And maybe the killer is some kind of steam-powered robot?

[pyat]

If 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.

Comments

[paka.livejournal.com]

I always liked the Rumpole stories. I think they are part of why I hate most crime lab dramas so much - in Rumpole stories, there was always some really neat little detail of how blood pools when bodies are left in one place, or careful study of blast patterns, or something really physical and thought out as a clever twist to murder mysteries, and by contrast American dramas seem to be all shouting and bullying and deep psychological stuff and lab work is only touched as super-science - it may as well be Star Trek with a policework gloss.

I don't really like the geek thing. I feel like I'm not a geek because I'm not one of the well-paid tech professionals and because I'm not really interested in video games. The contention you hear repeated a lot that "geeks" are well paid and winning just reminds me that I'm poor and therefore out of place, not actually a geek. So what that makes me is at most charitable a sort of dorky looking hobbyist, and at least charitable interested in a batch of stuff which is of no concern to anybody. I usually feel as out of place among "geeks" as among "mundanes," which I guess could be a good thing because it forces me to think on a more personal level or whatever.

I think every group has its own really superficial thing. The same way there's this superficial social lubricant of beer and football for a lot of the "mundanes," there's the superficiality of geekdom. Hard to explain... but the same way everyone has a favorite team or whatever and won't ever seem to explain past performance in terms of coaches and historical record, you have this veneer of Monty Python, Cthulhu as the only Great Old One anyone can name, and so on as a social lubricant in different circles.

And that's my over-long response.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

My breakdown would probably go something like this:

1. Japan (which includes "high" as well as "pop" culture), including the language

2. Chat-based RPGs, with the emphasis being on interaction rather game systems.

3. Certain odd music: jazz, experimental sounds, anything with drum machines in it, soundtracks for films, records released in limited editions of 10 by a guy in his basement, etc.

4. Music journalism, esp. as it relates to #3 above, not stuff of the "Britney's baby!" variety.

5. Hard science

6. Movies, movie-going and movie criticism

7. Tech stuff

8. Buddhist thought and practice, albeit not in a proselytory fashion

9. General crate-digging, which also goes into #3 above.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

That attitude was one that I had when I was 14. It was basically my equivalent to getting a mohawk or whatever. I feel a bit embarrassed when I see grown adults express it today.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

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 evidence based a curious idiosyncrasy of a Gestetner No. 6 typewriter, that might just be best thing ever.

It would seem I'm writing the wrong novel.

[hannahmorgan.livejournal.com]

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 evidence based a curious idiosyncrasy of a Gestetner No. 6 typewriter, that might just be best thing ever.

Oh, Piet, this made me LOL! Although I cannot relate to most aspects of your geekdom, I sure do appreciate your writing style. Thanks! :)

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if I'm playing devil's advocate or not...but I think that pop culture Cthulhu might be different from Lovecraftian Cthulhu in almost the same way that furry vixens are different from rl female foxes. I also think it's possible to be a fan of one and not the other.

(Although pop culture Cthulhu seems to amount to 'tentacled monster,' so it may as well be 'scary octopus' or 'flying spaghetti monster' rather than bear the name Cthluhu.)

[j-cat.livejournal.com]

I think though, that the fan culture as a whole confuses the shibboleth for the substance.

Holy crap that was a brilliant turn of phrase. Well said sir. Well said.

On account of sickness my head feels stuffed with cotton and so I can't quite find the words to articulate what I find really interesting about the first half of this post other then it's about how we construct identity.

I find the... a... huh... I find a number of 'geeky' fandoms' tendency to identify or turn their noses up at 'mundanes' somewhat troubling.

I worry that in an attempt to celebrate how they're 'different' from other people (a perfectly reasonable and healthy thing) they may also loose sight of what they have in common.

Actually I think it really just rubs me the wrong way to identify people as 'mundane.' Really, how snobby and pretentious can you get?

Huh... moving away from that rant at light-speed, Pyat, if you're still looking for things to write about I would be fascinated to hear your thoughts on constructing identity in the context of... well... any number of fandoms or communities. Anything that catches your fancy really.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Lot overlap with my own personal list. I've been fascinated with Japanese genre films, anime , music and manga because it seems like a the safety valve for a very conformist culture. As a result a lot of it is amazingly wild and creative. I used to read read Japanese plane watching magazines(Koku-Fan) not because I could read them, but because they were this window into some kind of sacred obsession. And lots Japanese pop culture tracks the same way.

