Geek Studies, Archived

Posted on Posted in Site Maintenance

I started Geek Studies in 2007 as a way to keep interviewees and informants posted on the status of my dissertation in progress. The blog ended up being not just a way to document the research, but a central component of that research, and a path to some lasting friendships. The dissertation itself—Geek Cultures: Media and Identity in the Digital Age—went on to be hosted as a free download on Penn Scholarly Commons. I thought I might maintain Geek Studies as a professional blog after finishing the dissertation, but ended up letting it fall by the wayside as I transitioned away from an academic career. Unfortunately, hosting your own WordPress site and then leaving it dormant for too long is effectively an invitation to be hacked—and it was—so I’m moving the site to WordPress.com to be archived.

There’s a lot I would change about the actual content of these posts if I were still in the business of academic blogging. There’s a lot more to say—and thankfully, that’s being said by others more qualified than I—about the intersection of race, gender, and class with geek identities. Still, I hope that these archives might be useful to readers and researchers going forward.

Some Stuff I’ve Been Up To

Posted on Posted in Games, Miscellanea, Research

Man, I sure wasn’t kidding about being busy in that last post. (I guess I was kidding about doing another post “soon,” given that that was two months ago. Yikes.) I hope you’ll agree, at least, that I’ve been keeping busy with interesting things lately.

Let’s Sing!: Not too long after I wrote that last post, I got to work on graphic and interactive design for an iOS game designed by Lex Friedman and Marco Tabini. It was my first foray into designing for an iOS app and doing visuals for a video game, so I was pretty excited. Also, it’s really, really fun. (Think “Draw Something, but with humming instead of drawing.”)

Five Ways Games Appeal to Players: I did a bunch of research about why people play games – quite a bit of it appearing in an earlier form on this blog – but finally decided I’d rather get it in front of game developers than just in front of academics. (Long story short: it’s a little more complex than “people play games because of challenge!” or “people play games for different reasons based on their personality!”) I’ve been a fan of Gamasutra for a while now, so I was pretty proud to get this in there.

Hate the Gamer, Not the Game: This piece at PocketNext is specifically about gamer identity rather than geek identity, but I think the sentiments will be pretty familiar to readers around here. While some people wish that terms like ‘gamer,’ ‘geek,’ and ‘nerd’ would go away entirely, normalizing the habits they describe, I think it’s problematic to deny people the right to choose their own terms of identity.

The Worst Company in America: As long as I’m going to defend my fellow nerds with one link, I might as well chastise us with another. This PocketNext piece is about EA winning the Consumerist’s “Worst Company in America” poll over Bank of America, and what problems that might suggest about geeky voting blocs.

The Flip-Flop President: Look, there’s just no way to say this that doesn’t sound awkward: I made an political attack ad against President Lincoln. But it was for a good cause! FlackCheck.org is a humorous spinoff of FactCheck.org, dedicated to educating about political communication through humor. This is part of a campaign to use modern-day political advertising techniques against our nation’s most beloved president, encouraging viewers to think critically about how ads are made.

All right, I’ll try do to better than two months before getting to the next post I have in mind – some links on geekdom by others I’ve been looking forward to sharing for some time now.

Geek Studies in the News (and on European TV)

Posted on Posted in Miscellanea1 Comment

The life of a freelancer doesn’t leave a lot of time for personal blogging, but I figured I’d post some links to stuff I’ve been involved with lately. Today I’ll start with some pieces for which I was interviewed.

La Revanche Des Geeks: I was interviewed last year for a documentary on geek culture by Franco-German TV station Arte. (You know the one.) I don’t speak French or German, but I hearing excellent things about it from people via Twitter, email, and comments around here.

Indian Geek Uprising: I was also recently interviewed by CNN Geek Out for an article on comics creators in India. My own geek studies didn’t look at the development of geek culture in other nations nearly as much as I would’ve liked to have done, so this was a really interesting perspective for me.

Batman and Superman and Spiderman, Oh My!: Rounding out this trio of publications that have interviewed me, here’s a piece from Medill Reports on a superheroes, inspired by the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo. (Not quoted here: a rambling comparison between superhero fandom and sports fandom. The more I think about it, the more similar they seem, geek connections aside…)

That ought to do for now. I should have a post soon, too, with links to some pieces I’ve been writing and producing, and another post linking to stuff I didn’t write, but kind of wish I had.

Playing in the Streets

Posted on Posted in Games, Research2 Comments

The following is an excerpt from my doctoral dissertation, Geek Cultures: Media and Identity in the Digital Age. It has been edited for the web.

Just south of Central Park, walking north on Broadway, we were spotted. A group of 50 or so people hurled their attack at us from across the street, shouting at the top of their lungs: “Can we help you?”

We screamed our response: “We’re amazed by you!”

Both attacks flew wide. We announced, “You’re too kind,” and each team proceeded on its way.

Cruel 2 B Kind is a game of “benevolent assassination.” It’s played in normal social spaces, where you don’t necessarily know who’s in on the game and who isn’t. Like the “assassins” games that have been played on college campuses for years, the purpose is to hunt some target and avoid being hunted yourself. In this particular variant, however, there’s a twist: You “kill” enemies with a warm greeting. If you hit the right players with your compliment, you absorb them into your team. If you hit the wrong players, they inform you that “you’re too kind.” If you hit someone who’s not playing – well, it’s friendlier than traditional crossfire, at least.

