It is an interesting incongruity to me that Geeks of all stripes have traditionally been painted as either anti-social or otherwise completely incapable of existing in any form of community. This I believe is a misrepresentation brought on by the dissonance between our behaviors and the social norms that exist around us. In my experience though, It is not anything like an accurate portrait of the average Geek. Quite the contrary I believe that our culture, while certainly out-of-phase with the mainstream, may in fact be more socially oriented than the norm – we just tend to have a different center of gravity for our social connections.
Take for instance all of the fan conventions we have created and nurtured into the giant hulking behemoths of today. Is there another cultural slice of society outside of Geekdom that is so driven to gather in this way, to this extent?
This is not some recent development among our people either – it goes right back to our historical roots at the dawn of modern sci-fi. The very first seeds of our culture may well have been sown by the young Asimovs and Bradburys who gathered for NYcon I in 1939, and whose works many of us grew up reading. Indeed the very first cosplayer was none other than one Forest J. Ackerman who showed up to that inaugural Worldcon in a costume designed by his girlfriend!
We have always been a people who desire to gather together and share our common interests. Looking back I don’t think anti-social was ever the right way to describe us – it was just that our sphere of interests was so far outside the norm that we were forced to create new social constructs within which to enjoy them. That creation goes on to this day with new conventions devoted to new Geek-culture passions announced every year.
While others were out at the mall or at the football game, we were not sheltered in closets hiding from other people. We were congregated around tables with others of our kind, nursing bags of dice and plotting the overthrow of vile dun
It is an interesting incongruity to me that Geeks of all stripes have traditionally been painted as either anti-social or otherwise completely incapable of existing in any form of community. This I believe is a misrepresentation brought on by the dissonance between our behaviors and the social norms that exist around us. In my experience though, It is not anything like an accurate portrait of the average Geek. Quite the contrary I believe that our culture, while certainly out-of-phase with the mainstream, may in fact be more socially oriented than the norm – we just tend to have a different center of gravity for our social connections.
Take for instance all of the fan conventions we have created and nurtured into the giant hulking behemoths of today. Is there another cultural slice of society outside of Geekdom that is so driven to gather in this way, to this extent?
This is not some recent development among our people either – it goes right back to our historical roots at the dawn of modern sci-fi. The very first seeds of our culture may well have been sown by the young Asimovs and Bradburys who gathered for NYcon I in 1939, and whose works many of us grew up reading. Indeed the very first cosplayer was none other than one Forest J. Ackerman who showed up to that inaugural Worldcon in a costume designed by his girlfriend!
We have always been a people who desire to gather together and share our common interests. Looking back I don’t think anti-social was ever the right way to describe us – it was just that our sphere of interests was so far outside the norm that we were forced to create new social constructs within which to enjoy them. That creation goes on to this day with new conventions devoted to new Geek-culture passions announced every year.
While others were out at the mall or at the football game, we were not sheltered in closets hiding from other people. We were congregated around tables with others of our kind, nursing bags of dice and plotting the overthrow of vile dungeon lords and pernicious dragons. In fact when modems for the home PC first started arriving in our hands in the late 70s and early 80s our first instinct was to create online gathering spaces where we could congregate – and BBS services started springing up all over America while we waited for the expansion of the Internet into our own homes.
To this day that drive to create spaces for our kind to gather in continues to flourish as forums for every Geek interest known to man spread from one end of the Internet to the other. In fact the argument could be made that the societal paradigm shift being birthed right now by social media is a direct outgrowth of the natural communal instinct of the Geek. I mean seriously, have you seen this guy? Before he coded Facebook he made a PC-version of Risk and he likes to quote lines from the Iliad. Tell me you didn’t have one of these guys in your weekly Warhammer group.
For all of the depiction of our people as socially inept, I think historically it will actually be seen that we were early adopters of a new set of communal norms and that as a cultural force, Geeks moved our society towards a new, more connected way of life.
So there it is – we weren’t social untermensch after all, we were just a few decades ahead of our time.
geon lords and pernicious dragons. In fact when modems for the home PC first started arriving in our hands in the late 70s and early 80s our first instinct was to create online gathering spaces where we could congregate – and BBS services started springing up all over America while we waited for the expansion of the Internet into our own homes.
To this day that drive to create spaces for our kind to gather in continues to flourish as forums for every Geek interest known to man spread from one end of the Internet to the other. In fact the argument could be made that the societal paradigm shift being birthed right now by social media is a direct outgrowth of the natural communal instinct of the Geek. I mean seriously, have you seen this guy? Before he coded Facebook he made a PC-version of Risk and he likes to quote lines from the Iliad. Tell me you didn’t have one of these guys in your weekly Warhammer group.
For all of the depiction of our people as socially inept, I think historically it will actually be seen that we were early adopters of a new set of communal norms and that as a cultural force, Geeks moved our society towards a new, more connected way of life.
So there it is – we weren’t social untermensch after all, we were just a few decades ahead of our time.
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