![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pyatIf you’re reading this blog, you’re probably familiar with the Lemon Demon song, “Geeks in Love.” It was made into a popular flash animated video that was making the rounds a couple of years back. The lyrics themselves are fairly amusing, though the video bothers me a bit, containing as it does a great deal of hatred for “mundanes.” And while I often feel that way after a brush with marketing staff or alarming people on the bus, I recognize it as more a response to being uncomfortable with people who have different outlooks and goals and background than I do.
I should say that I don’t actually dislike the song, and I don’t want to seem like I’m over analyzing it. However, after getting the song stuck in my head a little while, I realized what else I disliked about it. The geek couple in the video is portrayed as liking random bits of media, and this seems to be the primary criterion of being a “geek.”
And when they hear our favorite bands, they wish that they were geeks in love.
We rattle off our in-jokes while they wish that they were geeks in love.
Novelty bands and in-jokes! That’s what it’s all about. And LOLcats, and dressing up like anime characters. Unfortunately, these are all very shallow things. Basically, if it has a wizard, robot, or superhero in it, or it was drawn in Japan, it’s “geeky.” Or Cthulhu. Cthulhu is geeky.
I think though, that the fan culture as a whole confuses the shibboleth for the substance. People will pile on identifiers and tags indicating that they are a member of fandom, but then not evidence any actual deep interest or critical appreciation of the things they are allegedly fannish about. To use the example of Cthulhu, I once met a man with a personalized Cthulhu license plate and t-shirts and plushies, who had never read Lovecraft, nor even played the RPG based on his works. His “Cthulhufandom” was a sort of formless, amorphous blob at the centre of his being, madly piping out references without context to a meaningless universe where…
… sorry.
I guess I am a geek. The biggest thing I’m fannish about it table-top RPGs. Rarely does a day pass in which I do not make reference to this interest. I know more about the history of the hobby than most people, to the point of taking road trips to look at otherwise nondescript houses in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. This is a fandom I developed through active participation and development.
The second biggest thing I’m fannish about? I have no idea. I don’t watch television. I read a single comic book, and it’s a comic book about table-top RPGs. I’m certainly not up on current SF and fantasy novels, though I did just re-read the Elric books. I don’t play video games at all, though sometimes I go though periods where I play an awful lot of Civ IV.
I shall make a list.
1. Table top RPGs. As noted.
2. George Orwell. I’ve read all his published works several times, along with some biographies and collections of his personal correspondence and BBC memos.
3. Steampunk, sort of. In the sense that I like and read 19th century speculative fiction. I suspect most Steampunk cosplayers don’t know H.G. Wells from Orson Welles.
4. Rumpole of the Bailey! Yes, really.
5. Hard-boiled crime fiction, or at least private eye stories from 1920 till 1955 or so.
6. Victorian England, and Imperial England in general, possibly related to #3.
7. Hard SF, though I rarely read anything written after 1990.
8. Historical curiosities, particularly technology
9. Furry media that intersects one of the preceding things.
So, like, if someone were to write a roleplaying game adventure about Rumpole’s grandfather (a badger) who travels to British colonial Burma to help youthful Imperial Police inspector Eric Blair (aka George Orwell, perhaps a kind of ferret) solve a murder, with the evidence based a curious idiosyncrasy of a Gestetner No. 6 typewriter, that might just be best thing ever.
I should say that I don’t actually dislike the song, and I don’t want to seem like I’m over analyzing it. However, after getting the song stuck in my head a little while, I realized what else I disliked about it. The geek couple in the video is portrayed as liking random bits of media, and this seems to be the primary criterion of being a “geek.”
And when they hear our favorite bands, they wish that they were geeks in love.
We rattle off our in-jokes while they wish that they were geeks in love.
Novelty bands and in-jokes! That’s what it’s all about. And LOLcats, and dressing up like anime characters. Unfortunately, these are all very shallow things. Basically, if it has a wizard, robot, or superhero in it, or it was drawn in Japan, it’s “geeky.” Or Cthulhu. Cthulhu is geeky.