[relee.livejournal.com]

I would suppose that geekiness doesn't come from the randomness, but from the understanding. If something is difficult to understand, yet you understand it, then it's geeky, and you're a geek. For some people it's something to be proud of, and for others it evokes a sort of elitism. A sort of "Those pitiful fools don't understand the TRUTH!" that makes 'normal' people 'less' than the observer.

Some people are so ostracized for their individuality that they don't know any other way to socialize, and they ostracize other people for not being more individual, like them. Then they wander, alone, not knowing why people grow to hate them more and more, and they themselves grow to hate people more and more, never knowing that they're doing something wrong, because nobody ever did something right for them, so long ago.

Sometimes, people like that find other 'geeks' and 'nerds' and make some kind of connection, something somehow different from the way other people have treated them. They cherish this interaction more than anything, and this can lead them to act like they're into things that the other geeks or nerds are into, just to belong to something more than themselves for once in their lives.

Or so I have observed.


C'thulhu is geeky because all he ever does is sit in his tomb at sunken R'yleh making LOLcats and posting on chan sites.

I actually read The Call of C'thulhu last year, after a lot of procrastinating. Good golly Lovecraft is racist! And most strangely, he's specifically racist against people like bossgoji! Isn't that weird?

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

The meaning of geek has changed a lot. I remember the first geek tests that were available over Gophers could double as entrance exams for upper division major programs in the sciences or mathematical fields. These days, the tests are more about which shows you watch obsessively instead of how much esoteric knowledge you collect. Also, being outside of the mainstream has become mainstream these days. It's getting so that real rebels drink Bud Light while watching Monday Night Football while hoping that practicioners of arcane martial arts don't use them for practice.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I think you're right. I'm partly just being curmudgeonly on that point, and partly just doing the whole "I knew Cthulhu before he was cool!" thing.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Thank you, ma'am! :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I think every group has its own really superficial thing. The same way there's this superficial social lubricant of beer and football for a lot of the "mundanes," there's the superficiality of geekdom

I agree, but I think for a lot of "geeks", that's all there is. And probably for a lot of "mundanes", too. You can really like golf, but, honestly there's not a lot there that goes beyond the superficial appreciation.

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

It has been my experience that anyone who ever refers to people outside their particular geekclave as "mundanes" are themselves the most mundane individuals you'll ever meet.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Well, sure, if you want to sell one copy... :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Actually I think it really just rubs me the wrong way to identify people as 'mundane'

Yes, definitely. Especially as the various fandoms seem to be expanding to almost become a new default society. Harry Potter outsells legal thrillers and action movies by a considerable margin.

Anything that catches your fancy really.

Well... thank you!

[pyat.livejournal.com]

If something is difficult to understand, yet you understand it, then it's geeky, and you're a geek.

Well, sure, but then why are we sniffy about someone who can reel off baseball player stats?

Is bossgoji black? Lovecraft was sort of uniformly racist, mind you. He didn't even like Italians.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I would not be surprised.

[relee.livejournal.com]

There is such a thing a baseball geek, but they don't usually get to have that touching moment of socialization I mentioned, because sports are often linked with that ostracization I mentioned earlier. You could say they're just 'different', but they're also different in a different way that makes them different, you understand?

As for BossGoji, she's said before that she's a mix of two races, and I forget exactly which ones and don't want to mispeak, but they were the same as the badguys in the Call of C'thulhu. Well, most of the badguys, not the eskimos.

I suppose Lovecraft had more variety in his racism outside of that particular story.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Lovecraft was really bad at being a racist. I mean, yeah he mouthed the old American things, claimed Mein Kampf was full of good ideas, and shrieked when he was in a marketplace full of Black guys, but by the same token his wife and one of his best friends were Jews, one of his other best friends was very vocally Irish, and he thought the New Deal was a lot better than Mein Kampf. My gut feeling is that HPL was a bit of a drama lama, so some of the racism was general xenophobia (oh crap! There are people from places other than America or Britain! There are people from places other than Providence!) and the rest was just stuff he did for image, sort of like the intentionally archaic grammar.

