What is geek?

Well, the easiest way to answer that question is to just grab a dictionary.

geek/gēk/Noun: 1.An unfashionable or socially inept person.



2.A person with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest: "a computer geek".


What it means to be a geek has evolved during my lifetime.  When I was in school, being a geek usually meant that you were unpopular, and bullied.  Today, geeks are sometimes the most popular people in class.  They are free to show they intelligence and creativity and to revel in their own quirkiness.  But is also means that "geek culture" has expanded as well.  Today, Anime geeks no longer have to wade through piles of catelogs to get their hobby imported from Japan.  Often times, they were bootleg copies and poor quality.  Today they can just log onto Amazon.com and not only can they get a copy, but it will be a high quality copy legal copy.  The price of computers has dropped dramatically, so more kids grew up knowing computers and video games and these hobbies have gone mystical to mundane.  Most people today have a rudimentary knowledge of computers and sports fans even have a huge selection of video games dedicated to them.  Even the stereotype of a geek has changed from a heavyset man with thick glasses and poor hygene to a releativly normal person who simply loves science/anime/games/whatever.

In many ways, this is good.  It means that people are more accepting of who others are and those of us who are a little different or have a deep love of a unique hobby can express ourselves without fear.  I sometimes feel a little envious of younger people who can grow up and find peers with similar interests and who can wear a tshirt to school with their favorite passtime on it without fear.  My own life in school was a lot liek Revenge of the Nerds, except I never really found my Tri-lams.  Instead, I supressed how I expressed things and tried to fit in.  I even played football.  I'll admit, I enjoyed playing, but I was never any good, I never fit in, didn't really like the sport.  I just liked being a part of a team and being accepted as a part of a team.  Every now and then, I need to resist the urge to tell kids, "you don't know how good you have it!"  But reall,y who wants to hear an old guy like me gripe?

Now, there are anime geeks, tabletop gaming geeks (D&D, Warhammer, etc) video gamer geeks, music geeks, and many other kinds.  And we're all out of the closet and thanks to the internet we can find people who share our hobbies and suddely we're not alone anymore.  We've banded to gether to become a much sought after commodity as well.  Whole channels like G4 are dedicated to us, colleges woo us with offers to teach us how to enter our favorite industry, sites like YouTube allow us to show off our skills.  Some of us have even found a way to turn our hobbies into an income they can live on. 

A while back there was an ad campaign with the message "it gets better."  It did get better for me.  It it will keep on getting better for all of us because now we can truely be who we are.

We can let our geek flag fly.


Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go roll for initiative.