free-geek

I’ve been noticing an interesting trend these days. The backlash against the popularization of nerddom has finally started to break through the surface in a big way, which was inevitable, but interestingly, it’s come in the form of a specific backlash against the rise of the nerd girl.

The latest example came to light, thanks to my friend Church, in the form of an editorial over at Flickcast. I suggest giving it a read before moving forward, it isn’t long.

Now, before I go further, let me deal with something up front. Are there women out there who are using the nerd card to try and get some fame and attention? Probably. Is that editorial, and all the other similar pieces that have been popping up these days, gross over generalizations that serve little purpose beyond painting their writers as bitter elitist people? Probably.

Off the top of my head, I see two fallacies at work in the above piece (and in the vast majority of similar rants).

1) The equating of nerddom with fandom, or at least using fandom as the measuring stick for nerdity.

To say that someone isn’t a nerd if they aren’t willing to miss family functions because watching some TV show is more important, or take time off work so they can sit in line waiting for some movie to come out, is to take an incredibly narrow definition of nerddom. It also takes a very old and antiquated view of nerddom. I’m not a nerd because I use On Demand, or have a Tivo? I’m not a nerd if I’ve cancelled my cable subscription because I can just torrent the shows I want to watch the next day? I’m not a nerd if I prefer to read a book on physics or mathematics instead of watch TV? What happens if I have to choose between going to a MC Frontalot show or watching Game of Thrones? Which option allows me to retain my nerd status?

2) The assumption that you are either a hardcore nerd or you aren’t a nerd at all.

I thought the whole point of being a nerd was that you didn’t fit into the easily definable categories that other people tried to push you in. Shoehorning all of society into this binary equation strikes me as very unnerdy.

Seriously though, there’s a huge gap in such a simplistic view of nerddom, namely what I refer to as the guerillas. The guerillas are folks who have chosen to hide their nerdity when in “polite” company, and only indulge in it when they are in certain safe and controlled environments. When they’re sure that Bob, the loudmouth from accounting, isn’t near by to see them. I hope we can all agree that this isn’t a new group in the nerd world and in fact this archetype has, in all likelihood, been around since the beginning.

As nerdity has gained in acceptance the guerillas among us have started to feel safer in expressing their true selves. Where previously they took care to ensure that they appeared to be normal average folk, now they are more willing to admit that they enjoy Star Wars/Trek or comic books or some other form of nerdy pass time. Perhaps they do it in moderation, but at least they are not quite so worried about what Bob is going to tell people.

Are there attractive young women out there who are simply pandering to the nerds in hopes of gaining fame and fortune? As I said, probably. On the other hand, has Hollywood always been a lot nerdier then we’ve been lead to believe by Entertainment Tonight and People Magazine? Definitely. The difference is, where before a fondness for video games or comic books would be seen as a liability, it can be an asset now. It sets them apart and gives their brand a hook.

So while there are surely some who are pandering, I’d be willing to bet money that a good chunk, if not most, are sincere in what they say. They’re just now more willing to say it.

You know what though, let’s take a minute here and assume I’m completely wrong. Let’s assume that the other side is right and the idea of the hot nerd girl is just a myth and they’re all faking it.

What do I say? God bless ‘em.

Let’s take a step back here.

By the very nature of our culture the young traditionally look towards the famous as role models and guides through life. They are the people most of us have longed to be at some point in our lives.

This means that there are young girls out there looking at these women and idolizing them. They want to be like these women. And the message they are getting (outside of some possibly nasty lessons about body image, but that’s a separate discussion) is that it’s OK to be a little nerdy. It’s OK for a young girl to play video games or read comic books. Whether the message is sincere or bullshit, that’s still the message that’s being put out there.

Now look me in the eye and tell me that’s a bad thing.

But, it’s a shallow message you say. To which I reply with some trite statement about mighty rivers starting out as tiny streams.

This is only the beginning. Let’s assume that they all are full of shit. That doesn’t automatically mean the next generation will be so full of shit. Or that the generation after that. The Sex Pistols were a bunch of scenesters who were formed by their manager with the expressed purpose of increasing sales at the fetish shop that said manager co-owned. But a good chunk of their fans didn’t get the memo that it was all a bunch of hypocritical crap. They took it seriously and they did some pretty amazing shit.

