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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.'"
Nobody apart from other geeks has ever appreciated an actual geek.
You do realize that "geek" does not mean "computer nerd" right? Calling oneself a "history geek" is perfectly valid.
If the hallmark of real geekiness — of America — is determination, then we seem too determined to have an entitlement problem.
LOLWUT? This statement makes no sense. It sounds like a perversion of a tea party truism. A salute to real American geekiness as our founding fathers envisioned!
In my mind true geeks apply an overabundance of detailed knowledge to an overly technical project that wouldn't interest the general population. Count me in.
-sent from my TI-92 graphing calculator.
-- Flame me and I will happily flame you back. Bring it!
Intelligence takes work? First I've heard about that. Sure, utilising intelligence to create new things, undertake science, refine and present new ideas, learning, building etc -- they all take work. I.e. it takes work to use your intelligence to its full potential. But I don't think that's the same thing as saying "Intelligence? That takes work".
And they will explain to you why your non expert test is really not a good way to test if someone is geeky in this particular subject. They will then spend an hour or so providing you with a better set of 10 questions and writing up a multi-page answer for each one.
That's when you know you are dealing with a geek.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Ok, being a bit more serious. here is what is going on.
Throughout the age of d20 and now d21 (how would that work?) in the prime material plane at least we've been making the transition from "ruled by braun" to "ruled by brain". In this new age STR, DEX and CON aren't important as they once were and so in this new world that values INT above all else, those that have the CHR, but not the INT have to use some WIS and lie about their character class. Because in the public eye, CHR is always important. Most people don't want to associate with character with low CHR scores, so they take people with a good mix of both and make sure they get to fight the dragon.
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.