Cinema Blend offers “5 Reasons Scott Pilgrim vs. the World Failed to Find an Audience,” but its reasoning is somewhat suspect at times, and even the title seems like a misnomer to me. “Scott Pilgrim” is currently the top Trending Topic on Twitter. My friends have been talking about it for weeks; a bunch of us saw a free advance screening, and a bunch more saw it on opening weekend. The blogs I follow regularly have been generally gushing praise. The issue doesn’t really seem to be that it “failed to find an audience,” but that the audience it found wasn’t really big enough to promise the kind of box office take that you’d expect with a $60 million budget. The whole phenomenon feels strangely reminiscent of Snakes on a Plane: Everyone was expecting the hype to equal success, when in fact it might have been only enough to make sure the movie makes a modest profit in the long run.

Cinemablend may be onto something in pointing out that the pop-culture references and gamer culture in-jokes may have been a little esoteric for the cinemagoing populace at large, but I don’t think too much specialized knowledge was really required to “get” the movie. Yes, you’ll appreciate recognizing some Zelda music during one dream sequence, but knowing the music is from Zelda isn’t really necessary. The really esoteric references have been stripped in the adaptation from comic book to movie. (My favorite scene in the entire comic series shows Ramona getting dressed to go out, generally ignoring her boyfriend, while he drones on about a particular X-Men comic in which Wolverine gets crucified.) By focusing more on rock music in the plot and fairly generic 8-bit game imagery in the visual style, the movie tapped into common media tropes that should’ve been recognizable to most American moviegoers, from those who lament that punk is dead to those who actually shop at Hot Topic.

I’ve heard people suggest other reasons for why Scott Pilgrim didn’t do better, like how so many who were dying to see it saw advance screenings at Comic Con and local theaters (such as myself). It’s a fair point, but there’s no way that accounts for the $24 million gap between #5 and #1 on the weekend box office take (or even the $13 million difference between #5 and #2, Eat Pray Love, which I’ve never even seen an ad for).

Besides the possible issues of how accessible this content really is, then, I see a couple other things going on here.

One factor in Scott Pilgrim‘s reception is a backlash against the image of the “hip nerd.” A recent NPR piece on “‘Scott Pilgrim’ versus the Unfortunate Tendency to Review the Audience” gives a hint at how sick some critics (and perhaps, by extension, some moviegoers) are getting of the nerd image:

After referring to the first part of the movie as a “dork-pandering assault,” The Boston Phoenix reviewer goes on to say that Michael Cera’s performance is “irritating” in part because of “the non-stop Pavlovian laugh track provided by the audience at the screening I attended.” (As far as I know, that’s a first: “You made the audience laugh, you irritating actor in a comedy, and that’s what’s wrong with you.”)

The review in the St. Petersburg Times begins, “First of all, I’m not a video gamer. I have discovered more appealing ways to not have a life.”

The New York Observer sniffs that the film is “clearly directed at an audience with generational ADD.”

Here’s one from Philadelphia Weekly: “Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is Fan Service: The Movie, an insular, punishingly alienating experience preaching only to the faithful, devoted hearts of arrested 12-year-old boys. It’s singularly fixated on video games and shallow visions of women as one-dimensional objects to be either obtained or discarded and offers no possible point of entry to anybody over the age of 30.”

I can see how some viewers would get sick of seeing nerdy heroes lately, as that seems to be the bulk of what we’re getting in some genres, and Scott Pilgrim is the most celebratory of the bunch. This trend is reviewed somewhat in “‘Scott Pilgrim’: The End of the Nerd as We Know Him,” in which a Salon writer suggests that the titular character is a “Nerd in Name Only” (or “NINO”). The author was pretty far off in his prediction that Scott Pilgrim would beat The Expendables, but otherwise does a decent job of summarizing how the geek image has been mainstreamed and monetized.

That said, calling Scott a “NINO” (“Nerd in Name Only”) kind of misses the point of what we mean when we call ourselves nerds, but in the author’s defense, his appears to be an outsider perspective. The truth of the matter is that the pop culture image of the nerd is finally catching up to the self-image of the nerd, now that arch-geeks like Edgar Wright are at the helm of blockbuster movies. We the dorks are starting to realize, as a culture, that we are kind of neat. The self-image of the nerdy adult may include gentle, humorous, and honest self-deprecation, but it doesn’t preclude dating. It sees creative talents, like being in a kick-ass band, as part of being a nerd, not mutually exclusive with it. Its sees understanding of truly esoteric pop culture references as markers of authenticity, a shout-out to fellow nerds who know that what we are now is influenced by what we were as kids.

