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1 Comment [ View ]Geekdom threatened by posers? Heck yeah!
Thick-rimmed glasses, computer-lingo T-shirts and comic-book hero movies. They're in, they're hot and they're killing me and my geeky-ness.
I am a self-proclaimed geek, and I've paid the price to be able to truly call myself one. I grew up collecting Pokemon cards, reading "Star Wars" books, watching "Deep Space Nine" and dressing the part. I worked hard for the title of geek, suffering recesses of ridicule because I chose to trade cards instead of shooting hoops.
It's not fair that to be geeky is now the cool thing to do. It's not fair that just because "The Dark Knight" was amazing (which I won't doubt), everyone has to own a Batman T-shirt, or because "Transformers" rocked, all cool fifth-graders want an Optimus Prime poster in their rooms.
Yet there seems to be an epidemic of geek-dom going around and it's spreading faster than any of us would have imagined. It's a plague corrupting our society. OK, maybe corrupting is the wrong word -- geek-dom is changing society. But the growing popularity in being "geek" is corrupting the original geeks and their culture.
The geeks who came before my time, those who lived strongly in the comic book era, were shoved into lockers for their Batman T-shirts. Today that behavior is unheard of, and the geeks of yesteryear feel that they've suffered enough, without having their culture taken away from them.
Now, the trendy "geeks" are the ones bullying the nerds. And yes, there is a very thick line dividing nerds and geeks. Geeks might take the high math classes, but they aren't going to solve equations for fun. Geeks watch "Heroes," nerds watch "Nova." There's a big difference.
So what does the future look like for the geek culture? Not good, especially with the release of "Star Trek" in May. Sure, for the true die-hard trekkies, it will be mind-blowingly awesome. But the movie will also, no doubt, create more hype to be geeky. Punks who've never had an interest in "Star Trek" will suddenly call themselves trekkies. I say they don't deserve it. The producers of the film proclaim to be true trekkies, but they've admitted that they've created the film to appeal to a general audience. That's a mistake.
OK, so this going popularity of geek-dom is just the world becoming more tolerant, right? Well, that might be the case, but geeks like me feel that we are being robbed of our individuality. We used to pride ourselves on being geeks, but now it just doesn't mean anything.
So to all my fellow geeks out there, whether you agree with me or not, "dup dor a'az mubster."
Jimmy Dotson is a senior at Davis High School. He plays the trumpet in the band and enjoys listening to all kinds of music. E-mail him at psykid7@msn.com.
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Nobody should be pushed into a locker for what they wear! But I truley do agree. There is too much hype for these things, granted they are AMAZING but people end up being posers.
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