Blogging for Health, Knowledge, Fame: Grand Text Auto has a really interesting experiment going in blog-based peer review. Graphic Engine offers some thoughts on the benefits of academic blogging. Sterneworks.org offers some helpful DOs and DON’Ts for the would-be academic blogger. And, though not specifically related to academics, you may be interested in this report on recent research that suggests that people who blog and use social networking sites feel happier and more connected to others.

Gamers Striking Out: Awhile back, Fox News got someone on the air to slam Mass Effect for being sexually obscene. As Seth Schiesel explains, however, the person they put on camera was clueless, and gamers struck back by tanking the reviews of her book on Amazon.

Also, I was totally fascinated by this Wired article on griefers. I’m not sure how much of this kind of behavior is about being a jerk versus making an ideological statement (i.e., “don’t take your game world too seriously”), but it certainly raises some interesting questions.

These two stories don’t have very much in common, but to me, they both seem like examples of how you can make a statement with real impact by subverting the norms of online behavior.

Sort-of Real Superheroes: One link (courtesy Hipster, Please!) from way back on people who dress up like superheroes in real life, and one link (via Emily and others) about the superhero-themed restaurant coming to my own city of Philadelphia. Also, Michael Chabon writes about superhero costumes for the New Yorker (which I’ll probably return to in another post later).

Rebranding an Otaku Magazine: Kind of in the same tradition of Wizard now openly billing itself as a “men’s pop culture magazine” (as noted here), ADV revamps PiQ to be about geek/otaku culture more broadly, branded as “entertainment for the rest of us, squarely addressing the needs of a cutting-edge young male audience” (link via Chris C.).

Geek Culture Is Now Bullies’ Culture Too: I was, I must admit, both repulsed and fascinated to read about bullies “teabagging” another boy at school. This is probably an indication that FPS gaming is “mainstream” children’s entertainment fare, not just being played by the nerds who get picked on. It’s also worth noting that the antisocial behavior that kids picked up from gaming has nothing to do with normal, in-game violence (involving shooting and elbowing in the face in Halo, for example), but a sort of “content” that players themselves generated.

Confessions of a Sci-Fi Addict:
Let’s start with this link-ful post from the Website at the End of the Universe, brought to us courtesy Church. The main link is to a newspaper column titled “Admitting addiction to fantasy, sci-fi books” (“after years secreted in the book closet”). I was just as interested in the links that accompanied this on the referring site, though (such as these great old Worldcon photos), and the claim that “While not exactly in leauge with the civil rights or suffragette movements, geek acceptance has come a long way from the early days of fandom.”

Everyday Gamers: Meanwhile, at the Escapist, Tomohiko Endo’s personal essay “A Day in the Life of the Social Loner” offers a sad and perhaps somewhat familiar story of being ashamed to play video games. The take-away, perhaps, is that some forms of gaming may be seeing redemption among mainstream audiences thanks to their social component, but that doesn’t necessarily make others seem more acceptable—or, at least, some gamers fear as much.

Along similar lines, Mark Patience discusses his irritation with the stereotype that “Games are for Kids.”

Demeaning comments about my hobby used to run off me like water off a duck’s back, but the older I get the more vocal my detractors become. This means that I do most of my gaming in secret. [...]

A friend in my workplace has recently bought The Orange Box and can’t wait to play it. His wife is going away for a week, and he plans to get stuck in as soon as she goes. “Why wait?” I suggest. He looks embarrassed and mumbles something about how it would just be easier to do it while she’s away. I say nothing in reply and feel an inward empathy.

And finally, Jonathan MacCalmont writes on how he is Not a Gamer Anymore”—though his choice to distance himself from the term seems to have less to do with his interest in games than his lack of interest a particular “lifestyle” constructed by people who want him to be a gamer:

When gamers first appeared, they were mocked and bullied for their interests. They were nerds and geeks back before those terms had been reclaimed as badges of honor. [...]

Being a gamer might well have consumed my teenage years [...] but that was a decision I made for myself and not because some marketing guru with expertise in “lifestyle brands” suggested it.

