The Only Question I Ever Thought Was Hard ...

[bloodyrosemccoy]

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National Haiku Poetry Day
Yule (Wiccan)

 

Over the last four months, I’ve been pondering what makes a geek a geek. I’ve pondered this before, but there were some interesting circumstances that brought it to the foreground recently:

 

-The moment I stepped off the plane on my way to Africa, I had a bit of an epiphany.  I realized that I was in for a shocking cultural experience with people wildly different from myself.

 

This was in JFK Airport.  I had just met the other students going on the trip.

 

It seems that geeks do not really go to Africa, because none of them was.  I had some conscientious world-savers, but no one who understood my geekness. It was surprisingly hard.

 

-Last night, Mom told me she’s always amazed that I like Star Trek and stuff like that.  “It seems so out-of-character,” she said. “You’re so … no-nonsense, and here you like all this stuff.”

 

-Today, kittikattie linked to an older article that has the dumbest explanation of nerdiness ever.*

  

And after talking with some nerdy friends through the years and considering what makes me interested in what I’m interested in, I’ve come up with a certain explanation of much of geek/nerd behavior.  Since you’re all geeks and nerds, I’m sure you’ll have something to add to the analysis, but from my brother (a Mines geek, no less!) and my friends and myself, this is what I have:

 

Nerds and geeks come across as hyper-intellectual (sometimes we’re even actually intelligent!), with emphasis on those traditionally left-brained modes of thought that find pleasure in things that fit together cohesively, that have some sense in code.

 

Geeks/nerds have an obsession with reality and logic.  This seems to contradict the fascination we have with sci-fi and fantasy, but I think there’s a reason for that, too. I hate a lot of historical fiction (not all, but a lot) and contemporary fiction because it’s supposed to be set in our world—sometimes you even get famous characters in history. This drives me crazy, because there is no way a novel about, say, Ann Boleyn will be accurate.  No matter how well you researched, you have no room to make things up, because this really happened, and it didn’t happen like you’re claiming.  It is LIES.

 

Fantasy and sci-fi have no pretensions of accuracy.** What they do have is logic that works within the given environment—most complaints about fandoms have to do with the writers failing to respect their canon's logical parameters, contradicting the internal story.  My favorite example is Superman: we’re willing to accept that he can fly and win fights with trains, because in this world it’s clearly established that there are some people who can do things like that. But try to tell us that Lois Lane hasn’t worked out that he looks a whole lot like her pal Clark Kent, and that’s just crazy talk, because we’ve also established that all the not-heroes in this world are like our own, and therefore we’d expect them to be as smart. Or, if you say that Lieutenant Commander Data—who we’ll accept is a conscious robot—can’t use contractions, then for god’s sake don’t let him say “I’m fine” in the episode where you pointed that out.

 

We geeks and nerds like to be creative using logical parameters, which is why we work so hard at details in worldbuilding, or are fluent in Javascript as well as Klingon. We like information and complexity and seeing what we can do with it—give me a language structure, and I’ll start playing with other possible structures.  Tell me about biology, and I’ll take the constraints and play with ’em. So you say our planet has a 23° tilt? What if that were different? What would the world be like within other possible tilts?  What if? What if?  What if?  That’s also why we like fanfiction.  What if you took this character and did this? Let’s see what happens!

 

And we do have our own standards of coolness—just not the kind that makes us give up the fanny pack that's got all our fun shit in it. But since it’s a different sense of cool than most people have, things that would be uncool to others aren’t uncool to us.  By all means, make a model of the Millenium Falcon! Just don’t build an inaccurate model.

 

So if you identify as a nerd, then you will say it, because nerds are people who like information, and so we do well in school and then play with the info in our spare time.  We’re creative, but we like to do it logically, and not the Vulcans’ emotionless logic—for us, logic is full of possibilities, nuances, and emotion. We actually do think math is fun, because of itself and because look where it gets you.

 

Who wouldn’t want that?

 

 

*I still enjoy Weird Al’s White & Nerdy, but I never would have thought of it as a racial phenomenon before that.  I always thought he was trying to make it fit the original song, and that white nerds tend to be pasty because we spend all day downstairs playing videogames or writing shit like this in our blogs instead of going outside. 