Calling Scott Pilgrim “dork-pandering” is unkind, but not entirely inaccurate. At least Judd Apatow’s movies have the sense to show their lovable losers getting knocked around, insulted, and embarrassed. None have the gall to introduce the protagonist with a label reading, “Rating: Awesome.” To a viewer or critic who isn’t ready to stop dismissing dorks as losers, I can see how a movie that shows geeks how we see ourselves would seem ridiculous.

I don’t think, though, that Scott Pilgrim‘s disappointing performance can be blamed only on “nerd disdain.” This leads me to the second factor I’d like to suggest. Remember how many times you watched The Phantom Menace before you realized it wasn’t as awesome as you thought? Well, Scott Pilgrim is no Episode I, but it did have some pretty major flaws.

I know I am inviting some serious flaming on this one. Don’t get me wrong: I really enjoyed the movie. It was fun, and it was funny. I laughed several times, mostly at lines I remembered from the comic book. But let’s be frank: The basic plot—boy meets girl, boy fights enemies to be with girl—was generic. And, perhaps most problematic, the pacing was extremely rushed. Hollywood movies have a very codified sense of pacing that audiences have come to expect. (Watch The Mutant Chronicles sometime for an example of a movie that ignores this at its own peril.) When the reviewer cited in that blockquote above notes that it was made for those with “generational ADD,” I think that’s a critique of the transitions as much as the audience. The movie jumps from scene to scene with reckless abandon, featuring a non-stop energy that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. If the filmmakers hadn’t been so concerned with being true to the comic, there’s no way there would have been a full seven evil exes. There just wasn’t time for them all.

I wonder whether the movie dropped the ball attracting those nerds who weren’t already reading the comic and plugged into the hype surrounding this. If you weren’t already looking forward to it, but still belonged to the hip/nerdy potential target market, I think the best that could be said of the movie was summed up in that Salon piece mentioned above: “The film is empty-headed and utterly devoid of drama, yet aesthetically elating.” That was my own main disappointment with the movie, though not really a surprising one to me: It was fun, but emotionally and thematically vapid compared to the comic book.

This may be a bad thing for the movie, but it’s at least somewhat heartening when you think about the development of traditionally geeky media more generally. The reason I love that scene with Scott babbling on about an X-Men comic to Ramona is because it feels awkwardly, painfully real and familiar. It’s a piece of the drama of their relationship, something that goes beyond the generic “defeat the baddies, get the girl” plot. The Scott Pilgrim movie had to focus on “boss fights” to reach the end, while the Scott Pilgrim comics had a lot more wiggle room to explore the experience of being a directionless twenty-something trying to figure out how friendships and relationships are supposed to work.

I think that point is a major part of what’s missing from so many of the cultural critiques about the ascendency of the nerd to the “pop culture overlord,” in the words of that Salon piece. Yes, “geek chic” has a great deal to do with marketers and content producers finally realizing that geeks represent an audience eager to spend money on media. But it’s also important to note that this also represents a sort of ascendency of traditionally geeky media to something more complex, more sophisticated, more—well, adult.

It’s delightful to hear Zelda music in a dream sequence and to see foes burst into coinage when defeated on the big screen. Blockbusters can’t always sail on mere delight. We all know it’ll make a killing in DVD sales, but Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is not the sign of the Revenge of the Nerds that so many thought was foretold. At the end of the day, though, at least we can reassure ourselves that it was a much better adaptation than LXG.

There was a time when Comic Con International was about comic books; now, however, it’s a massive pop culture festival, and a sort of testing ground for movie trailers and TV pilots. In the wake of Comic Con 2008, the Guardian offers an article titled Geek Almighty,” a fairly typical article about geeks’ influence in hollywood:

As The Dark Knight roars towards $400m (pounds 201m) this weekend in its record-breaking US run following successful summer launches for Iron Man and Wanted, comic book adaptations are once again bossing it at the box office. [...]