[jirris-midvale.livejournal.com]

The title 'geek' has gone through a lot of change in the last decade. About 99-ish, it generally referred to the guys who had VHS collections of sci-fi shows or japanese cartoons, played D&D or Vampire or Magic, and more than likely had a website about it. Add to this things like Ham Radio, interest in non-windows/apple computers, and other more esoteric hobbies.

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.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

Nowadays, everyone is a nerd.

A GOOD Song About Geek Love

[ankhorite.livejournal.com]

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

I'd refine that a bit: they are themselves the most compulsively conformist individuals you tend to bump into. They're the first ones to admit geekdom -- and the last ones you want as the poster children for it.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

You echo my thoughts so well on all fronts!

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

I don't mind seeing adults be geekish -- rather, I mind when they have no sense of where it begins or ends, or when the party's over. A man twice my age who dresses up as Gandalf, I don't have a problem with. If he gets into a bitter argument with someone else dressed the same way about whether or not this or that detail is book-ish or movie-ish or not properly Gandalf-ish ... that's when a chill pill prescription might be a good idea for all parties involved.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

I've already commented elsewhere in this thread about this (heck, I wrote a whole NOVEL (http://www.genjipress.com/writing/4dayweekend) that was essentially a commentary on the subject), but here goes some more.

Fandoms by and large define themselves by what they are *not* just as much by what they *are*, and I think that's part of the problem right there. I rarely identify myself as a fan of X show or Y continuum for this reason: the minute I do, I can hear just as many doors slamming shut as there might be swinging open.

The whole bit about "the mundanes" is part of this -- because if there's one thing NO fandom wants to be part of, it's mundanity. Meaning life lived without any sense of ... well, fannishness, I guess. But I think it's really more about a misplaced (more like unrefined) sense of resentment against people who ruin their fun, whether that's part of the agenda or not.

I had some firsthand exposure to this not long ago, when I was over at my parents' place and a friend of theirs dropped in for dinner. (My parents know about my above-mentioned interests and while they don't share them are certainly wise enough not to give me silly grief about them.) Said friend spied me with one of the manga I had brought with me -- it was an untranslated item I was trying to read through for the sake of an article (http://www.genjipress.com/2009/02/tamayura-douji-vol-1-eriko-san.html) I was drafting -- and he made some all-too-easy-to-interpret-as-snide remark about grown men (I'm 37) reading comic books. I could have come right back at him with an equally sharp set of remarks about how graphic novels are taken seriously as literature in other countries, or some other remember-the-Alamo level of defensiveness (even if all I'd really achieve there was the creation of an anecdote I could then replay for the sake of other fans who weren't even there at the time). I chose instead to change the subject.

It's not a question of being a fan vs. not being a fan, of being mundane vs. being a Trekkie / Whovian / Babster / otaku. It's about knowing that everything has a place, and that part of that is also accepting that not everyone else in the world has to have a hobby at all, least of all yours.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

The problem with the "solidarity amongst nerds" thing is something I experienced for myself a ways back, when I was 19 or so. I was then friends with a guy with whom I shared a great many tastes in music and books and so on. It took a couple of really ugly scenes in public to realize that just because someone shares your tastes in things, that doesn't make them a good person or worth hanging out with.

I get the impression there are a lot of people in fandom who haven't learned this lesson sooner rather than later.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I was just mostly seeing the "mundane bashing" as childish.

[mmsword.livejournal.com]

Ah, Geek Social Fallacies, how we love thee.

[relee.livejournal.com]

I wasn't suggesting it was a good thing or a bad thing, just explaining how it worked, according to my observations and my understanding of psychology and sociology.

But yes, that is a part of what I was saying.

"Sometimes, people like that find other 'geeks' and 'nerds' and make some kind of connection, something somehow different from the way other people have treated them. They cherish this interaction more than anything, and this can lead them to act like they're into things that the other geeks or nerds are into, just to belong to something more than themselves for once in their lives."

Sometimes the social connection I mentioned here ends up being with someone who is generally a bad person.

[relee.livejournal.com]

Reading Call of C'thulhu, it didn't seem like he was racist the way people are nowadays. I mean, it didn't seem like he hated any of those people, he just didn't see them as people. You can like cats without thinking of them as people, right?

[pyat.livejournal.com]

All good points, Jirris! I have nothing very clever to say in reply, but wanted to let you know I'd read your comment. :)