 

**Or few. The reason I will take Star Trek apart is that it tries to pretend it’s possible in our universe, and then it makes these dumbass claims that aren’t possible at all.  On the other hand, Doctor Who or Star Wars don’t even try to be possible, and so I’m much more willing to accept the crazy shit they come up with. (I think that was one of the failures of the prequels: when George Lucas tried to retcon some scientific plausibility into it. Thank you, we didn’t need that.) Joel Hodgson told us not to worry about how he eats and breathes, in his world it won’t matter, so we don’t worry.

Comments

[spotweld.livejournal.com]

Nerds can be explained by exmaple better than by definition.
Here's the process. Find anyone, give them an utterly blank sheet of paper and maybe a pencil or pen. Ask them something along the lines of "what can you do with this"?

There is an infinite number of responces, but the nerds will always, always ask for the "rules" of what they can do. Nerds are the people who intentionally seek out limitations so they can see how far they can push them creativity. The limitations of the fictional universe, the hypostheticals of the real universe, the amount of punishment thier scratch built robot can do, the best way to get the chocolate melty while leaving the cookie crispy (and yes, there are food nerds).

Anyone else will "assume" the rules and just put down what they think *you* want them to do, nerds will seek the limits and attempt to surpass them.

[lookingforwater.livejournal.com]

...what if your response is to write a story? Does that mean I can't be a nerd?

=(

[spotweld.livejournal.com]

Depends... is it fanfic?

[lookingforwater.livejournal.com]

Maybe. Maybe not. Probably. Depends?

It's a story.

[spotweld.livejournal.com]

Not really, just pondering how it woulf fall into my statment above.
I guess with fanfiv you're using someone else's universe and therefor pushing at the boundaries of their rules.

You still have literary rules and tropes when you start from zero, so it may still apply, but not so strongly?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

How cohesive is the setting?

[lookingforwater.livejournal.com]

Given the mood I've been in, it would probably be a fairy tale, so rather restrictive. Fairyland has Rules, donchaknow.

[gryfindormia.livejournal.com]

Find anyone, give them an utterly blank sheet of paper and maybe a pencil or pen. Ask them something along the lines of "what can you do with this"? There is an infinite number of responces, but the nerds will always, always ask for the "rules" of what they can do.

Which is why I bugged the living shit out of this poor therapist when he asked me to do exactly that. After spending nine out of my allotted ten minutes asking him what exactly the activity entailed, I quickly sketched some sand dunes and a camel and made up some crap about how I related to it because of my childhood, which I was sure meant something deep in his book. (I grew up in a desert-y area.)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I bet he was also interested in the nine out of ten minutes of questioning the activity. Tells him a lot about you, it does.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*grin* That's a good way to look at it. We see everything like a chessboard: random pieces until you give it some structure, and then you can do endless things within those playing rules. Limitations, to us, aren't so much attempts at keeping something at bay, but as defining its character. And we like to see what we can do WITHIN limitations.

Hell, my hobby, conlanging, basically consists of making up a bunch of rules. It's actually fun!

[cjtremlett.livejournal.com]

Oh, gawd. I love Bucholtz's gender/identity stuff, but the nerd work? Bleh. She doesn't seem to get it. It's just not as easy as she wants it to be.

What's a geek/nerd/whatever term you want to use? A lot of what you said, though we're not all into science. We do like internal consistency, as you pointed out, but we also love finding the inconsistencies. We like picking things apart and putting things together.

I think that may have a lot to do with why we fit in so poorly in grade school/high school. There's no logic or internal consistency to social cliques. There's no system to popularity contests. Trendy makes no sense. I don't think that's all, by any means, but I think it's a factor.

We are not all white, either. I remember a conversation my junior year in college, talking about how nice it was to have a couple of non-white students joining the gaming/scifi/geek group. And it taking an extensive conversation before someone said "Hey, wait, Kyle's black." He'd been there over a year. Cool guy. Did special effects makeup (Kyle, melt my flesh!), usually played a Ranger, yeah, we knew Kyle. And honestly had never thought about what color his skin was.

I love being a geek. Geeks are good people. We're pretty varied and pretty accepting.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Try explaining that half the fun of Star Trek shows is pointing out the inconsistencies.

And, of course, there's the other side--our fascination for logic puts off people who don't like it, as much.

Yeah, I've a few not-white nerd friends who I'd never have thought of as acting white, but acting like nerds. One Of Us doesn't mean that you've changed their RACIAL category.

Geeks ARE (mostly) good people. And we're comfortable with ourselves--that's important.