But it won’t last you say. They’ll just move onto the next fad a year or two from now and it won’t have any lasting potential. To which I tell you a story about Nirvana.

If you’re to young to know who Nirvana was, go hit Wikipedia. The point is that Nirvana broke and suddenly it was cool to be a punk. Except being a punk was now something very different then what it had meant before Nirvana broke. It was watered down and had it’s edges filed off. And in the end, after a couple of years it faded into something else, as such things are want to do. The majority stropped being punks and moved on to something else. As they left though, they left some shit behind. Here and there were groups of kids who’d dug a little deeper while the shit was going down. May be someone handed them a copy of Maximum Rock and Roll or a Black Flag album or they became intrigued by Kurt’s tattoo of K Record’s logo. Whatever. Why isn’t important, what’s important is that when the masses moved on to the next thing, they stayed.

May be this will all fade away and we’ll go back to the way things were. But we won’t go back alone. We’ll take with us groups of folks who we would have otherwise lost. People who would have previously fallen to peer pressure to follow the herd, but because a bunch of attractive (kinda) famous people talked about their supposed love of Star Trek or World of Warcraft on some late night talk show, they found their way into the fold.

That’s the worst case scenario here folks. Absolute worst case is that a bunch of kids are going to find their way into nerddom and decide they don’t want to leave when everyone else does.

Now, are you really going to stand there and tell me that indulging your insecurities and sense of entitlement is more important then letting some kid find themselves in nerddom?

Really?

In his year end write up, my boy Z linked to Patton Osawlt’s Wired piece about the current state of nerdity. Z and I have different opinions about the nature of the piece. He tends to see it more as holding up the old guard as the true path of nerdity. I on the other hand see it as a send up of folks who cling to the old ways.

What ever the intended nature of the piece, it has left me thinking about a few things that I want to address in a couple of pieces.

The first such piece is about “the questions.”

- What is a nerd and/or geek?
- Are you a nerd and/or a geek?

These are the two questions, in one form or another, that have dominated nerd discussions over the past year or so. It has gotten to the point that a lot of us are pretty sick and tired of the questions and would be happy to see them never asked again.

Over the past couple of days though, since Z posted his essay, I’ve found myself thinking about these questions. Why are we so sick of them? On their own they’re actually really important questions. Ones that we should be constantly asking ourselves in self reflection. Why then have they developed such a negative stigma? My theory is that it has nothing to do with the questions themselves, but in the answers that we’ve received in response to them.

The replies we tend see are dominated with checklists involving social status, societal awkwardness or isolation, a laundry list of approved interests and hobbies, and an underlining sense of obsessiveness that exceeds socially acceptable limits. These are answers that make sense, if the question was being asked 10 years ago.

Invariably, the answers that we receive to these questions is not what we are, but instead what we were. The kind of things that used to separate us from the “norms”. The thing is that the last 10 years have seen a monumental upheaval in how nerds interact with and relate to society as a whole. We now live in a world where we take it for granted that a new summer will be met by more then one attempt from Hollywood to mine our most cherished fandoms for the next big money grab. Where we have found ourselves intermingling with the norms in our collective obsessions with properties like Harry Potter, The Sopranos, Lost, and The Wire, among a plethora of other franchises. Where we have taught them the toolsets we developed in our slavish devotion to older properties like Monty Python or our desperate attempts to make sense of the Akira movie. And where they have begun to adapt these toolsets to their own separate obsessions.

These changes have created a situation where the old definitions of who and what we are now ring hollow. They are recited from memory because these are the responses time has taught us, but when we stop and really consider the question being asked, we find that we don’t really believe our answers anymore. This existential crisis has lead some to grasp tightly to the old ways and hold them up as a true path. One that must be followed with out mis-step if one dares to lay claim to the title of nerd or geek. Others respond to the crisis by declaring the death of us. A mournful bellow that the terms have lost all meaning and should be driven from our tongues is their cry. Still others ignore the reality of the situation and pretend that nothing has changed.

