadvantage).
    And in conclusion: I am not a number!

  29. I agree with “Plainsong” here and would also add you are a bit late to the debate, and it’s getting to be a bit like beating the dead horse. here we have a social variant of the arguement I’ve been apart of for years (girls and video games) in that you’re essentially agruing “I was a geek before it was cool.”
    We are so divided as a subculture its re-fuckin-diculous. I cannot speak for anything but from the perspective of the gaming scene, but its like “Oh well, you play WOW? youre not a real gamer” “oh you only play games 25 hours a week? Youre not a hardcore gamer” when the fact of the matter is, we are all gamers or, in your case, geeks. We needn’t subdivide further… and others are right… you only become the bully we dreaded in school.

  30. That’s because my family got ALL of them. One for each kid. I think mine
    ended up in decapitated in Barbie clothes and in bed with Riker.

  31. I agree on the part that after the 2nd (and 3rd, 4th etc) time it kinda get’s lamer and lamer and it becomes a promo for geeks being cool by using not so geek people and things.
    I however never got a chance to play D&D, which does look like fun, and I’ve never had a hard time like they show in some geek/nerd stereotype movies etc.
    I’m just a guy, who loves technology, computers, gaming, movies, learning and knowing stuff and sharing that with others. I call myself a geek (sort of) and I’m f-ing proud of it!

  32. I find myself wondering what planet people are on where they’re “unwelcome” to gaming groups?
    I guess my part of geek culture wasn’t as snotty because we’ve always been de-freaking-lighted to sit someone new down, teach them the rules. Heck, I’ve bought friends dice sets and books to get them started!!
    Personally, I don’t care if “the evil marketing people” are trying to take over “my party”. So what? I’ll just go next door where it’s quieter and I can watch my shows and read my books in peace. Sometimes they get it right and there’s stuff like the new Star Trek out, which I adored. Of course it’s all canon-messed-up; so what? It was fun. And then sometimes, they get it really, really wrong. Dungeons and Dragons the movie, anyone?
    I don’t care what people are into; if you self-identify as a geek, you probably are one. Computers? Great. Roleplaying games? Fantastic. CCGs? Well, it’s your money to waste, but good for you!
    But I’ll be perfectly clear here; just because you’re a geek and I’m a geek doesn’t mean I have to like you. Oprah could sit down with me and a dice bag and a Shadowrun 2 book, and I would still think she was cracked in the head and highly over-rated.
    And even if you’re not a geek, doesn’t mean you’re not invited to my house if you play nice with others.

  34. I take it that was the tradeoff back in the day? It hit automatically but could only do 5 damage? I think I’d take my chances with a to-hit roll.

  38. And klinqueen, right on to you.
    Newspaper, both high school and college. Band geek – by senior year I had four band periods, and I don’t even play an instrument. I own every episode of the original Star Trek series and every movie on VHS. I can recite Firefly. Love my Mac; hate my PC. (Also proud sorority alum!) I call myself a geek, yet have never gamed. It often seems like gamers look at us as pretenders but we’re not – there’s room here for all kinds of geeks!

  40. like several other people, i was almost as bothered by your appearance in this ad as by your post regarding it – i didn’t expect condescending and judgemental here
    not all geeks are gamers (or programmers or many of the geek definitions mentioned here); i’ve been a geek since my parents bought me a child’s compendium of mythology when i was about 6 and i first read about gilgamesh, odin, athena, etc
    i’ve also managed an EB, worked in multiple capacities at various internet companies, spent thousands of dollars on sf/f books and comics, attended cons, and learned among other things bits of windows, osx, linux, unix, c/c+(+), basic, machine language for a commodore 64, dos, fortran and cobol, etc
    i know enough cisco to not only program just about anything they make from a home router to the high-end network equipment my company currently uses, but also to be able to read a maintenance request/scope of work and understand what impact the work will have on our network, which of the 250,000+ customer orders will be affected, and create the appropriate network event with the correct customers in monitoring and those who will go down notified of the work – all while answering several other questions and putting out today’s fire or broken resource
    but other than the occasional game of backgammon or set, i am not a gamer of any stripe – i know what a d6 vs d10 is, i know that mtg is a card game with thousands of cards available for play, i even tried a larp once but although i was playing with good friends i still didn’t enjoy it at all
    so does the fact that i don’t game negate my geekhood? does the fact that i dress like a goth/rivethead and go out to clubs and have better social skills than too many of the geeks i know take me out of the running for major geekdom? both the advertisement and many of the responses to it raise more issues than they address – i think the problem is you’re looking for an absolute definition, when geekdom, like sexuality, runs across a broad spectrum – the kinsey report graphs that show humans aren’t straight or gay but fall on a scale that runs from straight to bi to gay could easily be applied to geeks as well

  43. Does this mean that there is actually a group of women who know what “-10 hit points for you, buddy” means? I miss those days. In order to continue to play with funky dice, I now teach middle school math. How geeky is that?
    I actually thought the video was rather funny, but that’s probably just me being shallow. It’s not as if I actually *knew* who most of those people were by their faces alone.

  44. “Nothing wrong with people coming late to the party, as long as they come. But acting like they came early and helped set up is not cool.”
    Exactly roninspirit!
    I’d kinda consider myself like one of the friends that came early, but just opened the chips and put them in bowls. I played D&D with my brother and his friends, and read a lot of the fantasy books. When I was in my teens I was very much in love with D&D and the general experience of being completely invested in the words that came out of the DM’s mouth. That was awesome!
    I no longer play, but still feel extreme adoration for the game. That one D&D quote really bothered me. It just put the whole piece under this negative umbrella for me from that quote on.
    I also agree with mightydarv
    “They seemed to focus so much on distancing us from what we supposedly aren’t that it’s like they dismissed what we are.”
    As I was watching it, I could hear my teenage “Geek Girl” voice in my head – yelling “real geek” “fake geek” “real geek” “real geek” “REALLY?!?”. Judgemental? Sure. The way it felt for me was that some of the video was awesome in it’s genuine message, but a great deal of it felt condecending and forced.
    Throwing a bunch of cute girls in low cut tops in there didn’t do it for me either.

  45. i. couldn’t. agree. more.
    i was just having a discussion with a pal earlier today, asking when it became “cool” to be a geek? and why i still feel like an outcast if it’s so cool.
    the answer is spelling out perfectly in this article. GEEKS UNITE!! SOLIDARITY, BROTHER!!

  46. PA’s Tycho had a news post about this sort of thing a couple of years ago. The gist was “Jocks used to stuff me into lockers because I played video games, and now they all own XBoxes. Do I get to stuff them in lockers now?” The video suffers from the fact that it doesn’t break the stereotypes of geekdom – it presents them as something that a few people transcended. Rather than saying we’re in solidarity with Simpsons Comic-Book-Guy, it specifically says “We don’t know that guy.”
    Someone needed to say “If you do live in your parents’ basement and speak Klingon, you’re still cool by me.”

  48. i. couldn’t. agree. more.
    i was having a discussion earlier today with a pal about when it became “cool” to be geeky, and why i still feel like an outcast if it’s so cool.
    the answer is pretty much perfectly explained in this article. GEEKS UNITE! SOLIDARITY, BROTHER!

  49. My point being, that it all depends how you define the word. It’s about identity.
    Now put those chickens back in their coops.

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