Digital Means “Less Geeky” for RPGs: Cabral points me to a short piece on Marketplace discusses how Dungeons & Dragons is making the transition to the internet. One player quoted in the segment suggests that if the game gets more popular, some might see it as less geeky: “I think there’s definitely sort of a stigma behind D&D for a lot of people — and for role-playing games in general. If some of that went away, that’d be better.” Maybe this would work—as we’ve discussed before, the success of World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings may have boosted the cultural cachet of neo-traditional fantasy—though I wonder if the actual act of roleplaying, when viewed in person, will be as easily redeemed as the basic trappings of associated genres.

The Love Note of Zelda: Jordan notifies me that one woman, looking for love, accepts what she is and what she wants, posting a Craigslist ad in search of a guy who looks like Link. Click through for the full post and a photo of her in Zelda garb; short version is here:

Hi, I know thats strange one. I want a guy who looks like link. from the game. I thought to myself that I might as well be honest. I look like zelda, so why not ask for it? who knows.. [...] Im a simple chick who loves zelda. [...] I want a guy like that and a guy who is romantic and believes in chilvary, love, old school ways, and doesnt have a problem with european culture.

Otaku Hunting:A couple links brought to my attention by Kotaku suggest that it can actually be dangerous to be an otaku in Japan. One article from some time back notes that otaku hunting—in which criminals target Akihabara nerds because they tend to carry lots of cash—is on the rise. A more recent article suggests that police have been actively stopping Otaku and checking their bags. Kotaku suggests that “since there have been incidents of otaku being mugged, many have started carrying knives and other weapons to protect themselves,” which may be what police are looking for.

More on Why We Need Nerds: Church points us to an article from The Economist about David Anderegg’s new book about nerds. I need to check out a copy myself—anybody read it yet?

Fiction is Prettier than Reality: At Nerd World, Lev Grossman reprints an interview with J.J. Abrams tangentially about Cloverfield. I often hear that sci-fi can be used to examine social truths that people would be otherwise uncomfortable approaching, but it was interesting to hear The Twilight Zone as an example that wasn’t only intended to serve that purpose, but was Rod Serling’s response to earlier, failed attempts at doing social commentary. Also, I appreciated Church’s comment. Why must actors be beautiful people even in a movie that’s supposed to look like it was destined for YouTube?

Straight from the Internet Memeticist: Church refers me to an article by Cyle Gage, “I Can Has Rezearch Papar?” The article traces the development and explains the rationale behind internet fads involving intentionally stupid imagery on the internet, particularly You’re the Man Now Dog and Lolcats. He refers to such practices and the culture around them as “the lulz.” What I found most fascinating was the claim that this started as a humorous practice for intelligent people pretending to be stupid, only to be taken over by people who misunderstood the ironic intent:

[4chan] really is an adult web site. The long running joke that has developed over the past 3 or so years is that everybody on the website, (well, on /b/ anyway) whislt ADULTS, and reasonably intelligent ones at that, engage in moronic activities verging on the utterly stupid. The joke being that everyone acts like the same retarded individual. WHILST KNOWING THAT THEY ARE NOT. The joke is in the delivery…. Eventually, so many 14 year olds end up browsing the site that the original adult userbase has been overshadowed by the masses of underage people who have now turned the joke inside out, and the site has now literally become a place for 14 year olds to be retarded. – anonymous on 4chan

The author continues to note that “The inside jokes are so obscure that it requires a wealth of knowledge and understanding of the jokes before they can be used properly,” and so a commonly used phrase on 4chan is “LURK MOAR”—stating that people should watch what’s going on before getting involved themselves. This seems to me sort of a microcosm of geek culture more broadly in some ways, or at least parallel to other geeky pursuits (hence the Geek Culture Manifesto‘s warning to look without jumping to judgmental conclusions).

Geek Graffiti: I don’t remember where I found this link about geeky street graffiti projects, but it’s worth a gander. The projects run the gamut to geeky references to geeky methods of application and display.

