Defining the American Nerd: Salon has an interview with Ben Nugent, author of American Nerd: The Story of My People. (Thanks to Paul for the link.) Our respective approaches to considering the place of the geek/nerd in American culture differ somewhat, but I have ben fascinated to read more about the points where our conclusions align. I wonder, too, how readers here would respond to his definition of what all nerds—from computer programmers to Society for Creative Anachronism folks—have in common: “a love of rules, a love of hierarchies that were meritocratic and open to everybody, and in some cases the affectation of rationalism.”

On a personal note, I also found it funny when Ben remarks that “I’m probably the one person on planet Earth who might have to affect nerdiness as part of their professional life.” I similarly keep getting the “Are you a geek?” question and I’m never quite sure how to answer. I certainly think I am, but I have known geeks who would disagree (because I don’t build/program/live in my own computer). Plus, the people who ask me are generally the people I wouldn’t normally act geeky around—something I only realized about myself after months of studying how others understand what it means to be a geek.

Breaking into Geekdom: Austin 360 (the web presence of the Austin American Statesman) has an interview with a hometown geek done good, Scott Porter, star of the recent Speed Racer movie. (Thanks to Church for the link.) What I found most interesting was how there may be a mild hurdle for a guy who played football (and played a football player, in Friday Night Lights) to get accepted among the Hollywood geek elite:

The weird thing is now that it’s becoming popular there’s this huge backlash and everybody’s really testing each other to see if you’re a true geek or a true nerd. I passed the test — the Wachowskis kind of ribbed me for a little bit. I don’t know if it’s because of the fact that I played football in high school or the characters I play or the way I look, but a lot of people tend to not believe that I’m as into it [comics/sci-fi] as I am.

Virtual Therapy, Real Gains: I was completely fascinated by this New Yorker article about “Virtual Iraq,” a Full Spectrum Warrior VR mod customizable for treating soldiers with post-traumatic stress. (Special thanks to Chop Shop, my local haircut joint, for leaving out something in the waiting area other than fashion magazines for a change.) The article does a pretty good job of explaining how this is used very carefully as a tool for therapy, and what psychological processes it engages. I was most interested, though, to read the very important cultural strength behind this, as it offers a method of therapy that lacks the stigma of seeing a “shrink.” As one soldier explains:

Infantry is supposed to be the toughest of the tough. Even though there was no punishment for going to therapy, it was looked down upon and seen as weak. But V.R. sounded pretty cool. They hook you up to a machine and you play around like a video game.

That same soldier admitted later in the article (anonymously) that he cried after every session.

One could argue that there’s a more widespread gain to be made by removing the weak or non-masculine stigma of therapy, rather than catering to those who can’t get over that stigma. That doesn’t do much good for people who are suffering right now, though, and I wonder if treatments like this might be a way of getting the hardest-to-convince populations thinking about therapy in new ways. Of course, I’ve made pretty much the same argument about how making formally unusual comics and video games can shift stigmas related to those media among non-geek audiences, so take from this what you will.

Not Interested in Unlocking the Clubhouse After All: The Boston Globe has an article commenting on recent research suggesting that the major reason for the gender gap in the sciences and technology professions may just be that this is what women prefer, and our society allows greater freedom to follow personal career preferences.

I post this link with the usual caveat that it is not scientific research, but a newspaper article about said research, and may qualify the claims therein less than peer reviewed material would. That said, I’m very curious to learn more about this, as the chicken-or-egg possibilities seem very important to consider. The implication here seems to be that science and tech simply don’t appeal to the innate and more broadly enculturated preferences of American women, but I wonder how well the stereotypes surrounding these fields specifically can be parsed out when studying what people want and believe.

I also think we should question the assumption that working in science and tech means working with “inorganic materials” as opposed to the “organic.” As any programmer can tell you, even the most tech-oriented jobs require working with people at some stage in the game. I wonder if we should be questioning not just why people prefer what they do, but why we conceptualize different fields the way we do. Might we see interests in computer science programs shifting if they offered increased emphasis to communication skills and teamwork exercises in their curricula?

