When I was growing up, like many children, I was an outsider. I didn't have the confidence of the popular kids, which was bolstered, starting around 9th grade, by experimentation with drugs and alcohol. I was neither pretentious and moody enough nor enough of an elitist to fit in with the theater kids, whose contrived eccentricity seemed to require a self-seriousness that I could never quite muster. Even among those who would later come to be called
goths but who, at the time, identified themselves as
freaks, I stood just on the fringe of social acceptance. I didn't like the right music, I wasn't interested in sports, I dressed plainly and was nervous. I looked in on a social hierarchy that was based on clans and labels, some of which got incredibly baroque when you consider the ephemeral distinctions on which they were based, and I had no label. I had no clan. I saw it all as superficial, and yet I wanted to take part - I
wanted to be called something. So I studied. I was intrigued by the ways in which these people made social distinctions, the idiosyncrasies that could shift one person from one clan to the next, blessing or shackling him with a new moniker that, ultimately, would be just as meaningless as the last one.
This is the way we are in school. Lacking social experience, the model of society we build as we develop as individuals is primitive and, predictably, based on appearances. I learned, as a high schooler languishing in social oblivion, that it was a person's interests that made him a jock, a nerd, a freak, or a prep. A jock who was socially awkward could cover that up by forming friendships with students who shared his interests in beer and partying, thus ingratiating himself with a crowd that, otherwise, he may have approached with fear. Nerds had less of a buffer. Their interests in reading, sci-fi, and computers put them among a minority, leaving their collective social weaknesses all the more exposed and compounded by their status as pariahs in the greater social scene. I watched all this with bitter fascination. My interests weren't specialized enough to garner me a place among any group, so I suffered through my academic career as a ghost and formed no rewarding relationships.
But now I am grown. I'm old enough and experienced enough to see that those superficial distinctions don't have a place in the world. What really matters is not what a person's interests are but the content of his character. I should be happy to be beyond that, but I find myself on the outside yet again. The old labels stick around; the old prejudices die hard. And now the division is pressed even wider by the recent surge in popularity of a word that was seldom used among my classmates:
geek.
Geek is an old word. As a pejorative, it refers to someone who is interested in such things as sci-fi, fantasy, RPGs, and technology on top of being socially underdeveloped. The wearing of glasses and or pocket protectors may work in concert with severe allergies to complete the effect. It used to refer to circus freaks, like the bearded lady or the guy who would bite the head off a living chicken in the finale of what were sometimes referred to as "geek shows." But
geek is a reclaimed word. The sting is almost gone from it entirely; it is now self-applied with dignity, worn as a badge by many who see their interests as indicative of superior class or higher intelligence. This, in my opinion, is every bit as stupid and limiting as the word when it is used as epithet.
But it gets worse.
Geek, like all such terms, refers to a person, first and foremost, who has certain interests. Interests can be marketed to. And so,
geek is now a demographic. If you're a geek, you'll buy these types of products, you'll watch these certain shows, you'll respond to this specific type of nostalgia. At the same time as geekdom is celebrated, it is levered into marketing plans that only make the distinction emptier and more offensive.
What does it mean to be a geek? How do you go about fitting in among geeks, if you so wish? What action figures should you buy? What movie quotes should you recite? What kind of haircut is appropriate? A better question is this: what does the word
geek say about you as a person? How does adjusting your tastes in technology and entertainment to fit into a certain social caste have anything to do with your understanding of how best to improve the well-being of the people in your moral sphere?
Geek remains meaningless - like all the other labels we used in school to foster separation. It is not a distinction that is necessary for us to make if we are to function well in society. In fact, I assert that such branding can actually be very divisive. Like what you like. Wear what you want to wear. Be a person and not an icon representing the interests of a demographic profile constructed to facilitate the development of a marketing strategy.