I think though, that the fan culture as a whole confuses the shibboleth for the substance. People will pile on identifiers and tags indicating that they are a member of fandom, but then not evidence any actual deep interest or critical appreciation of the things they are allegedly fannish about. To use the example of Cthulhu, I once met a man with a personalized Cthulhu license plate and t-shirts and plushies, who had never read Lovecraft, nor even played the RPG based on his works. His “Cthulhufandom” was a sort of formless, amorphous blob at the centre of his being, madly piping out references without context to a meaningless universe where…
… sorry.
I guess I am a geek. The biggest thing I’m fannish about it table-top RPGs. Rarely does a day pass in which I do not make reference to this interest. I know more about the history of the hobby than most people, to the point of taking road trips to look at otherwise nondescript houses in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. This is a fandom I developed through active participation and development.
The second biggest thing I’m fannish about? I have no idea. I don’t watch television. I read a single comic book, and it’s a comic book about table-top RPGs. I’m certainly not up on current SF and fantasy novels, though I did just re-read the Elric books. I don’t play video games at all, though sometimes I go though periods where I play an awful lot of Civ IV.
I shall make a list.
1. Table top RPGs. As noted.
2. George Orwell. I’ve read all his published works several times, along with some biographies and collections of his personal correspondence and BBC memos.
3. Steampunk, sort of. In the sense that I like and read 19th century speculative fiction. I suspect most Steampunk cosplayers don’t know H.G. Wells from Orson Welles.
4. Rumpole of the Bailey! Yes, really.
5. Hard-boiled crime fiction, or at least private eye stories from 1920 till 1955 or so.
6. Victorian England, and Imperial England in general, possibly related to #3.
7. Hard SF, though I rarely read anything written after 1990.
8. Historical curiosities, particularly technology
9. Furry media that intersects one of the preceding things.
So, like, if someone were to write a roleplaying game adventure about Rumpole’s grandfather (a badger) who travels to British colonial Burma to help youthful Imperial Police inspector Eric Blair (aka George Orwell, perhaps a kind of ferret) solve a murder, with the evidence based a curious idiosyncrasy of a Gestetner No. 6 typewriter, that might just be best thing ever.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-03-17 09:40 pm (UTC)Maybe it's because I've gotten older and the circles I run in have gotten a lot older (most of the people I consider my peers tend to have about a decade or more on me), or maybe it's the internet, but geek isn't so much an exclusive club as it used to be. Geek popular culture is way more in the mainstream than it used to be; I know a lot of people younger than me who have watched an anime series or two and just about everyone I know younger than 25 has a gaming console. Not to mention that now almost everyone has a website of sorts thanks to social networking sites.
The concept of 'mundanes and geeks' tends to lean toward the generation before mine. If you were a Gen-X'er and you played roleplaying games, you were a fuggin' dork. These days, you can ask a group of people my age or younger if anyone plays WoW, and you will get a few people who will say they did or currently do.
I think the internet and early exposure to it has lead to traditionally 'geeky' interests being a lot more widespread.
Being traditionally a 'geek' however, that idea that one takes an almost scholarly approach to a segment of popular culture, isn't something that I ever see as being the majority of modern fandom. However, those guys who were in the past obsessive about baseball and keeping records of statistics are given a wider scope of media. Rather than being given baseball as the only option for this sort of behavior, he can follow tradtionally 'geekier' things as well, thanks to the exposure and access the internet gives to everything.
Basically what we're seeing these days is a homogenization of pop culture because of the internet. A former co-worker of mine, a woman of 45 years old, knew what I meant when I used the word 'Anon' in an anecdote. You're going to see a lot more casual observers and partakers of geeky pursuits like sci-fi and computer games vs. the core of 'hardcore' geeks who keep collections of old British fantasy novels and go to gaming cons; but things like Star Trek are still going to be seen as traditionally 'geeky'.
As a culture, we love labels and boxes to put ourselves and others in. And we love novelty. And nerd is chic these days -- it's desirable. It doesn't matter how deep you're in, if you've watched a few anime series on Adult Swim it's perfectly alright to say 'I'm a geek' as far as most people are concerned. I don't have any particular dislike of this mindset. I don't feel like my fandoms are being invaded or anything because I know that the title of 'geek' really was at best a loose one.
As for fandom culture itself, well, that's always been based on active participation. Or to put it simply, being a part of a subculture and being a geek aren't always the same thing. And I think it's always been that way.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-18 08:21 pm (UTC)