Perceiving Smarts and Popularity: Boing Boing directs us to research at Ohio State University suggesting that kids think peers with glasses are smarter and more honest, but not necessarily any less attractive. One researcher said that “the findings suggest that media portrayals associating spectacles with intelligence may be reinforcing a stereotype that even young children accept.”

Meanwhile, Newsweek reports on research at the University of Virginia that teens can be happy just believing they’re popular, even if they’re not seen as particularly popular by their peers. The kids who are reasonably well liked but not super popular seem to benefit from this, but it doesn’t sound like teens are fooling themselves:

The one group of teenagers who did not fare well socially were those who did not perceive themselves as well liked and were not ranked as popular by their peers. These kids were viewed as more hostile toward their peers as the year went on and they were less sought out by their classmates over time. “They’re not at all on the radar screen,” says McElhaney. “They don’t see themselves as accepted and that’s where it’s most problematic, when you don’t have either that popularity or sense that you’re well liked.”

Perhaps the most practical solution for such teens, implied by another researcher quoted in the article’s final paragraph, is to at least find a small group where one can be accepted.

Makers, Punks, and Geeks: V. Vale at RE/Search has written an essay on the parallels between punk culture and the “maker” culture fostered by Make Magazine and its Maker Faire. As Boing Boing summarizes, shared ideals include DIY, Mutual Aid, Anti-Authoritarianism, and Black Humor.

This is a familiar argument to me, but I’m still trying to piece together for myself a cleaner understanding of the genealogy of this branch of geek culture. In From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Fred Turner addresses how hippy/DIY ideals led to the development of the net as we know it. Publishers Weekly said of the book, “On first glance, back-to-the-land hippies and dot-com entrepreneurs might not seem much alike”—but perhaps punk culture is sort of the “missing link” there. (This reminds me that I’m looking forward to reading Christina Dunbar-Hester’s dissertation, which similarly addresses the role of DIY culture and political activism in geek ideals.)

Also through Boing Boing, I came upon this New York Times article on Maker Faire. “This is a real geek fest,” a physics professor quoted in the article remarks, and the article makes note of a couple of the sillier points of the inventions (like cars shaped like muffins).

Noticeably unlike other geek fest articles covered by major newspapers, however—which often leave it to the reader to nod in amusement over weirdos in costume—this article consistently leads the reader back to conclude that this is all A Good Thing. Muffin cars may be weird, but they are “green,” and the overarching message of the festival emphasized here is of the positive uses of technology for humanity.

Is this tone sign of greater respect for geeky pursuits? Maybe. I’m inclined to believe, though, that this is indicative of the socially acceptable geekiness accorded specifically to technology, thanks to its widely understood economic worth. This is, as the author notes, a “high-tech, adamantly nonconformist culture, steeped in engineering and art and innovation in garages that incubate billionaires.” You won’t hear such praise in the Times‘s Comic Con wrap-up this year, even though the attendees of each event may see quite a bit of overlap.

On the Virtues of Steampunk: The New York Times and the Boston Phoenix both recently did pieces on steampunk (and an unedited version of the NYT piece went up here). The NYT piece in particular got me thinking about a couple of things that seem relevant to geek and tech cultures in general.

This article is concerned with “the intersection of romance,” emphasis on explaining the contemporary and subcultural importance of the romance. I’m curious, though, of whether this has broader relevance to how we consider the design of technology. For instance, I was very interested in this comment: “Yes, he owns a flat-screen television, but he has modified it with a burlap frame. He uses an iPhone, but it is encased in burnished brass.” The specific mention of the iPhone suddenly got me thinking about how steampunk may in some ways be another version of the kind of design consistency and holism championed by Apple.

Sure, Apple is all very top-down, steampunk is very DIY, but in both cases, it allows for a unified aesthetic experience between multiple objects in everyday life. The economic realities of mass production mean that a truly unified design aesthetic across multiple product types must necessarily be DIY, or at least rely on a lot of copycatting. Apple doesn’t make video game consoles, but thanks to redefining white and curvy as the color and shape of the future, Nintendo and Microsoft have helped make their electronics fit the contemporary living room aesthetic.

I’m not sure I’m going anywhere with this, but I suppose I’m wondering whether steampunk represents a challenge to other unified design aesthetics (or, to be less charitable, aesthetic monocultures). We’ve been able to “skin” our software applications for years now; will marketers find a way to bring that level of visual customization into other areas of our lives, on a much broader level?