So Say We All: Henry Jenkins links to a new special issue of FlowTV, a critical forum produced at UT Austin. I believe first found out about FlowTV when searching around for geek stuff and coming across Kristina Busse’s article “Fandom-is-a-Way-of-Life versus Watercooler Discussion;
or,The Geek Hierarchy as Fannish Identity Politics.” This time around, it’s a whole issue on Battlestar Galactica.

Transmedia Griping: Maybe the developers of Soul Calibur IV thought that Yoda and Darth Vader “fit” into their game’s universe because they fight with weapons and belong to a certain epic fantasy tradition. As the comments following that post (and elsewhere over the internet) indicate, though, some gamers and fans are far too concerned with continuity and canonicity to allow such a move to go without complaint. An example of marketing to geeks gone awry, perhaps?

MMO Jargon Explained: Kotaku refers me to an explanation of the language of MMOs—”more scientific notation than lazy shorthand.” (Some of the commenters on that post seem to disagree with the specifics, though.)

A New Blog: I feel bad embedding this link deep within a links post, but Gawker’s new SF blog, io9, definitely deserves a link for those who have yet to discover it. The site’s editors, not incidentally, include the editors of She’s Such a Geek!

More “Casualcore” Gaming: Michael Zenke at Joystiq mocks the notion that Conflict: Denied Ops is a “casual FPS,” and perhaps rightly so:

As one of the demo reps put it: “The idea is to make a solid action game, without any unique elements that you’d have to learn how to use. The idea is that you’ll already know how to play it.”

What you’re left with, then, is a game that you’ve already played. Nothing about Conflict: Denied Ops stands out from any other FPS on the market.

When recently asked what I predict will be a major development in digital media in the next 2–3 years, I answered that software companies, and especially game companies, would get better about marketing their products beyond geeks, to those who are currently labeled as “casual” users. I don’t think there’s anything inherently less devoted about so-called “casual” gaming, having known people who are just as obsessive and excited by online Flash games as some other gamers get about Halo 3. That said, I think a major obstacle to getting such gamers into, say, a first-person shooter is that it still looks like the sort of game that (they imagine) geeks play. Where the Wii succeeds is in making games look—and perhaps even feel—like something else entirely from what we’ve come to think of as console gaming. I figured that three years would be plenty of time for other software manufacturers to figure that out, but maybe I was overly generous.

Hardcore Gaming vs. Hardcore Porn: GameDaily recently asked adult video actresses about video games, yielding one response indicating that it is now okay to be a nerd:

GD: Do you find nerds attractive?
Jenna: [Looks offended] Do I like nerds? I am a nerd. I have shelves full of books at home about vampires and werewolves. And I always have my PSP with me. Right now I’m playing Jeanne D’Arc, which is just awesome. Also, I’ve got a PS3 and I’m dying for the new Final Fantasy to come out. See? I told you I was a total nerd.
GD: I think I am in love.
Jenna: That’s understandable.

Meanwhile, a conservative columnist gets some backlash from gamers over calling a sex scene in Mass Effect explicitly pornographic. The columnist’s response to gamers? Call them nerds, imply that they are sex obsessed. He has recently backed off from part of his critique, but honestly, the critique is not at all of interest to me; as Penny Arcade points out, this columnist is nobody particularly relevant in a broader cultural context, and is flat-out wrong. What interests me is that you can still fling ‘nerd’ around as an insult (while implying sex deprivation) in the same week that a porn star proudly claims to be one.

The aforementioned Joystiq post was discussing downloadable content (DLC) in the upcoming release Rock Band. I was reading it for personal interest more than research interest originally, but that’s how these things often start for me. I was pretty pleased that the pricing scheme for the DLC seems friendlier than the system set up for the Guitar Hero games, but I was curious how other Joystiq readers felt about it, so I checked out the comments.

One commenter expressed an interest in downloading Japanese pop and rock music for Rock Band, and was met by a chorus of negative and somewhat hostile responses, including one stating, “stay on 4chan.” (I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but I’ll get back to that in a moment.) Another comment finally defended the request to some extent—not because the commenter also wants that music, but because making it available is sound business:

that’s kinda how these music games got started. [i.e., offering J-pop/J-rock ...] Besides, with this heavy count of DLC, the idea is to appeal to niche audiences. Imagine a geek rock pack, or an unsigned pack, or a J-Rock pack. Even with these prices, it’d be crazy to expect someone to own every single song.