The studios are once again courting one key demographic – the geeks. This knowledgeable and vocal sub-culture has returned to prominence since the 1990s, when fan hysteria greeted films such as Men in Black, Blade, and the Star Wars sequels and propelled them to box-office success. In the intervening years, Hollywood’s cyclical nature and the ascendancy of comic book aficionados such as Christopher Nolan, Zack “300″ Snyder, and Frank “Sin City” Miller has seen the nerd return as a highly influential factor in Hollywood. Studio chiefs know all too well that if upcoming projects such as Captain America, Wonder Woman and Wolverine are to prosper, first and foremost they have to be all right with the fans. [...]

[T]he comic-book fans are a savvy crowd and, if Hollywood gets it wrong, poor early word can spread like wildfire. Ever since the cult website Ain’t It Cool News damned 1997′s Batman & Robin with negative advance reviews, there’s been a potency to the musings of netizens.

The article continues with some of the other usual comments about how fans will revolt if adaptations veer too far from source material, and how central fandom is to some geeks’ lives. Lucasfilm’s head of fan relations adds: “Fan culture is all sorts of things. It can be geeks in costumes who haven’t showered for two weeks or ordinary-looking people who received their love of Star Wars from their parents and have in turn passed it on to their children.”

Hollywood Reporter, meanwhile, offers another sort of piece. A piece titled “Is Hollywood Overestimating the Clout of the Geek?” similarly recognizes the film industry’s efforts to appeal to the hardcore, but questions whether the extra effort really pays off in the end in the form of better profits:

Marketing to the grassroots wasn’t always this important. For years there were two tiers of marketing, usually arranged in a clear hierarchy. [...] Where most marketing went broad, the second type trafficked in details; where mass-media marketing tried to stoke enthusiasm, this kind assumed it and cultivated it. [...]

But a few years ago, some time after showrunners started quietly checking out catty TV blog TelevisionWithoutPity.com and some time before Comic-Con became the calendar’s biggest corporate marketing destination, a funny thing happened: The second approach became primary.

On its face, this shouldn’t be the case. A brand’s cult following isn’t a very large number, and it’s also a group already inclined to like and spend money on a product, which by most marketing logic is exactly the group you should spend the fewest resources on.

The thinking, though, grew out of a crucial tastemaker argument — the idea that the movie and television business functions as a series of concentric circles, with the tastes of a relatively small group on the inside radiating to the larger — and more lucrative — circles outside it.

But a few years of experience have yielded enough anecdotes and data to suggest that the nerd-herd strategy might not matter as much as the hype has suggested.

The article offers a few main arguments against “the nerd-herd strategy.” First, fans are too elusive to know how to really please them. Second, fans’ favorite series don’t always catch on with the mainstream, with one director suggesting that “the total number of people in the blog world is probably only a few hundred thousand, and as much as they might hate to hear it, for most movies that’s not going to make the difference between a success and a failure.” And third, movies that were successful with both fans and the mainstream tend to be held aloft as examples supporting the power of geeks, while new projects that meet with geek approval at Comic Con, only to flop when released into the wild, tend to get glossed over.

It’s an interesting argument, so I encourage you to read both articles and chime in with your own thoughts. For now, I’d just like to note that I was a bit surprised the latter article didn’t get into any of the “long tail” stuff about the most passionate niche being where most of your money might come from in the long run through DVD sales, licensing, and merchandising—a lesson taught to Hollywood by none other than Star Wars, a modern geek classic (you know, back before George Lucas went to the dark side). It’s probably also worth noting that “the total number of people in the blog world” is several times larger than estimated above, according to even just a quick glance at the estimated stats of some major geek destinations online (which can number in the millions). Even if these geeks’ opinions aren’t filtering into the mainstream, there’s still enough members in these groups to constitute some viable markets in themselves. And, as Church pointed out in a conversation about this, geeks may be able to hurt a project with negative reactions more than they can help a project that excites them (see above note of fear about repeating Schumacher’s Batman debacle).

I definitely have to agree that a cheering crowd at Comic Con is not an accurate litmus test for success; the audiences and viewing conditions just aren’t generalizable, even among geeks. It’s also worth pointing out, however, that short-term profitability with the broadest audiences possible isn’t necessarily the smartest way to define a movie as a “success,” let alone a product of any “quality.”

(Thanks to Church for links and conversation on this topic.)

If a television show turned cultural phenomenon spawns diehard fans who recite dialogue by heart, wear costumes inspired by the show and buy all the tie-in products, are these devotees nerds? If the show in question is Star Trek, The X-Files or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the answer is certainly yes. But what if we’re talking about Sex and the City?