[chairman-wow.livejournal.com]

I agree with pretty much everything you said (one of my favourite things is cause and effect - what were the steps leading up to this thing, how would changing them slightly make it different, what's this thing going to cause... and it all fits together in an amazing yet not at all rigid way) except I quite like historical fiction - not the kind about famous figures, mostly, but the type where the author makes up some characters and puts them in that historical setting. Which is almost like fantasy anyway, I guess. The amount of fantasy depending on the depth of research done. :P

I'm not entirely sure how much sense this comment makes. I should maybe go to bed soon.

[michellerz.livejournal.com]

lol I think it makes sense because I totally agree with you - and I too, quite enjoy historical fiction. :)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Well, like I said, depends on the fiction itself. If it's just in the milieu, then I want it to be well-researched, and it can be all right--and I am, after all, a die-hard Sherlock Holmes fan, which was contemporary fiction when it was written and is now historical. But if you stick in Abraham Lincoln (unless it's Real Holographic Simulated Evil Lincoln) or somebody it will begin to annoy me. (There are different degrees of tolerance for sci-fi time-travel stories, which I can get impatient with quite fast. I think it depends on how "possible" the authors try to insist it was ...)

I can handle something like the American Girl stories, that just have a person in those times, but once you cross into them taking part in actual historical stuff it gets obnoxious.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

That raises interesting questions in my mind about the sub-category I self-classify into, which is "art nerd." It's all interpretation, and one can have really heated and satisfying arguments about what x means, when nobody actually knows. Because it all depends on what set of rules you apply.

That's something I've been interested in for ages, actually. Take something ambiguous. Interpret it using rule set x. Then chuck that all behind you and interpret it using rule set y, and see where that gets you. I tried rather clumsily in my college sculpture course to head in that direction, by creating something ambiguous and giving the viewer a set of cues to interpret however they liked. ... It confused a lot of the class, which frustrated me terribly.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I'D be interested in the idea. Tell me more!

Art nerds must have it rough. Artists like to be about defying conventionality, but as nerds you resist the concept of No Rules! I know nerds can do a logical version of code-switching (code-switching is changing from one language--rule set--to another), but you've got to have A rule set.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

At the same time as art is about defying conventionality it is also about subverting it and reinventing it; a great deal of art history is all about how one artistic movement build on and reinterprets previous movements and ideas. Even the newest of new ideas must draw from a preexisting pool of concepts and basics; without any common ground at all, it becomes incomprehensible. So, in my opinion, it's less about tossing out the rules and more about reinterpreting and remaking them. They're still there, we're just pushing for loopholes and exploring the limits.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I do know a lot of artists who want to defy all convention, but they generally DO become incomprehensible. As for subverting, reinventing, and finding loopholes, well, that's the kind of art I like!

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

And like any other kind of geekery, art has its own subdialect of neepneep. X3

[michellerz.livejournal.com]

First of all: *Applauds*
Secondly: I definitely agree that the article is quite dumb. In my mind, clearly, the writer was a non-nerd, or dare I say it...a wannabe nerd? :-O!

I think the best part is the "What if?" trait. I would definitely say that what sets nerds apart from others is their capacity to think beyond what's there, and that many have huge imaginations. Because seriously, I don't see how so many nerds could enjoy a game like D&D - or any RPG for that matter, especially ones that delve into fantasy - if they didn't have that penchant for thinking of new things.

All that being said, YAY NERDS!!! :D

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I tell people I say "What if?" about everything, from anthropology class to astronomy. I like thought experiments and exploring a range of possibilities.

D&D has rules and parameters. They might not work in our world, but they are clear enough in its what-if world. Give us something like that, and we'l be content. ;)

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

I like the xkcd strip that had the Lever of Shock! Where a normal person got shocked and thought 'I better not touch that then.' and the geek was shocked and thought 'Oh! I onder if that happens every time?"
Lemme try to go find it...
http://xkcd.com/242/
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/xkcd_rss/

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

so... er... Kirk or Picard?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*grin* I'd have to go with Picard, although it's definitely apples to oranges.

However, I have a friend who just put together a Powerpoint presentation on why Kirk is better. We argue a lot.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty much how I look at it too.

It also explains why so many geeky types (particularly of the computer subtype) go in for Objectivism. The idea of paring down socio-politics down to an elegant set of rigid rules appeals to them (the problem, of course, is that human behavior is messy and complicated, and eschewing things like altruism is neither desirable nor even really possible).