Over time, your Rock Band band is going to fall into a certain genre based on what stuff you download. If tye wants a Japanese-style band, weeaboo as it may be, he could.

As I started reading this whole exchange, I thought I might be following up with a post about geeky music niches, or perhaps hostility toward J-pop fans from other kinds of geeky fans. Then the bit about ‘weeaboo’ kind of derailed me.

I recognized the word ‘weeaboo’ from a Perry Bible Fellowship strip that involves a bunch of people at an office meeting shouting the word while spanking a guy (another thing I consumed more out of personal interest than out of research). There’s nothing particularly J-poppy about the comic. I poked around to figure out what was going on with that, and came to an Urban Dictionary page. Through a mix of amateur etymology and frequent use of the word ‘faggot,’ Urban Dictionary contributors suggest that the term was appropriated from PBF to be used as a derogatory term replacing “wapanese” for modern-day, white Japanophiles, such as those who frequent 4chan.org. A longer, even more derisive post devoted to ‘wapanese’ (which lists ‘weeaboo’ and ‘Japanophile’ as synonyms) appears on Encyclopedia Dramatica.

Reflecting on this, the post idea about niche audiences for geek music had receded in my mind in the wake of even more flagrant geek-on-geek hate, and now I was thinking of an entirely different direction to look at all of this: the influence of webcomics on geek lexicon. That latter topic is part of an even bigger topic I’ve been pondering lately, as I realize that a couple sites I have visited for my dissertation (i.e., PAX and the XKCD meetup) have revolved largely around webcomics audiences in a way I never really intended. I do read some webcomics, but I’m certainly not plugged into that scene as much as I used to be. Assuming it’s not just my webcomics-oriented bias in picking out sites, then, I wonder why webcomics figure so prominently into the way some geek cultures construct themselves.

I’m not sure when I’ll be able to revisit all this, but please feel free to respond in the comments on any of the several branches suggested above (or more, if you see others).

Nerdcore Stuff: Articles on nerdcore hip-hop recently popped up in Boston’s Weekly Dig, ProHipHop (“Hip Hop Marketing and Business News”), and XLR8R (and while I didn’t keep track of where I found them, something tells me they all came from Hipster, Please!). It’s interesting glancing at them all together, as they offer something of a range of takes on nerdcore. I’m not entirely clear on whether the Dig is just being snarky in a friendly way, but between these articles, you get an insulting tone, a fascinated tone (with a focus on the whiteness of the nerdcore scene), and a “Wow! Geeks are the new cool!” kind of tone you’d expect in a mainstream music magazine (with an interview with one nerdcore documentarian).

Geekery, Just for the Ladies: You may have heard of Japanese maid cafés, where male otaku get to get a taste of their fantasy worlds by interacting with women playing the part of a certain anime archetype of sorts. It sounds weird to some, but to others, it sounds like a business opportunity—so now we read of boys’ school cafés for female otaku. An article in The Age, “Boys’ school cafe offers geek girls tea and fantasy,” describes a new sort of business addressing another fetishized archetype represented in anime targeting Japanese girls: the prep school boy
(link via The Comics Reporter.

Part of what I find fascinating about this is how much more actively marketed to Japanese geek culture seems to be than American geek culture. TV networks are starting to catch on to such possibilities, but for the most part, I feel like efforts to market to geeks are still predominantly at the grassroots level around here, with phenomena like nerdcore hip-hop and various little web-based t-shirt stores that started from a few nerdy friends and worked their way up to profitable businesses. Anyway, just thinking aloud…

The Nerd Psychology Explained: Or, at least, a nerd psychology explained. Rands in Repose offers The Nerd Handbook for those who seem confused by their nerdy mate’s behavior. Nerds, he says, focus all their energy on a major Project that may change rapidly, require a Cave to retreat from the world, and rudely ignore you because of a filter for irrelevant information. Rather than hope that nerds change, the writer says, you can game the system and just try to appeal to their organizing and puzzle-solving impulses. Personally, I found parts of this slightly familiar, but it seemed so specific that I felt it had more to do with the author than with the larger population he maps it onto. Feel free to tell me I’m wrong, though.