This brings me to the other line I particularly appreciated: “Part of the reason it seems so popular is the very difficulty of pinning down what it is. … That’s a marketer’s dream.” This seems so relevant to the concept of “geek” and “nerd” more generally that I wanted to make note of it for future reference.

The Best Weapons Are Silent: How do you entice the employees of a video game publisher to keep mum on company secrets? Sega’s gamble: motivational posters with ninjas.

Dr. Anderegg analyzes a variety of statistics and cultural objects in attempting to come up with a comprehensive account of what behaviors get kids labeled as geeks and nerds (sometimes reaching conclusions very similar to those of my own dissertation!). This includes discussion of things like nerds’ interest in “magic” and fantasy fiction, but focuses most of all on why kids might feel like they can’t (or shouldn’t) be good at science and math. His strongest arguments, I think, are those that draw upon his direct experience and knowledge as a child psychologist. His discussion of the connection (or lack thereof) between geek stereotypes and Asperger syndrome is the most compelling I’ve read, and all the quotes from conversations with kids and parents really help give a sense of how non-nerds go out of their way not to be seen as nerds.

With the exception of a brief note in the conclusion about a 17-year-old who considers herself a member of a “Geek Club,” the book mostly considers “nerd identity” as synonymous with “the nerd stereotype”—something negative that we need to do away with. This means, perhaps unsurprisingly, that there isn’t really much consideration of geek/nerd identity and culture as something celebrated among adults; it’s something kids mostly grow out of, the author suggests, before they go on to make tons of money. In some ways, though, this was just a necessary limitation in scope, and I’m hoping to help fill in the gaps in this area myself.

If you happen to read this book yourself, I’d be very curious of your take on it. Please feel free to leave comments on this post or shoot me an email at jason at geekstudies dot org.

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.

Comics Activism in the University Library: Comixology offers the first part in a series on how one university librarian (whose job is not to build up the comics collection) rallies support among faculty to build up the library’s comics collection.

Geek Activism in the City Streets: Yahoo News reports on an effort to rename one city’s 42nd street after the late Douglas Adams. The motivating party behind this campaign is an online geek community (blog, forum, store) I was previously unaware of, Geek in the City.

Ugly Activism in Buenos Aires: A BBC article recounts the tale of Gonzalo Otalora, Argentine writer of Feo (“Ugly”) and semi-ironic “campaigner” for the rights and recognition of ugly people.

His book, Feo (Ugly), has just been republished and is selling well. On the inside cover is a picture of Gonzalo as a youth. It is not a pretty sight.

“I was a child with thick glasses, spots and braces,” he said. “The kids made fun of me at school.

“Later the girls rejected me in the discos. And then when I was looking for work, I felt so ugly and insecure that I was rejected again and left without a job.

“The great challenge in my life has been to stop being the school nerd—and thanks to my humour and bravery I’ve managed to overcome all that.”

That the focus here is on looks more so than braininess or interests may speak directly to regional differences in how ‘nerd’ is defined. Buenos Aires is particularly known (or residents think of it as being known) for its “beautiful” people.

Evolution of the Nerd: Z. passes on a link from Australia’s The Age which proclaims that Geeks Rule, OK. The article goes on to describe a variety of subgroups of geeks, and why geeks at large are now “the dominant force in popular culture.

All I Want For Christmas: Popular Science polled tech luminaries and internet celebrities while compiling its “ultimate for-geeks, by-geeks gift list.” Individuals polled include Jonathan Coulton, Jimmy Wales, Fake Steve Jobs, Wil Wheaton, Xeni Jardin, and others.

Usted es un Nerd Enorme: A sepulcher in new video game Uncharted contains a message in Spanish that reads:

If you are reading this grave, you’re a huge nerd. Please get a life and a girlfriend.

Kotaku crossed out part of the original response (which had sarcastically lambasted whoever thought that reading Spanish was nerdy), probably because comments that follow the post suggest that most readers found it more funny than offensive.

