Slashdot Mirror
Have Geeks Gone Mainstream?
An anonymous reader asks: "Recently, I've been seeing more and more news stories about how 'geek' has gone mainstream. There have been a slew of articles with titles like Geek Pride and Geek Chic, which discuss how movies like 'The 40-Year Old Virgin' and 'Napoleon Dynamite', as well as television shows like 'Beauty and the Geek' have made it cool to be a geek. Two pinup calendars of geeks have been released this year, taking advantage of the new mainstream interest in all things geeky. These include the Geek Gorgeous Calendar, which features women who work in the hi-tech industry, and the Girls of Geekdom Calendar, which includes geeks like 'Art Geek' and 'Movie Geek'. So if being a geek has really become cool, why has interest in CS as a major dropped among incoming freshmen and women are still a minority in computer and engineering fields? Is it cooler to pretend to be a geek (wear 'Save Pedro' shirts, etc.) than to really be one?"
This isn't hard....
1. Bring a geek is still not cool. Your best bet is to hang out with other geeks and try to be at least the coolest of the non-cool.
2. Enrollment in CS courses is down because there is no future in it. Everything you can learn in CS can be farmed out to some Indian tech worker for 1/10 th price of anybody in the US. They have all the theory and none of the experience, which is what today's company-on-the-go needs.
3. Girls aren't in technical fields because the educational interests in the US have been to neuter the school curriculum to make females feel more important. Instead of getting girls interested in science, it just means that Home Economics is worth more credit than AP Physics. This is important because girls suck at math and logic, but we need them to graduate for some reason.
The article blurb completely misses the point. I'm not going to waste my time looking at a bunch of supposedly "geek" chicks in a calendar or whatever so I didn't bother following the links.
HOWEVER, it's idiotic to say "are geeks acceptable and mainstream now?" just because ther'es a poster full of HOT chicks calling themselves geeks. (Or go the other way where you have your typical fugly girl who is only hot compared to your average fugly girl, but geeks usually have lower standards so as long as you're not 400lbs, you're a "hot chick").
The point being being a geek isn't acceptable or mainstream. Being hot and attractive is. Being attractive makes everything acceptable. Why do you think it's socially acceptable to be a drunk, a junkie (heroine chic anyone?), a dropout, a braindead social butterfly or any other number of things? Because as long as you're ATTRACTIVE, they're all acceptable.
Addicted to meth, but you're handsome or beautiful? Then it's okay. Addicted to twinkies? Go away fatty, we don't want to see you. Alcoholic? That's okay. It's a disease. you're sexy and we love you anyway. Gameaholic? You're a fucking loser. Go rot in the corner.
Personally, I don't see anything wrong with it. Physical traits are beneficial to society and being attractive is more valuable than being smart. The only people who don't know or believe that are ugly people who think that brains are really as sexy as they are told.
Brains are sexy - in a sexy body. Be as smart as you want, but if you have fugly teeth or are fat or are goofy looking - you're still disgusting. And that's the way it should be.
And no, I'm not trolling. Don't mod me down just becuase you're afraid to confront the truth about the world.
This kinda bugs me. Why is CS ``IT?'' Computer Science is not ``IT'' - it's much closer to Mathematics, albeit in it's code-monkey incarnation it is purely applied rather than theoretical. Sysadmin/Netadmin is IT. Software Engineering is not IT. Algorithm design is not IT. Knuth is not IT. DJB is not IT. Djiksta is not IT. Steve Jobs is not IT. Eurgh.
IT is just silly buzzword used by PHBs to collectively group anyone who can do more than play Sollitaire on a computer. Ja, und?
most of the MIS girls here are going to be the project manager types as opposed to computar geeks (me).
Very rarely you will see plain MIS graduates becoming project managers. Software engineering project management requires much more skills that all those poorly designed cs/management MIS undergraduate programs have to offer. I would say that a CS/EECS/EE U/G with MS in MIS sounds more decent. Still employers would prefer a MS in CS or Phd or even better someone with many years of experience to manage their projects.
IMHO MIS programs are a way to make ppl who do not have the ability to be real engineers into studying a computer related field. MIS u/g are not computer scientists/engineers but poorely equipped plain management graduates. CS is not something you learn in 5-10 light courses.