This is a short list of links with some brief observations I felt like sharing. (Some of this information is likely going into a paper to be revised for journal submission shortly.)
Christmas was typically geeky (for me) in the Tocci household this year, netting one Mario brothers t-shirt, two comics, four Xbox 360 games, one PS2 game, one DS game, and the new They Might Be Giants album. I also had the opportunity to introduce my girlfriend’s family to the Guitar Hero series, graciously lent by my brother Stephen. Now I am turning my attention back to papers, the dissertation, and taking stock of the links I’ve gathered to clutter up my browser lately.
I use Google Analytics to keep track of my site traffic. It’s fascinating to me to see who and what brings people here. For the sake of reference, I had about 2,100 pageviews from about 850 unique visitors in the last 30 days, the period analyzed in this data. My biggest month so far was a little over 1,000 visitors. From talking to other bloggers I know, I get the sense that this is pitifully small for a blog that makes money (never the plan for this one), decently large for a blog that you only expected to be read by friends, and maybe still even a bit on the small side for a blog maintained by someone who’s reasonably popular and interesting (e.g., one of the top Emily’s on Google).
Google Analytics keeps a list of what your top-viewed pages are. These results generally don’t surprise me because they tend to correspond with incoming links from notable bloggers I already knew about. Today, though, I noticed something on the list that seemed unlikely to have garnered about 5% of my total pageviews from such a source: posts tagged as “Apparel.”
The title of today’s post comes from a comment on Kotaku in response to pics from the upcoming Nintendo by Torrel clothing line. (More on Torrel and the line at this article from Black Enterprise.) In the words of Kotaku writer Michael McWherter, “Torrel LLC has taken the best of Nintendo, run it through the ‘urban market’ filter with plans to provide thousands of clothes-conscious gamers with over-sized and wildly tacky Nintendo authorized gear.”
Last Monday saw the opening of a new Threadless brick-and-mortar store in Chicago (link via Tcritic). In case you’re not familiar with Threadless, this is notable because it used to be an online-only venture, a sort of odd union between traditional consumer capitalism and brand-spanking-new Web 2.0 collaboration. The site was founded on the premise of having users submit designs and vote on which designs they like and would buy, though recent years have seen it introduce special lines of shirts not voted on by the audience.
For many, the highlight of last year’s Penny Arcade Expo was entirely unplanned: A crowd of people made the best of their long wait in line by knocking a big, blue ball around. Later, while Gabe drew a strip onstage and Tycho fielded audience questions, someone requested that the ball be included in the strip, and the artist happily obliged him. (See lower left corner, third panel. An old character made it to the second panel by special request, too. I’m blanking on the relevance of the still-beating heart and the crowned hot dog, but those were last-minute additions too.) After the convention, the event apparently became somewhat legendary, with “ball footage” posted around the web and references among my interviewees. One of these people suggested that this illustrates the heart of gamer culture: Geeks just wanna play.
I’m fascinated to see now that Penny Arcade has made an “All hail BALL” t-shirt, announced the week before PAX 2008. This strikes me as a fairly brilliant merchandising/marketing technique. The only ones who will really be interested are those who have fond memories of the ball at last year’s PAX, which drastically limits the market for such a product. That’s okay, though: PA has its own venue where their most fervent fans are sure to appear, and some of those people seemed intent on getting the ball somehow included in the annals of PA history. The reference will be completely opaque to outsiders, so the shirt basically functions like a secret handshake with other fans. And, as I realized at Comic Con this year, some people buy fannish and geeky apparel just to wear at other cons—as a button on one person’s backpack said, “Being a fan means never having to ask, ‘Where would I wear that?’” When I go to PAX next weekend, I’ll be surprised if I don’t see dozens of people wearing this shirt.
This move really helps characterize Penny Arcade as an outfit that takes its cues from its own fans, while still doing projects in their own style. Kudos, too, for having the restraint to let the subject lie dormant awhile and suddenly announce the shirt the week before the next con.