The Language of the Language of Comics: In a roundtable at Newsarama, comics critics and bloggers discuss the vocabulary at our disposal for discussing the formal elements of comic art. As expected, Scott McCloud’s name comes up a few times, but I was interested to see some European theorists mentioned in there as well.

Social Gaming Without the Game: The World of Datecraft, a social networking/dating site for World of Warcraft players, is now in beta (link via Kotaku). I’m not clear on why this is necessary—isn’t WoW itself mediated enough to allow for interpersonal interaction that is less threatening to shy nerds? Why the extra step of going to a web site to network with people whom you might already encounter in a more personal setting? I suppose, though, this site probably remedies the potential problem of your dream date being on a server you never frequent. I’ll be curious to see how successful this is compared to more general geek dating sites like Geek2Geek and Sweet on Geeks.

Essays: I really, really need to get back to these, so before I forget let me direct your (and my) attention to three essays. First, Paul Graham’s practically canonical “Why Nerds Are Unpopular.” I read it some years back and I figure it’s worth going over it again with a fine-tooth comb to compare it to the research that’s been done on the subject. Also from awhile back, a college newspaper about MIT’s geek culture. Really, I should probably be spending more time just hanging out at MIT for this dissertation; it’d be interesting to compare how the geek culture there has changed since Sherry Turkle wrote about it in Second Self. And finally, Hipster Please (neat blog about nerdcore and the nerd community noted in a recent comment by Church) features “A Pontification on Nerds and Community.”

Online Geeky Groups: As part of my efforts to find my way into smaller, more “local” geeky communities, I started hitting up the social networking sites to see what sorts of groups they had. MySpace has a Geek Culture group (among others), Meetup has a whole geek subdomain (but alas, no events in Philly or Boston), and Facebook has over 500 geek-related groups (before even searching for “nerd”), including a group for geeky girls at Penn. Still haven’t figured out what to do with any of this knowledge, but it seems good to know.

Another Magazine: Nerds Gone Wild seems like what Geek Monthly might have been like if were produced by Australians who like to swear more in print and give away PDFs of their magazine online. Includes yet another potential ancestry for geekdom: magicians!

The Politics of Comics: Japan’s new PM may be a manga fan. This is apparently thrilling news to Japanese fans and investors, as there really is such a thing as pro-manga policymaking: “While serving as Japan’s foreign minster earlier this year, Aso was instrumental in creating the ‘Nobel prize’ for foreign manga artists. He’s keen on promoting manga overseas, arguing that the comics are a critical vehicle for enhancing Japanese diplomacy” (etc.).

Gamers and the Spiral of Silence: Sometimes, Kotaku posts about things like “the weird world of FFVII roleplayers” or academics discussing virtual migration on World of Warcraft. And when they do that, you can pretty much assume that some people are going to post comments in response to express how the people cited in the post are pathetic. Granted, the former post there does have some pretty extreme stuff going on in terms of how invested these roleplayers are with their games, and the latter only has a couple negative comments. Still, they fit the general pattern I’ve noticed, and I’m wondering if there’s a spiral of silence going on here with the lurkers. From what I understand, it’s not the most well-supported theory, but it’s done okay, and these sorts of things might work differently in different communication media. (Just thinking aloud.)

I’m Not Even Sure What This Is: And finally, Evergeek Media: “It’s Amazon meets AP – with geeks!” It sounds like they are a sort of news/data aggregation service for companies that want to understand what’s going on in geek-oriented media industries. Looks like the site hasn’t been updated for awhile. I don’t even remember where I originally stumbled upon this, but I just found it again the other day in some old bookmarks. I wonder how much of a market there really is in providing insider knowledge to companies that want to reach geeks, especially considering that most such companies I know of have plenty of eager geeks on staff already.