Mark Medley, a reporter writing for the National Post, asked me this question a couple weeks ago. Now, it kicks off an article titled “Female Trekkies.” (Another version, sans my brief quote, made it to the Victoria Times Colonist under the title “Sex and the City Fans. Geek or Chic?”)

This may sound a bit confusing to people who aren’t familiar with Sex and the City and its devoted fan following. For some fans, being a SATC fan goes beyond catching up on the show every week: It means buying the outfits featured on the show, and being thrilled to catch the movie premier now that the show’s off the air. Sound familiar, browncoats? Some fans of geeky media may surely think so, such as comics writer/novelist/blogger Jamie S. Rich, who describes (in a link via Chris) a screening of the new Sex and the City movie:

Really, it was like I was at a comic book convention, but one for chicks. Though, I don’t think it’s fair if I show up for the Hulk screening covered in green make-up I’ll get called a geek and going to see Sex and the City in fake couture is somehow not geeky. You can’t even make a claim that having boobs is what makes it different, because I know a lot of comic book guys (and sports fan guys) with bigger boobs than any of the actresses in the movie (well, except Jennifer Hudson). Nerds in any other underwear are just as nerdy.

I’m sure there are some around here, too, who would argue that ‘geek’ is now a broad enough term to apply to just about any fervent interest, especially when applied to pop culture in this way. That take on the concept of ‘geek’ lends it a little legitimacy, when you think about it—how could ‘geek’ be a bad thing when just about everybody is a geek nowadays?

That said, when Mark Medley asked me whether I thought SATC fans were geeks, I told him no. Or, rather, I told him that my research prioritizes what people tell me over what I think personally, and I suspect that these fans (a) wouldn’t call themselves geeks and (b) wouldn’t be considered geeks by most of those who do consider themselves as such.

Annalee Newitz, io9 and She’s Such a Geek! co-editor, was quoted as denying this geek definition flat-out:

Women who follow Sex and the City are not geeks. … They are doing what soap opera fans have always done: obsessively reading about their stories, and buying related consumer items. Are women who read Vogue geeks? Are women who know every detail about Sephora cosmetics geeks? No. You can’t expand the term ‘geek’ to mean anyone who is interested in something without draining the term of all meaning.

And one especially enthusiastic SATC fan quoted in the article kind of backs this up, distancing herself and fellow fans from this label:

I don’t think there’s anything nerdy or geeky about Sex and the City. … I think it’s more of a diva, glamour [thing]. I guess that’s more what I’d consider myself.

So what’s the big difference here? My quote that made it to the article suggests:

Being identified as a geek, or identifying oneself as a geek, kind of signals an understanding that you are or you know that you should be feeling embarrassed about what it is that you’re interested in. … And I doubt that…Sex and the City fans are really particularly embarrassed about their great interest in the show.

This isn’t a complete explanation, of course, but a reporter can only fit so much of my lengthy ramblings into one article. I thought it might be worth it to expand upon this a bit here, though.

In this context, I think that the big difference between a geeky fan interest and a not-geeky fan interest is how much the interest conforms to broadly understood norms of gender and maturity. It’s tempting to say that geeky/nerdy interests are more “intellectual” or based around obsession over “data,” but really, that wouldn’t count out SATC fans or even most sports fans. (Some geeks may be surprised by the breadth of statistics and history known to the average sports fan.) The only dimensions we’re talking about here are depth of enthusiasm and an interest in costuming (or fashion, if you prefer). Sports fans, too, will similarly “dress up” (in jerseys and/or face paint) for major fan events.

No, what we’re seeing here is that some interests are characterized as geeky and some are not, regardless of the specific behaviors or level of excitement involved. Sports represent a traditionally masculine interest, celebrating competition, aggression, and physical prowess. And, arguably, this is all connected to adult interests of strength and (to put it bluntly) suitability for mating. At the same time, being a SATC fan represents a sort of acceptably feminine interest in a feminist age. Even the SATC fan’s comment quoted above resists the “geek” label in favor of “glamor” or “diva,” a clearly gender-coded understanding. What’s particularly interesting to me about SATC is the way that it updates these feminine interests for a feminist culture. The characters aren’t the image of the female consumer constructed in a lot of old television and advertising, dedicated to swooning over heartthrobs, living for husband and family, and spending frivolously. They may be just as interested in relationships and shopping, but they’re sexually open, and successful career women in their own right.

