The Geeky Misconception

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As a bonafied member of the "I was kicked around and ished on in <insert academic level> school" club, I found refuge and solace at a very young age in the fact that I could pick up a BFG and blow away enemies with a single plasmic hit.  While I may not have had the biggest collection of stickers and was considered a loser because I manufactured my own "Skip It" out of a decapitated doll and some rope, after school and especially on Saturdays "Astro Boy" was my BIFF (best imaginary friend forever) and I was part of an elite force of Decepticons threatening to take over the world!

It was during that time, that I found a camaraderie among a fellow infantry of "geeks" who without judgement, complex social rules and drama, just knew how to have fun.  

Fast forward a couple decades and I'm still around the same awesome type of folks except we've probably learned to dress better, our toys/action figures/comics now sit on chic contemporary shelving units instead of in white filing boxes and apparently the term geek as become inundated throughout every possible sub-culture.

Where my gripe lies is that suddenly wearing Converse, being into Twilight or lining up for free bags at Comicon makes someone a "geek."  I think I've heard the "geek" term used to describe every type of packaged person, to the point where when I heard someone say "I'm such a shopping geek!" or "I'm the biggest geek because I sit on Twitter all day" and "I know I'm such a Geek,  I got the <insert latest well packaged/marketed Apple>; product", it just makes me wish I could manifest some sort of magical Claymore to slay the blasphemous drones with.  This magical Claymore would of course protect me from any legal or karma type repercussions.  
All in all, it's not that I find it so terrible that the once considered derogatory descriptive term, is now the "in" thing, I just find it painstakingly annoying that it's become a blanket term for any and everybody who partakes in any sort of activity.  

Here are just a few of my rants in response to some folk's statements.  
  • NO!  Just because you're a mall rat (some of us are, I am a victim of that) it does not make you a geek! 
  • Playing Bejeweled on MSN does not make you a gamer or a geek!
  • Owning every Apple product and worshiping the plastic they're wrapped in doesn't make you a geek, it makes you an Apple Fanboy/girl. (which is fine but let's define the lines here)
  • Suddenly reading the only comic you ever got in your life, which is the X-Men issue they gave you at the movie theater, doesn't make you a comic lover OR a geek! 
  • Girls that say they love geeky guys, yet complain when their boyfriend plays video games all the time, need to re-evaluate what they wished for. 
  • and etc etc! 

I'm not pretending to know the ins and outs of what the classification spectrum is for geekdom, but I do know that the term has become overly saturated and most of the time it's nonsense.  

With that though, I'd like to send lots of love to the clans, teams, medics, healers, band mates and such that put up with me during times where I ran out of mana, ammo, had horrible aim, selfishly stole runes, KS (kill stole), and was if just for a moment, the biggest noob.

A comment from my favorite Gonz " Gleek is the newest interpolatiion of the word Geek. Geek has become the chic add-on to a guilty pleasure, distracting from the embarrasing (potentially) stigma of liking something. Insecurity is not a good look."



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