By the time I left Lisbon, I had chatted with people at four stores selling comics, one selling board games, two selling video games, one specializing in science-fiction figures and paraphernalia (though several of the above also sold various anime and/or sci-fi figurines). Several of those people told me they could set me up interviews with some English-speaking customers. I also got a friendly and helpful email reply from João of the Lisbon Gamer blog (a proud geek whose wife also blogs at Geek By Proxy).

The students at UCP were also quite helpful; I know now, for example, that while they know the word “geek,” they also have two separate words for someone who seems strange, like a Star Trek fan, and for someone who is excessively studious. The first is toto (which I may be misspelling), whose other meaning refers to the ponytail hair style; I think that’s probably not a coincidence, considering that many geeky fans wear their hair long (see also the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons). The latter term escapes me, but it compares a person with nose buried in a book to a bull charging, head-down. I’m getting an interesting picture of what it means to be a geek in other cultures, and I hope to work that into the dissertation and/or an additional paper. I’ll probably write more here on the topic after my travels and proposal are behind me.

I’m looking forward to exploring more of Paris, having spent my first day here walking from the Latin Quarter to the Arc de’Triomphe to the Eiffel Tower (and about halfway back before I came to my senses and got on a bus). My hotel in the Latin Quarter is directly across the street from a comic store and a video game store, around the corner from another video game store and a gambling/gaming store, and not too long a walk from a store that seems like an importer; I have yet to visit, but I noticed on the bus ride past last night that it advertised (in English) “Comics,” “Science-fiction,” and “Manga” on the awnings, with windows full of models and action figures. I had not been planning on writing much in my dissertation about toys/figurines, but they occupy such a common and prominent space in fan/geek-oriented retailers that the subject probably deserves some attention in future interviews.

(Maybe it does bear brief mention, at least, that even though I just banged out this post’s title as a joke, research does suggest that people all over the world react pretty similarly and positively to childlike features, such as large eyes and small noses. I don’t know if that counts as “something more clever,” but there you go.)

Update: Suggestions are piling up at this Flickr comment thread, with ‘hobotaku’ in the lead. Any manga fans out there want to comment on this? I’m very careful to “use members’ meanings” (as we learned in my Field Methods class), meaning that I generally avoid using terms to identify people that they don’t use themselves, so I’m curious whether this would strike manga readers as simply derogatory. (The commenters in that Flickr thread certainly mean it to be.)

KEVIN FREEMAN: The primary focus is on fans of comics, gaming, anime, science fiction, and the like. As a group, we’re an interesting lot, and deserving of a closer look. But we wanted the book to be more than a series of jokes. Yes, there’s humor, but it’s set within the confines of a more serious story. [...]

THE PULSE: Do you think people like to laugh at themselves and see comics like this? Are you worried you might be offending your target audience with their portrayal in SubCulture?

FREEMAN: I like to think that most of us don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re an odd lot, but most of us embrace that fact. We like being different. I admit, the book does take a dangerous path. But I think the story is written in such a way that it ultimately portrays fans in a positive way. Sure, we’re all a little strange, but we’re also genuinely good people. I hope that’s what the readers get out of it.

STAN YAN: Honestly, I think that many of us that do take ourselves too seriously might not be able to see ourselves in the characters that share our “quirks”.

Mostly I’m just linking this because I like to keep track of when people specifically link the audiences of what are ostensibly diverse media (what do games have to do with comics?). It’s also interesting to note how the people involved in this interview all fancy themselves as part of the group being poked fun at here, but are still aware that some people might not find it so funny.

I’m inclined to agree with Freeman that the kind of folks who would even pick up a (somewhat harder-to-find) comic in the first place are also probably used to making fun of the stereotypes associated with fandom, especially as the creators are clearly part of the in-group. Certainly enough people can get behind that sentiment that you can sell t-shirts about self-deprecating geek humor. Maybe it helps to go the extra mile by portraying an avatar of yourself as the demented nerd in question.

The Ping Pong room will be set up for RPGs (Role-Playing Games, not to be confused with the rocket propelled grenades which share the same acronym), and the DVD Movie room will be playing Anime Movies all day in support of the event.

Ziggurat Con, Iraq, 2007: quite possibly the world’s first war zone game convention.