Geeky pursuits don’t really fit anywhere in this paradigm of age- and gender-appropriate interests. To the world at large, they seem primarily aligned with childish boys, not adult men or women. Comics, games, and sci-fi represent escapist fantasy, a rejection of the hypermasculine, and not quite aligned with the traditionally feminine. The war paint of a sports fan somehow seems more manly and acceptable than the war paint of a LARPer. And in comparison, the fashionable dress and four-inch heels of the SATC fan is practically unassailable as an acceptably adult and gender-appropriate “costume.”

Of course, I’ve never claimed it was my job to arbitrate who is a geek and who isn’t. I pay attention to how others decide that for themselves and for one another. Sex and the City fans, now’s your chance to let your geek flag fly and stomp on my own observations, if you’re so inclined. So far, though, I’ve had the impression that geekiness is defined as much by how the world looks at what interests us as by how deeply we get involved with those interests.

Geek Speak: Perhaps you’ve heard rumblings that “nerdic” is the fastest growing language (from Wired, Gizmodo, the Telegraph, or Daily Mail). This “geek speak” includes terms coined specifically for conversation about internet and technology, like mash-up, rickroll, Wimax, and so on. Such terms are being added to the Oxford English Dictionary more rapidly than any other category of terms.

As far as I can tell, the newspaper stories on this essentially amount to regurgitating the press release, even including the part where it claims that this is a real language that can support entire conversations and that will unite Europe. The blogs recognize that this is not a real language (and Gizmodo even calls out the retailer behind the press release for this), which kind of provides a funny example of websites actually providing more critical and careful news coverage than print sources.

For another angle on geek lingo (which I have yet to check out fully myself), check out this article about leetspeak in the Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society. That link goes to the abstract, but it’s also available as a free PDF. (Thanks to Cabral for the tip!)

The Geek Defense: Perhaps you’ve read about Hans Reiser, the computer programmer who is being tried under suspicion that he murdered his wife. Wired had a big write-up about his story a short while back. Since reading that, I came across a Washington Post article which paints this in an unexpected light: The suspect’s seeming paranoia and bizarre activities—such as carrying around tons of cash and removing his cell phone battery—are geeky eccentricities, not evidence of guilt. The Post article suggests that Silicon Valley may be the only place where Reiser might find a jury of his peers, where his “actions appear fairly reasonable, at least to people who spend much more time with computer code than with other humans.”

I can imagine cases where this kind of defense might actually make some sense—not just for geeks, but the concept that some people have a quirky psychology that might be hard for your average person to interpret as anything but the slip-ups of a lunatic. Nevertheless, I wonder if it’s problematic for a court to attribute “quirky psychology” with “spend[ing] much more time with computer code”—as if being solitary is one thing, but being a solitary programmer makes you a cyborg or something. I’m no expert on criminal law, though, so I’ll leave the interpretation of this specific case to those who are.

Prom Night, Take 2: Church clued me in to Geek Prom. As the site explains, “For those who were too geeky to attend their high school prom, it’s a chance to finally be accepted. For those who were too cool to properly enjoy their high school prom, it’s an opportunity to finally let that inner-geek out.” Sounds potentially pretty inclusive—anyone been who can report what it’s like? The photos on the site and other sources indicate that lots of attendees really ham it up, dressing as unfashionably as possible.

Following Up on Black Nerds: You might remember Raafi Rivero’s post about black nerds from awhile back (which I discussed here). Well, Michael Hastings-Black clued me in to Raafi’s follow-up post, featuring a video of the SEO Rapper neatly illustrating a point that some readers originally struggled with:

The thrust of the piece remains vital — that because of our more democratized communication tools we are beginning to see a more accurate depiction of black america. Mainly because, you know, that media is actually being created by, ahem, black people. But all of these things are articulated more succinctly by the SEO Rapper above, whose seamless integration of the swagger required of an MC with the pedantry of the digerati is too smooth for hypertext.

The Flip Side: I refer here not to parallel dimensions within mirrors, but to what it must be like to be a non-geek in a geek-dominated environment. As one student newspaper writer explains, that’s what it’s like to not know anything about Star Trek at Case Western Reserve (the alma mater of two of my most lovably geeky friends here in Philly). “You’re not a real nerd!” others exclaim of this physics major, as she similarly admits no interest in Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, or other sci-fi staples.