The problem with all of these responses is that they treat who we are as static things to be cast in amber and placed on a shelf for later observation. For a social group to survive though it must be allowed to grow and evolve, or else it will stagnate and die. So these reactions to the changes that we are undergoing are more then just attempts to hold back the hand of time, they are, in a very real sense, a death sentence for our very identity.

There is cause for hope though, as mentioned in Z’s piece.

Art has long held a place in society as the preferred method though which we can explain the unexplainable. Free of the chains of logic and the rules of discourse, art provides us the freedom to say things that we have no words for. While the past year has in many ways been defined by our inability to answer the questions, it has also provided the best answers we have to these questions. When you look at the art we have produced; from some of our best music yet, much of which comes from relative new comers; to amazing fan vids; to the temporary spaces we have created where we are free to redefine who and what we are; it is obvious that what we are is not what we were, but is evolving to something new and wonderful.

When history writes this chapter of our existence, the first decade of this century will likely be seen as a time of change for us. A time when we had to jettison what we used to be and redefine who we are. That same history will likely record a laundry list of embarrassing missteps and fruitless side quests, but it will also show that it was what we did, not what we said, which ultimately guided us through the transition.

Last Thursday was my 35th anniversary as a crew member on spaceship Earth. For some reason I didn’t have any urge to do the whole reminiscing routine and getting all wet around the eyeballs and what not. Not saying there’s anything wrong with those routines, they just didn’t occur or appeal to me this time around. May be when we finish the next rotation.

What I did find myself in the middle of was some much needed cleanup of some really buggy routines that honestly, I should have gotten to long before now. A couple of maintenance patches that have been sitting around for way to long, and an over due BIOS flash.

The maintenance patches (two of them to be exact), take the form of quitting smoking (again) and taking part in a RPG Fitness game that Hatter from Scrub Club put together. The idea here is that you gain HP for each pound you loose and for every X amount of HP you earn, you level up. End of the three months, who’s ever leveled the most, wins. You can also increase HP by doing things like taking your blood pressure, taking a fitness course, or going to see the doctor.

My current plan is to first focus on getting my sleep schedule back under control. While I’m doing that, I’m also switching over to cooking again instead of eating out. I’m still heading out for lunch, but the salads at Chicken Out are replacing the sandwiches at Chic-Filet. Once I have my sleep schedule back under control, I’ll start looking into breaking out the Wii Fit and get a work out routine going in the morning.

The BIOS flash is taking the form of rereading an old favorite of mine, The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff. The book is an attempt to explain philosophical Taoism using the stories of Winnie the Pooh as examples. I first came across the book when it was given to me as a gift on my 18th birthday, along with All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten, by Robert Fulghum. The two books combined served as major mile markers in my life, separating my adolescent self from my young adult self.

I can’t remember when I last did a full reread of Pooh, but it has to have been over 10 years ago. Considering all of the changes that have happened in that time span, I’m actually kind of surprised I waited this long. I guess my navigation subsystems were more screwed up then I thought.

Rereading it now though has been kind of eye opening. For one, I knew this book had had a profound impact on shaping who I am, but I was not quite prepared to realize that it is, in many ways, the underlying foundation of my software design philosophies. How I gather requirements, how I prioritize those requirements, how I design a solution, all stem from ideas that I first encountered in this book. I wonder if that’s why I’ve been getting a little restless these days with my coding? Now that I’m just a coder and I’m separated from the client, I’ve lost that compass point. It also makes me wonder, exactly what would a Taoist ETL process look like? I’m going to have to think on that one.

For now I breath, smile, try not to fight unnecessary battles, and just try to enjoy life again. I can occasionally see glimpses of the man I used to be, but I’m not him anymore and I need to find out who I am now. Right now, that involves building new habits that don’t involve smoking and do involve healthy eating and more movement then in the past. It also involves finishing the Tao of Pooh and either picking up Kindergarten for a reread or something else to keep myself mindful of where my head is at.

As part of the RPG fitness thing, we had to pick a character class based on our goals for the next three months. I picked the Monk class since I was more concerned with my eating habits then anything else. Given everything else though, I think it fits.