Continue reading “Playing in the Streets” →

It’s About Games, Not Pockets

Posted on Posted in Games1 Comment

After months of blog silence, I emerge from my internet hibernation to unleash upon you a flurry of articles about video games. I’ve been quiet around these parts mostly because of all the writing I’ve been doing elsewhere – and the venue I’ve poured the most into finally launched today. PocketNext presents reviews, previews, interviews, and features on free mobile games (but their new Features Editor is kind of a big nerd).

We’re launching with a bunch of reviews already up, with plenty more on the way. I’d especially like to draw your attention, however, to some of the commentaries and features I’ve been working on over the last few months, including pieces on…

I’ll have more to say soon about some of the other venues I’ve been writing for. For now, though, I’m too excited about this project finally seeing the light of day to share this space with anything else!

Somebody Else’s Thoughts on Misogyny & Popular Culture

Posted on Posted in Miscellanea1 Comment

Alyssa Rosenberg wrote a post titled “Six Thoughts About Misogyny and Popular Culture.” Some of my favorite bits include:

1. Just because women buy misogynistic products, or sleep with artists of misogynistic products, does not mean that those products don’t express misogyny. […]

4. Feminists are not always looking for something to be angry about. But it’s hard to overstate the sexism in American popular culture. […]

6. Liking art that is misogynist, racist, sexist, or homophobic doesn’t necessarily make you those things, and indictment of that art doesn’t have to be an indictment of you. […]

Folks need to breathe a bit. I think our conversations about culture would be a lot healthier and more interesting if we could hold two thoughts in our hands at the same time and acknowledge that we like problematic stuff. Because really, we all do.

She’s responding to recent discussions relating to rap music, but the connections to ongoing debates in geek culture struck me as so relevant that I couldn’t just link to it on Twitter and move on. I want to be able to refer back to this later, as these debates seem to end up in the same places every time.

Into Cosplay Before It Was Cool

Posted on Posted in Miscellanea7 Comments

I came across this pre-trick-or-treating photo while rummaging around a box in my mother’s house, looking for photos for a documentary, and today seemed like a good day to share it. In case it’s not clear, this lineup includes a robot, a ninja, a pirate, and a zombie. (I’m the tall one.) All we were missing was a monkey, and we would’ve had a complete geek zodiac.

Thanks to Jarrod, Jeff, and Stephen for permission to share this one with the world, roughly 20 years after it was taken.

The Tales Dead Men Don’t Tell

Posted on Posted in Games

Remember Dead Island? Maybe you saw the award-winning trailer some months back. Internet audiences were captivated by its short, strangely affecting story of a family torn apart by zombies (both literally and figuratively). The reviews coming out now, of course, paint a picture of a game pretty unlike that singularly remarkable advertisement, and the comparisons aren’t really favorable. Dead Island’s ad seemed to promise something new that the game itself wasn’t prepared to deliver, something that developers still have yet to make a reality, something that gamers and even broader audiences are still hoping to see – and it isn’t just an especially emotional zombie game.

Continue reading “The Tales Dead Men Don’t Tell” →

“People Create Culture”

Posted on Posted in Miscellanea2 Comments

I wanted to share with you an anecdote from Jerry Holkins at Penny Arcade:

I received the strangest question in an interview once: somebody wanted to talk to me about MC Frontalot, who coincidentally has a new album out. They wanted to know why rap about nerd things, or make comics about nerd things…. I scrunched my whole face up, and the region between my eyebrows shifted tectonically from plain to mountain. But he could not see this, so I was forced to express my confusion with the human words.

This was a person writing an article for a newspaper, a device which transmits culture, but he didn’t seem to understand what he was doing! Maybe he was confused because he was taught to “speak” without “voice,” that is, to communicate neutrally. Maybe he found the printing press in the woods, and operates it via dimly understood rituals. But here’s the apparently impenetrable math: people create culture. And they create it by describing the world in terms which are relevant to them. Who does he think makes all this stuff?

All that changed was the hand on the tiller.

I find myself having a similar conversation quite a bit. I try not to hold it against people who don’t understand, though. It’s not always obvious to outsiders why the whole “nerd” thing would remain relevant to us into adulthood. I guess that’s why I wrote a dissertation trying to explain it.

How (Not) to Date a Nerd

Posted on Posted in Miscellanea5 Comments

A friend of mine sent me a link yesterday to a Gizmodo post titled “My Brief Affair with a World Champion Magic: The Gathering Player.” The date goes precisely as a nerd might fear it would.

At dinner I got straight down to it. Did he still play? “Yes.” Strike one. How often? “I’m preparing for a tournament this weekend.” Strike two. Who did he hang out with? “I’ve met all my best friends through Magic.” Strike three. I smiled and nodded and listened. […]

So what did I learn? Google the shit out of your next online date. Like, hardcore.

I’m not writing this to condemn the author of this article; a sizable portion of the internet seems to have done so quite extensively already. Nor am I writing this to speculate about what Gizmodo, a heavily nerd-trafficked blog, was thinking in running the article (though the “nerd bait” theory seems reasonable). Rather, I’m writing this because I think I might disagree with the message many of my fellow nerds take from this story.

Continue reading “How (Not) to Date a Nerd” →