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?"
"Geek" in the mainstream is just a fad. Geek as many of you know it, can refers to the poor skinny white kid with glasses who have a hard time ever get any. What's the difference between something like The Real World (real show on MTV) or like Geeks in a Basement (something I just made up). It just exposes us to something that we're not normally accustomed to seeing, that's all. Isn't the reason why we watch tv? To be in our own fantasy world or to laugh at others?
Having a degree in computer science isn't necessarily the only way to get a computer related job when one graduates college. At my school, there are other computer related majors such as information studies (IS) and management information systems (MIS), which have different roots. I am a female MIS major at my school. The ratio of males to females in my major classes is around 60/40.
I could be a programmer when I graduate, though someone with a degree in CS would typically be more equipped to be able to do a better job than I am. I think most of the MIS girls here are going to be the project manager types as opposed to computar geeks (me). Most of the guys I know who drop out of CS go to IS or MIS (they mostly go IS because it has less prereqs).
This might be because of two definitions of the word geek. One is the socially bad one, of a some smart, but socially annoying guy hiding in his parents basement. The other, good definition is that of a generally tech savvy individual with wide reaching interests, and a short attention span for various forms of knowlege (grokk everything, and move on). The later is okay now, whereas before we were creepy.
/., non serverfarm) world.
Really, its sort of like saying "Yeah I hacked my box", where the non-geek will take it as what we take to mean "skr1ptk1dd13" crap, when we actually mean, "it didn't work right, so I rewrote my OS" We're so used to talking to ourselves, that we forget that people use these words differently in the real (non
Also, who said you have to be a techie to be a geek? I'm a philosophy geek first, and technology comes second. I think tech is just the primary obsession of geeks since it's easier to tweak/hack/control.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Well, the thing is... most geeks I know really wouldn't be interested in doing coke off of hookers' tits. Rather, they'd probably be looking for girls that like to talk (about non lame things), play games, or various other not-necessarily-that-geeky but geek-interesting activities.
Others would probably just be happy to have a woman look at them. You can pull the slashdot stereotype but there really are many varieties of geek.
What if the mains were going geekstream? Chickens be damned, I say!