It’s an amusing little piece, but reading between the lines a wee bit (as I am inexorably compelled to do), I am fascinated by the implication that “real nerds” can’t just be good at science; they have to watch the classics. Compare this to the “real geeks” who, every time there’s a geek typology printed up somewhere, exclaim that we must reclaim the days when being a geek meant building your own computers.

Drunken Vader vs. Jedi Congregants: I suppose this BBC article about a drunk guy in a makeshift Darth Vader costume assaulting self-identified Jedis is played pretty straight by the reporter—but I kind of get a sense that the implication is, “Which is weirder, a guy dressing like Vader and assaulting people, or the fact that there is actually a reasonably large and active religion of Jedi adherents?” Gizmodo seems to think that the latter is more deserving of punishment—further evidence, perhaps, that the most ruthless critics of geeks nowadays may just be other geeks.

Film Geeks and Geeky Films: Ethan Gilsdorf write an article for the Boston Globe about the Independent Film Festival of Boston, seen through the lens of geek culture. As the second paragraph proclaims, “if the Independent Film Festival of Boston has a cri de coeur this year, it’s ‘Geeks unite!’” And: “‘Geek culture is the thing that drives popular culture,’ said Nancy Campbell, an IFFBoston managing director. ‘Anyone who’s ever been a geek knows at some point the mainstream co-opts it.’”

Films at the festival touched upon topics such as Wizard rock, Bigfoot, virtual world and RPGs, nerdcore hip-hop, Harlan Ellison, and more. (Not mentioned in the article: Natural Causes may have had the first “naked Wii” scene outside of internet porn.) The article includes some behind-the-scenes notes for some films, like the comment that some gamers didn’t want to participate in Second Skin because of fear of stigma.

Incidentally, the end of the article notes that its writer, Ethan Gilsdorf, is writing a book titled Escape Artists: Travels Through the Worlds of Role Playing Freaks, Online Gaming Geeks, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.

Geek Ghetto vs. Nerd Power: And finally, Scott Brown offers a sort of rebuttal to Ben Nugent’s American Nerd in this month’s Wired. I have yet to read Ben’s book, but as Scott describes it, the conclusion is essentially that “nerd chic” is “just a fad,” while “‘real’ nerds are still out there [...] furtive, defensive, [...] all of them stubbornly unassimilated.” But no, Scott argues, nerds have made such a mark on our culture at large that we’re now the mainstream, and the mainstream is now us.

My take on this is that neither of these viewpoints is wrong, and they’re not really mutually exclusive. But, for many of us, one of these points can certainly feel more “right” than the other.

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.

I wasn’t struck by the videogame-ness of Ikea upon my visit there, but I was hugely disoriented and amazed by the many living room worlds it had on showcase. David Byrne is right, though, that Ikea is a simulation of sorts, a kind of hyperreality. I can’t help but wonder if he plays enough games that it was invoking in him that feeling that so many gamers seem to find familiar—the déjà vu for the digital age, where you wonder for a moment if there was just a glitch in the Matrix, or if you’ve simply been playing too much Grand Theft Auto.

I know I’m not the only one who’s experienced this. Sometimes, it’s immediately conscious. My first time skiing, I remember looking through my orange goggles at the world flying by me, thinking, “This is just like a video game”—and then, immediately after, feeling very foolish. The simulation was more familiar than the reality here because, previously, it was all I had access to.

At times other times, such as when one has been playing a particular game for an extended period, it might take a moment for our conscious recognition to catch up with what we are feeling. It’s just a momentary impulse you don’t act upon but, again, probably feel silly for experiencing. One of my younger brothers confessed that after playing GTA games for an extended period of time, he occasionally notices things while driving and thinks, “That would make a good ramp.” And once, after playing Bioshock for hours, I heard a low car engine a block or so away as I walked to a friend’s apartment. It sounded so much like the groaning of one the game’s enemies that I immediately wondered if I should change my course to check it out. The thought process only lasted a fraction of a second—not long enough to actually change how I behave, but certainly long enough to know where the feeling came from (and, again, to feel kind of dumb).