Virtual World Research, The Sequel: Slashdot notes that Edward Castronova’s Shakespearean virtual world, Arden, didn’t really work out as planned—there simply wasn’t enough interest from players. Now in the works: Arden II. The gaming/economics researcher reflected:

You need puzzles and monsters, or people won’t want to play … Since what I really need is a world with lots of players in it for me to run experiments on, I decided I needed a completely different approach.

I find his approach interesting, and I do think that online games could offer some fertile ground for research in economics, but I’d be nervous about extrapolating too much more about social/psychological research more broadly from behavior in a virtual world. Aside from that, my biggest concern is that experimentally manipulating the conditions between different servers of the same game would simply encourage people to jump ship to a new server, which would wreak havoc on your data. Still, I wish this project the best, and I’d be interested to see whether this yields any results on whether interpersonal behavior within virtual worlds maps well onto behavior in person vs. other online contexts.

The Ups and Downs of Transmedia Storytelling: Comics may represent the place where Hollywood goes for new ideas, but it also seems like the medium may represent the place where fan favorites go to die. Ever since Joss announced that Buffy would be seeing a canonic “season” in comics form—and, shortly thereafter, that Veronica Mars might also be resuscitated in this way—I have been particularly interested in how others might use comics to continue franchises that face major economic barriers in other media. Now, Slashdot reports that Joss Whedon’s Firefly franchise will be coming to comics—but ironically, that’s the format that fans may be least interested in seeing. This doesn’t surprise me too much; after all, Firefly was great largely because of its cast.

Net Linguistics: Nelson suggests some unusual emoticons from games, and follows up with some notes on the evolution of the <3 (“heart”) emoticon (latter link via Boing Boing). The <4 emoticon seems like a pretty classic example of how programmer thinking might influence linguistics, sort of a visual/textual equivalent of “love++.”

On a related note, Geek Gestalt notes that Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is “w00t.” I’m not sure whether this is a sign that l33tspeak has moved into popular usage or whether this is an event that would actually encourage such a move, but it seemed noteworthy whatever the case.

Cons as Vacation Spots: MSN City Guides offers suggestions for a bunch of “geek getaways” based on different interests. It’s not entirely comprehensive or accurate (E for All was not bigger than PAX, despite high expectations), but it certainly does read more like a travel guide than the typical newspaper approach of marveling, year after year, that people are dressed up so funny-like and are drinking more than expected.

Don’t Watch Snakes on a Plane Alone: Slashdot refers us to a study suggesting that enjoying movies is contagious. The post quotes one researcher:

By mimicking expressions, people catch each other’s moods leading to a shared emotional experience. That feels good to people and they attribute that good feeling to the quality of the movie.

This is a different interpretation from what I expected. Personally, I’ll watch television alone, but I always wait for company to watch a movie. This article suggests that people give the movie credit for emotions that are actually cued by other people; I always thought of it more in terms of magnifying what I enjoy about a movie by being able to share it with people I care about, adding a new dimension to what is in the movie alone.

Games Teach You Useful Skills: A 12-year-old swedish boy outsmarted an elk, saving himself and his sister based on behavior learned in World of Warcraft (link via Boing Boing). I kind of liked the story better when I thought he had been attacked by a moose, but either way it’s pretty weird and impressive.

First, links of general geeky interest, and then, some more specific stuff about games, comics, and Harry Potter (or rather, Dumbledore).

Nerdy Boston Weekend: Tomorrow, I’m headed to a Beauty and the Geek casting call to do some participant-observation research. I figure the best way to justify my presence there and get a sense of the process is to just try out myself, but it would probably overcomplicate my life if they actually found me interesting. (My guess is they won’t, as I plan to make no secret that I’m there for my own research.) Later in the evening, I’ll be headed to Nerdnite in Jamaica Plain for some more participant-observation. I wanted to just go as an attendee this time around, but I promised that I’d present something next time if they’re still interested and I’m in town again.

A Trip Back in Time: I happened upon an article from a couple years ago by Lev Grossman, Time‘s current “Nerd World” blogger, about how ‘geek’ is becoming mainstream. This led me to a longer interview with Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon, which I remember reading some time ago but wanted to link again.

Our Geeky Military: Via Boing Boing: “New book features US Military emblems, shows the Pentagon is full of D&D geeks and X-Files fans.” The book is titled I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black World.

