Geeks Versus Geeks

[bloodyrosemccoy]

gwalla linked to a great article by Dr. Nerdlove about this whole Gamergate idiocy. For a long time I've been unable to say much coherent about it, because I get paralyzed by bafflement. Like, "Is this really a productive way you want to spend your time? Is harassing random women so important?" and then I get all slack-jawed and just stare in incomprehension.

But that article helped clarify something for me--and I have to say, I can sort of understand some of it, in the context of the rise of Geek Chic.

I grew up in the last decade when geeking was still marginal. I had all sorts of interests that got ridiculed by classmates--sci-fi, fantasy, Star Wars, wizards, pirates, aliens, conlangs--hell, books in general. I didn't get bullied for it,* but I did get bothered for it. And--just as important--there was no Official Geek STUFF. If I wanted cool wizard or sprite costumes and props for my dolls, or Super Mario earrings, or the One Ruling Ring, I had to make them myself.**

And suddenly I hit college and started hearing people self-identifying as geeks and nerds. Geekery started to become cool. And it was, honestly, KIND OF WEIRD. Those people who had pointed and laughed at me for writing fantasy before now suddenly declared that they were ALWAYS fans of the Lord of the Rings, just as much as I had been. Naturally, I viewed that claim with some suspicion. And what made it more confusing was that suddenly I was being marketed to, with geek products and replicas of cool stuff I liked, which is sort of surreal if you're used to being ignored by marketing. You assume that the marketers are disingenuously catering to your interests without actually caring, which is often true, but that's often true of all marketing. But the disingenuousness in marketing means you find yourself cynically assuming that NONE of these "new geeks" REALLY shares your interests--that they, like marketers, are just full of shit--because a lot of them spent years either ignoring them or outright telling you they didn't.

And then it gets tangled. Being excluded became part of geek identity, because it's a good way to cope when you are being excluded. But at the same time we want to tell ourselves we are better than our excluders. So now, when "they" are all starting to realize that the stuff we're interested in IS PRETTY DAMN AWESOME and want to join in, we have a choice. We can let go of the part of geek identity that treasures our own marginalization, accept people who refused to accept us, and share our cool stuff--or we can laugh maniacally, yell something about how the tables have turned and now WE are the excluders, and turn into the same jerks that we were trying to get away from.

Okay, yeah, it's tempting to dole out some poetic justice. But I want to actually be better than that, like I tell myself I am. Especially since the only thing I have to give up is my outcast status. In the end, it doesn't even matter that people who laughed at the things I liked in the past are now saying they always were fans of those same things.*** It's not like it's a zero-sum--I am still allowed to enjoy Star Wars even if they also enjoy Star Wars. Even if they like all the WRONG Star Wars things, well, that's their problem.

So what I'm saying here is, I can understand that knee-jerk reaction. But I also know that we can override it. And if we do, we'll prove that geekiness not only has the coolest toys, but we also are cool people.

Who would ever have thought that geeks would be cool?


*As far as I know. I was a bit oblivious to things that, in retrospect, were attempted bullying. Obviously not bad, but still.

**Possibly this is why so many geeks are also pretty good at crafting.

***If they were, then I'm unimpressed at how they failed to admit it and made fun of me, but then I realized that if they were then they were too scared to admit it and I feel kind of sorry for them. And if they weren't always into it, then they've just figured out that my toys really ARE cool, which is a positive step. And if they're cynically bandwagoning, well, whatever.

Comments

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Mm. I can see how some of this is true, but...it's not like geekery has always been the haven of the straight white dude. There have always been women (and PoC and folks who aren't straight) interested in geeky things too. So while I can see some of the lashback being about "newcomers", a lot of it seems to be lashing out against people who were there all along.

But then, I admit my perspective is somewhat skewed by never being in an area where geekery was particularly uncool. Having a video game console was rare and awesome and an object of envy in my peer group; everyone played computer games in the school computer lab when they could; most people read some SF&F books, because there was only so much available to read or do anyway. I didn't run into any anti-geek pressure until college, at which point it was sports-playing dudes with XBoxes expressing their bafflement that a girl was into video games. Like I hadn't been playing Centipede on my family's computer when I was eight. As far as I could tell, the loudest Gamergate folks are the New Kids to geekdom, trying to steal it from people who were there even earlier.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I admit I'm not sure which of us you're arguing with. The article points out that the "straight white dude" gamer stereotype was never accurate; it became a question of who was VISIBLE, and the straight white dudes got used to being the only visible ones or genuinely think they ARE the only ones. And for my part I'm thinking about how I can kind of see where you would respond with territoriality if you PERCEIVE that some "newcomer"/"outsider" (regardless of what they really are) is closing in on "your" thing. Obviously it's flawed training and no excuse for being a colossal dirtbag, but it gets me closer to seeing the impulse that drives them to it.

But you are definitely right--the idea that all geeks are straight white males has always been a myth. I guess too many of them bought into it.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Ah, point, I'm being unclear. I've seen the "Well, geeks were persecuted, so of course they're reacting to their former persecutors suddenly finding geek things cool!" actually given as an argument for why it's especially benevolent of geeks to not do "fake geek girl" things, and as an excuse for why they would reasonably do so. But that's not what the article was arguing, nor you; I was chewing over some of the reasoning that's 15 degrees off, and muddled it with personal anecdote.

Sorry! I did not mean it as an argument against what you were saying, and probably just should've put that elsewhere, not in your comments.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Gotcha! That's cool; sometimes it takes writing something down to really solidify what you're thinking.

And that is a problem when people conflate reasons and excuses. I'm just now getting to the point where I can see where the tantrum might be coming from, but it doesn't make it OKAY to throw those tantrums. I'm glad you said something; it does help me process it, too.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

And I feel all the more sheepish for contributing to muddying things, because I'm a big believer in empathy, in the "understand why people do things" sense, even when one isn't sympathetic to what they're doing. Figuring out how people get to their decisions is useful!

[broken-moons.livejournal.com]

That's a great article; I've always been confused about why gaming was thought to be a boys' bastion, when Roberta Williams' work was basically my introduction into gaming, and Ataris and Nintendos were coveted equally by boys and girls back in school. I've no idea why the gaming industry decided to start marketing mainly to boys - did they think that the crash was because they general marketing wasn't working, and starting over with a smaller demographic would bring back sales? It seems like a silly thing to do.

I think they're right about the extinction burst thing; the whole gamergate 'movement' feels like a death struggle, and all it's been doing is showing how much of a minority those 'real' gamers really are.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

The only thing I have an issue with is the assertion that the NES was specifically positioned as a "toy". As I understand it, Nintendo tried to position it as part of a home entertainment system, hence the name "Nintedo Entertainment System" and even having a front-loading mechanism to make it feel more like a VCR (the Famicom in Japan was top-loading just like the old Ataris were).