Dan took my call for links to heart, and has sent me yet another I cannot pass up: Shiny Shiny, “A Girls’ Guide to Gadgets.” Specifically, he referred me to some Pac-man accessories (perhaps knowing that I may be willing to challenge gender norms if it means getting to wear Pac-man jewelry), though that in turn led me to a Zelda map belt dubbed “Geek chic of the week” and also a post on top geeky slogan shirts. I’ve noticed that most geek-oriented shirt sites tend to offer only a portion of their inventory in “girl sizes,” so it’s interesting to see what sorts of things get pulled up by a girl-oriented geek site.
One kind of geek that I’ve not seen represented on geeky apparel websites is the band geek—until now. J!NX has a band geek t-shirt amidst their dozens of shirts about computers, role-playing, and FPS gaming. And what’s the first comment by one of their members? “[Y'all] should mix muisc and computers together in a shirt for us computer and band geeks.” I guess that’s probably what you should expect your audience to say when you sell shirts over the internet.
When I interview people, one topic that often comes up is what interests are “too geeky” even for the self-identified geeks. Usually, it’s some form of role-playing game—massively multiplayer RPGs for some people, pen-and-paper/tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons for some of those who are comfortable with MMOs, and live action role-playing for most of those who will admit to having played D&D. As one of my interviewees said, “I have to be wary about what I admit to people I play.” I’ve often wondered what it will take to make the role-players feel like it’s okay to admit to what they do, or for other gamers and geeks (and heck, non-geeks too) to feel comfortable role-playing.
I see some signs that make me wonder whether this change is underway. The New York Times Magazine has a slideshow up of people with their online avatars, though I suppose it’s as easy to read it as “see, these are people too” as it is to read it as “weirdos are fascinating.” Also, a couple weeks ago, I noticed that the Newbury Comics CD/comics/kitsch store in Harvard Square was selling Dungeons & Dragons t-shirts. And I’m not just talking logo shirts here, though they had those—they had a shirt with the art from the cover of the Dragonlance rulebook, which features a half-elven man with a sword and some demon thingie behind him. I’m not sure, however, if these are being sold/worn mostly as a retro/ironic thing or if the pervasiveness of games like World of Warcraft is finally making D&D seem more socially acceptable.
(And yes, I know enough about Dragonlance to tell you where the art came from and that one of the guys pictured in it is half-elven, but apparently not enough to tell you what the demon thingie is actually supposed to be called. I’m doing my best here, though.)
I tend to think of skateboarders and starving artists as already pretty well established in terms of subcultural/countercultural cachet. Apparently, using terms like “nerd” and “dork” can signal them as even more eager to be known as outsiders. At the Art Dorks website, Chris Mostyn explains this artist collective’s name and approach (link via Boing Boing):
Dorks. Isn’t that derogatory? Not from where I’m standing. A dork, nerd, geek, weirdo, whatever, is someone who doesn’t fit into a cleanly defined mold of what a person should be in our culture. It is someone that is usually looked down on for not living up to a standard of normalcy. [...] We all share a love of drawing and whether we make monsters or meat, robots or rabbits, it is work that revels in and celebrates growing up in a pop-culture, sci-fi, kung-fu cornucopia of a culture. We make what we know, and what we know is that life is not always normal. It doesn’t always wear name brand clothes, drink light beer and watch Monday night football. It’s just life.
Meanwhile, Skate Nerd similarly positions its subculture in opposition to sports, the archetypical pastime (I infer) of the conformist mainstream. As one t-shirt explains, “If I thought skateboarding was a sport, I never would have started.”
Both of these examples also suggest something that I haven’t really seen addressed yet in academic research on fan cultures and media subcultures (but if you have seen it, please let me know). That is, how do people actually get involved in their interests in the first place? Not just the “moment of epiphany” that I’ve read in some fans’ accounts, but what was going on in the skate nerds’ lives when they “started” skating (unaware that it would later come to be associated with mainstream sports—ironically, largely thanks to Tony Hawk, who also helped mainstream the video game)? What was so relevant to the Art Dorks about “growing up in a pop-culture, sci-fi, kung-fu cornucopia” that made them want to include this in their art?
Just thinking out loud today—no quick answers, but comments are welcome at any point. I’ll be checking out Rejuvenile from the library tomorrow (also brought to my attention by Boing Boing), which will probably offer some food for thought on kids’ culture continuing to engage adults.
