Are Fake Geeks Dooming Real Ones?

mattnyc99 writes "In the wake of the Best Buy 'geek' trademarking and Miss USA calling herself 'a huge history geek,' writer (and self-proclaimed geek) Eryn Green has an interesting piece for Esquire on how so-called 'geek chic' is pervading the culture so much that no one appreciates an actual geek anymore. From the article: 'The difference between brains and beauty is that you're more or less born into good looks — entitled, if you will. Intelligence? That takes work. If the hallmark of real geekiness — of America — is determination, then we seem too determined to have an entitlement problem.'"

Comments

Re:Are we assuming

[Americano]

isn't a geek just because she's a girl or is it because she is attractive?

I'm sure there's a little bit of misogyny mixed into these responses, but I think it's mostly because most of the people assuming this imagines that every participant in a beauty pageant is dumb-as-rocks. (See: Miss South Carolina's response about maps & education several years back.)

Comically, many of the same people who make that assumption will also turn around and express their titanic levels of outrage over being stereotyped when people generalize them based on a comparison with a single data point about the neckbearded computer geek they once knew.

Having been to a 15-20 pageants as a member of the color guard presenting & retiring the national colors when I was in college, I had the opportunity to meet quite a few pageant participants (and yes, it was pretty great being a 19 year old in uniform surrounded by a bunch of 18-25 year old pageant contestants). Some of them were pretty dumb, and talking to them was tremendously un-fun. Others were quite sharp, and a lot of fun to talk to - quite a few were college students trying to win some scholarship money for school.