Geek Chic: The other day, someone asked me if there is really such a thing as “geek chic.” All I could think to say at the time was that it’s in the Oxford English Dictionary dating back at least as far as the early 1990s (a classic geek answer, if i do say so myself). In case that’s not proof enough, apparently this concept has its own Wikipedia entry separate from the main ‘geek’ entry. That entry includes a picture of Steph the Geek, whom I had never heard of before, but that seemed worth a link.

More Nerdy Writings: I feel the need to update this post with a couple things I just stumbled upon. One is Nerdblurb, which a friend recommended to me (well, its podcasts, anyway). The other is Stephen Fry’s new column at the Guardian, whose inaugural entry is titled Welcome to dork talk” (link via Daring Fireball, sent to me by Dan Moren, with whom I’m sharing a booth at Diesel Cafe in Somerville).

Games

Games Should Not Be Movies: In “Constructing Artificial Emotions” at Gamasutra, Daniel Cook makes the case that video games should skip the script and focus on what they seem to do best. (Link via Kotaku.) This kind of goes in the opposite direction from my own recent postings on games and narrative.

Game Grammar: Another Gamasutra article, “Designing Games,” Brandon Sheffield talks to Raph Koster about “game grammar.” (More on game grammar from a talk Koster gave here.)

Serious, Artsy, Congressy: The Escapist has a whole issue now on interesting game formats, including articles like “Ten Myths About Serious Games,” a piece on video games in art exhibits, and a piece on Fantasy Congress.

RPGs, Sort Of: This review of The Witcher at Eurogamer (link via Kotaku) explains that video game “RPGs” have more to do with the formal properties of early Dungeons & Dragons than with actual “role-playing.” I link to this because people are always asking me what on earth makes a video game an RPG.

Life Without Achievements: One Kotaku writer reflects on how life is better without Xbox Live Achievements: “Jesus, since when was it fun to force yourself to play through parts of a game just to earn yourself an arbitrary point score? Last I remember it was around 1987. We moved on from there for a reason. Because it’s stupid.”

Another Sort of Game Review: Hipster, Please! refers us to Little Miss Gamer: “PBC touts Little Miss Gamer as ‘a game review show for everyone,’ but I respectfully disagree. It’s actually more of a game review show for those gamers who are neither Xbox Live douchebags nor Evercrack addicts; it’s a game review show for folks who game for pleasure, as opposed to those who do it for the sake of following the lead of their respective demographics.”

Comics

Formerly Known As “The Guide to Comics”: Wizard Magazine is now billing itself as “The #1 Men’s Pop Culture Magazine.” Anyone who has read Wizard will not find this much of a surprise; that’s why Frank Miller famously tore up an issue on stage at the 2001 Harvey Awards, explaining, “Even though this monthly vulgarity . . . [cries] to all the world that we’re as cheap and stupid and trashy as they think we are, we sponsor this assault.” (I wish I could find a full transcript online still.) Nevertheless, Dirk Deppey collects all the surprised responses (search for “fangirls” on that page).

Comics Can Be Successful: Tom Spurgeon sums up recent developments in webcomics business models. Also: an ironic link with the text “Hooray! Comics finally saved!” to an article on the 30 Days of Night film adaptation, which “takes graphic novel films out of the fan-boy ghetto” Also: “Essentially, 30 Days of Night is a hit-and-miss step in a direction that opens the possibility for audiences who don’t eat smelly nachos and live in their parents’ rumpus rooms to enjoy the movie as well.”

Color in Comics: One of the papers I just submitted to a conference had a paragraph or two on experimental uses of color in comics, which made it the least discussed formal technique of the paper. Fortunately, Derik A. Badman has me covered in Panel & Pictures: Changing Colors.

Dumbledore

In Brief: Yes, I need a whole category for links related to J.K. Rowling’s announcement (or rather, explosive, offhand comment) that she “always thought of” Dumbledore as gay. The story was broken by Potter fan site The Leaky Cauldron, where the news about Dumbledore shares a headline with some other characters’ marriage plans.

On “Geeks Gone Wild”: The most extensive single-story write-up I’ve seen so far has been from Bay Windows, “New England’s Largest GLBT Newspaper.” It discusses Rowling’s possible motives and general reaction, both positive and negative.

