The Desert Mermaid

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.

The thing that's weirding me out the most about this Ferguson debacle is trying to figure out the cops' endgame.

The protesters--now their goal is pretty clear. They are trying to communicate that they would like to not have to worry about whether they might get randomly killed by the police. Which is really a pretty reasonable request in a country that claims that such is already the case.

But the police themselves ... I really don't see what they're trying to accomplish.

I suspect that they don't, either. I'd like to think that they are not just straight-up bad--I always would like to think that about people doing bad things. But I do think they are making the mistake of listening uncritically to the stupid parts of their brains.

I'm talking about the brainpart that has unconsciously absorbed the stereotypes swirling around it in society, and blurts them back at your smarter brain hoping that you won't take a second look at them to say "Whoa, hold on, this is one of those prejudiced thoughts. The smarter part of me knows better than this."

The brainpart whose first impulse when you fuck up irrevocably--smash somebody's window, run over their dog, or, y'know, MURDER THEM--is to run away and hide and hope that somehow it will have NEVER REALLY HAPPENED.

The brainpart that, when confronted with the reality that it's impossible to unmurder someone, doubles down because now you're COMMITTED to your first line of action because if you change that would be admitting you were WRONG and that is showing WEAKNESS and you can't do that.

I dunno, this is all speculation. I know I have that stupid brainpart. It's a constant struggle to ignore the monkey logic it shrieks at me, and I'm not always successful. I suspect everyone has the same stupid screeching monkey brain,* a brain that is pretty good at figuring out immediate threats like, say, leopards coming at you RIGHT GODDAMN NOW, but is not so great at integrating history and conceptualizing the future, and thus can't do much with complex things like human rights issues and institutionalized prejudice. I suppose the cops just aren't overriding those. It's the best explanation I can think of for the unbelievable illogicality of the police's response.

Or maybe they're just assholes. Hell, I don't know. I'm just stuck maundering as I watch people's requests that other people not indiscriminately terrorize them met with indiscriminate terrorism. It tends to raise questions, dangit.


You can also go beyond simple maundering: check out Amnesty International's call to action on this, or even donate! Dude. Amnesty International is in the US. What the hell is up with that.


*I debated whether to use the phrase "monkey brain" in this context, because it has, uh, unfortunate other connotations. But I've consistently used it over the years to refer to the fact that all humans are a very thin neocortex away from being straight up animals, and by god we behave like it often, and the phrase is an evocative way to describe it. I hate it when one group of people refers to another as "animals" because it just obfuscates the fact that we're ALL fucking animals, and we ALL have to work to keep that animal part of our brains from destroying our civilization. And as is so often the case, here White people, who have a history of baselessly congratulating themselves for being somehow less animalistic than everyone else, seem to be having a harder time shutting up that monkey inside them. Because nobody calls them on that shit, so why should they?

I hope that's clear. I have no frame of reference for that sort of thing. Correct me if I made the wrong call.