Excellent points, all around. That’s the problem with doing a blog post about something that could fill a whole MFA paper, not enough time to hit all the bases.

Let me hit some salient points though on what you’re saying.

* School, especially public school, is going to be tough for geek kids no matter what. It’s a place where cliques still rule and I just don’t see any change for that in the near future.

* Maybe there’s a misconception about geeks and where we are right now. Maybe the geeks of history have found their societal place because they’ve always had a place. Maybe it’s just now that we can actual express how surprised we are that society doesn’t keep denigrating us. Perhaps we all mellow with age. This is just free thinking here, not to be taken as my beliefs. These are questions that have crossed my mind.

* And in turn, being comfortable with where we are, I guess I’m surprised as what that means when what ever we call art tries to reflect ourselves…which is where my rambling rant on where the “Hollywood still doesn’t get geeks” was exploring.

You are absolutely right though, we have taken the words back and not only taken their power from them, but I would say that we’ve infused it with our own, new and improved, as it were. Some people actually desire to be called geeks and that just proves how far we’ve come.

Heh, nice reference at the end there.

tb

While you raise some valid points. I think you miss the big picture. It’s not that we won because we’re playing some game, or because we’re somehow more socially acceptable, though I wonder about that. I haven’t been in an jr high in a while but I’m sure that the math club is still pretty ostracized. The point is that we’ve taken the words back.

Like the gay and black communities we’ve embraced the slurs and rendered them powerless. That’s what was won.

It’s not about being mainstream. Facebook was for us and then our mom’s and grandma’s started joining, so we moved on. This current fad with geek culture will pass as all things do, but I think we’ve passed a milestone in that it’s going to continue to be socially acceptable to be a dork.

At the very least we’ve removed the need for Anthony Edward’s to make a speech at the pep rally.