On Surprises and Disappointment: Lev Grossman isn’t too surprised. John Cloud laments, “Why couldn’t he tell us himself?”

On Authorial Authority: Jason Mittell questions what it means for Rowling to keep making addenda to the series after its completion: “The press & blogs I’ve read seem to be treating it as a statement of fact – it’s Rowling’s fictional world, and thus her statements are canonical. … But something changes once a series is complete.” Neil Gaiman, meanwhile, explains that authors know plenty about their characters that they just don’t have the space or the inclination to share with you.

And the Rest: The revelation about Dumbledore’s implied sexuality has made one man regret his tattoo. Also, this whole situation reminds me of how some exhibit claims to have proven that Superman is Jewish, as if he were a real man and not the product of many writers over the course of decades.

My brief response: Of all the fictional characters that I’ve ever seen interpreted as gay from media I’m very familiar with myself, only two have struck me as making a lot of sense within the source material rather than willful reinterpretation to satisfy the interests of the reader. These are Dumbledore, and Leon Kennedy from Resident Evil 4. Also, despite protests that Dumbledore should have said this himself in the pages of the series, I don’t find it so far outside the realm of believability (aside from the wizardry part) that a gay guy who had been in love with a Hitler-like figure and who goes on to head a boarding school for children in the late 20th century might have kept his sexual preferences to himself.

Between these and Mary Bucholtz’s upcoming book, I’ve got a lot of reading ahead of me. After I finish the dissertation next summer, I hope to find their good company on the bookstore’s increasingly full “Nerd” shelf.

How did such a nerdy profession become cool — aside from the fact that a certain amount of nerdiness is now cool? Many young librarians and library professors said that the work is no longer just about books but also about organizing and connecting people with information, including music and movies.

Does that mean I have to categorize this post as related to books, music, and movies? Yes—but wait, there’s more!

Ms. Campbell added that she became a librarian because it “combined a geeky intellectualism” with information technology skills and social activism.

Jessamyn West, 38, an editor of “Revolting Librarians Redux: Radical Librarians Speak Out” a book that promotes social responsibility in librarianship, and the librarian behind the Web site librarian.net (its tagline is “putting the rarin’ back in librarian since 1999”) agreed that many new librarians are attracted to what they call the “Library 2.0” phenomenon. “It’s become a techie profession,” she said.

I haven’t really been thinking of librarians as part of the whole “new hip geek” phenomenon, but I guess that was just me being too narrow: After describing how librarians use social networking sites and instant messging programs, this article even goes on to explicitly draw connections between libraries and comic book cultures. I’ve long known about the success that libraries were having with comics—even beyond what I read on industry news sites, I once interviewed someone at the Philly Free Library who said they brought in comics creators for author events to lend the library some hipness.

Plus, nerdy/hip librarians and library-goers are a a large enough niche that they have their own presence represented in webcomics. This article mentions Unshelved, the online comic for hip librarians, and off the top of my head, I can also point out Questionable Content as a comic about modern indie rock/hipster culture featuring a protagonist who works at a college library with a tattooed lesbian (see also this t-shirt design).

I’m fascinated, too, by the whole “social activism” angle that comes up repeatedly in this article. When you think about it, though, if there’s any group that has as much claim to phrases like “the information wants to be free” as the open source and free culture proponents, it’s library advocates. I tend not to think of geek culture broadly speaking as widely characterized by overt political activism—just certain facets of it, like the copyright reform enthusiasts—but perhaps certain political sentiments are more widespread than I normally imagine.

Fairyland by Paul J McAuley uses a holographic foil and irridescent cover stock; The Separation by Christopher Priest uses an uncoated stock and a deboss; and Hyperion by Dan Simmons uses a spot varnish over black. [...]

From a quick browse of a few online sci-fi forums it looks like existing readers aren’t overjoyed at the new look, but that’s really not the point — these covers are designed to reach out to a new audience who wouldn’t dream of picking up the standard sci-fi book.

There are eight in the series, produced in-house by Emma Wallace, with a brief that was simply ‘do what you want, but bring them to a new audience’. She’s done that in spades.

Jacob and I are sort of design snobs, so this new vision is welcome as far as we’re concerned. He suggests that there are likely many people—sci-fans included—who are turned away by fantasy-art-style covers, despite that the article suggests that “existing readers” prefer the old look. As he pointed out to me, though, there’s probably a big overlap between the readers who like such covers and the readers who frequent sci-fi book forums. I wonder, then, who will really be attracted by this new approach: the less hardcore (or less “faithful”) SF fans, or those who typically wouldn’t even have read SF in the first place?

Definative anthropological guide to geeks of all ages, June 15, 2000
Reviewer: A reader

This book is that rare and wonderful creation, a humor book that actually gives useful information about a sorely misunderstood segment of today’s population. Mikki Halpin addresses the issues that pervade life with a geek, but in a gentle and humorous way without ever sounding patronizing. Now that the geeks run the world, thank god there is miss halpin to show us how to thrive and survive through all of our geek interactions.

I realize we’re targeting slightly different markets here, but I’m not sure how comfortable I am competing with the definitive anthropological guide to geeks. I’m not even sure I’m allowed to be funny in a dissertation, which puts me at a distinct disadvantage.

Despite my quibbles with overzealous fan-fic authors, this was one hell of an accepting crowd, one in which a teenager was as welcome to weigh in as a professor, where discussion of philosophy was as compelling as discussion of technology, where it didn’t matter if you were from a Christian fundamentalist or Wiccan background, and where even the fiercest debate could teach an ardent fan something new.

There’s quite a bit in here about “wizard rock,” too, what sounds like a surprisingly active music scene separate from (but probably compatible with) lab nerd music and nerdcore hip-hop:

Carpenter [of the Remus Lupins], 23, who graduated last year from UCLA with a degree in English, has 55 concert dates scheduled this summer. He describes wizard rock as “probably the coolest summer job you’ll ever have.”

I asked the puppyish Carpenter if the hordes of boys and girls hanging on him throughout the conference meant that wizard rock has helped him score some horntail. He grinned and said, “There is a very strong distinction between opportunity and what you do about it. Wizard rockers are known for being pretty good guys, and behaving well. Because we’re dorks.” [...]

Though they’ve taken on the personae of Slytherin brats, the women [of The Parselmouths] said their favorite Potter characters are the outcasts — Neville, Draco, Snape and Luna Lovegood. “We are complete dorks,” said Horner, entering some bizarro universe in which she was trying to convince me of how uncool she is. In high school, they explained, they enrolled in an advanced computer class. “The boys in it looked at us and decided to treat us like we didn’t know anything,” said Horner. “But it turned out we knew a lot,” said Vahlberg. “Yeah, we recorded and produced our own CD, so clearly we know a little bit about computers?” added Horner in pitch-perfect upspeak.

I think it’s interesting how the musicians here refer to themselves as “dorks,” which (according to the folks I’ve talked to) is by far the most socially-inept of the geek/nerd/dork triumvirate. The author is sure to remind us that there’s enough crazy sexy stuff going on, though, to redeem the even the dorkiest:

Back in the ballroom, I was beginning to agree with Brittany Vahlberg that this was way better than prom. In fact, people anxious to host lively wedding receptions might want to consider asking their guests to dress in wizard garb. Boys danced with girls, girls danced with girls, boys danced with boys, and doxies danced with dementors. Everyone looked pretty, and if not pretty, then pretty weird. Guys lost their shirts. People were grinding, making out, hugging. They line-danced. They drank. They did the time warp. (Oh, did they do the time warp…) A couple got engaged. I was pretty sure that the Potter fans did everything that was legal (and some things that weren’t) on that dance floor. My only surprise was that Bianca Jagger did not enter on a horse. In fact, I had the Rolling Stones in my head. “The music’s screaming, my feet are flying, everybody’s laughing, and nobody’s crying.”

Well, for now, anyway. Give it two months.

This last sentence, of course, is a reference to how devastated many Potter fans expect to be when the story ends. This stands in contrast to how happy Lost and Battlestar Galactica fans seem to be that their series have endings in site—but then again, when a TV show drags on, it means sitting through pointless “filler” episodes. New Harry Potter books are spaced out enough that fans can provide the filler themselves without too much worry that their machinations will be undone with next week’s installment.