I think this happens more with games for me than with any other medium, but I know it can happen with other media we have been sufficiently immersed in. My friend Tom, for example, recently wrote on Twitter: “birds swarm past my office window and my immediate reaction (although not fully formed into a thought) is ‘nice algorithm’. crap.” When I asked for permission to quote him on this, he further confessed that playing lots of the Tony Hawk game once got him assessing how effective surfaces in the real world would be to grind on with a skateboard.

My most personally embarrassing example relates to a very specific director’s movies. Once, while walking down the street alone, I was approaching a man in a long coat walking in the opposite direction, toward me. Just as I neared him, a light-colored pigeon suddenly flew between us, and it triggered the feeling that something intense was about to happen. Again, just a split second, and by the time I figured out what that feeling was—a memory of so many movie gunfights that break out between strangers as doves fly by—it was already gone. Perhaps this is a particularly geeky phenomenon: A number of xkcd strips similarly refer to getting distracted by patterns in the world around us. Sometimes, in our bored moments, we might even play out scenarios in our minds long after realizing that what we’re seeing in the world was simply placed there by our imagination.

I know this is fodder for media effects researchers to claim that games and movies make thoughts of reckless driving and killing chronically accessible, thus making us more dangerous people. That’s certainly worth studying, but I think focusing on that may miss the point here. Everything I’ve mentioned is a far cry from actual aggressive behavior. If this phenomenon—weird, conscious, nonviolent, and mildly embarrassing split-seconds of disconnection from reality—is the grand culmination of so many years of playing games and watching movies, increased aggression may not be the most likely or noteworthy psychological effect demanding researchers’ attention.

Is what I have just described a sign of spending too much time away from the “real” world? This seems the easiest explanation, but I hesitate to make this conclusion. Our world includes our mediated environments. This is a simple fact of contemporary life. And, if this is in fact especially common among scientists, programmers, engineers, and researchers, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a chance that there’s something positive about brief flashes of pattern recognition. This may be deeply connected to certain kinds of problem-solving ability.

Returning to the example that began this post, parts of our world may already be designed (intentionally or not) to take advantage of how we solve problems and navigate other sorts of environments. There is something very surreal about Ikea, but it probably taps pretty effectively into a game playing impulse that’s already there for so many of us. I don’t feel like the boundaries between the real and the simulated have broken down entirely, as some would claim, but I’m finally sensing enough of a crack that I wonder what we can yank through from the other side.

There’s probably a paper in here somewhere, but I’m not sure I have time to brush up on my Baudrillard to write it just now.

“Hero Building”: On Gizmodo, an embedded video and some comments on “NY Jedi School Trains Lightsaber Enthusiasts (To Be Bigger Geeks).” The first few comments are mostly about how people are shocked that attractive women are in attendance, but that eventually moves into discussion of how profitable it would be to own a battery store in the area. For social researchers, the clip is worth watching for one instructor’s discussion of how the classes allow for “hero building” among shy attendees; otherwise, it’s worth watching because the lightsaber fights are actually pretty impressive. Updated for the line I meant to quote from the video but forgot about, near the end (thanks, Jordan): “It’s about nerds trying to better each other, and make their lives better through the dorkiness that makes them great.”

Nerdcore is “Insane”: The Boston Globe has an article on nerdcore that touches upon the tensions in the culture better than most newspapers’ takes that I’ve seen (link via Dan). MC Chris explains why he’s trying to distance himself from the scene, some of the rappers make a case why it’s an homage to hip hop rather than a (potentially racist) parody, and some nuggets here even suggest that it’s more like mainstream music stardom than one might imagine. Of the nerdcore concert at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show, one documentarian notes, “It was insane. They eventually had to shut the show down…. They caught rappers doing coke in the bathroom, they were smoking joints on the floor. There was literally porn stars there.” (Incidentally, I’ve been informed that the porn convention in Vegas happens at the same time as CES.)

The Fall of the ‘Graphic Novel’: Eddie Campbell laments the loss of ‘graphic novel’ as a useful term (link via Journalista). Those who first popularized the term wanted to create a distinction not just between saddle-stitched and squarebound comics, but between those with literary and artistic pretensions that might find a foothold in mainstream bookstores and those that still carry a stigma of juvenility and geekiness. Of course, now it’s associated with traditional superhero comics and manga. It’s uttered with irony by many, transparent as a gussied-up term for ‘comics’ with no useful formal or critical distinction. In Eddie’s words, “it got borrowed by a bunch of boobs and it came back busted.” That may sound somewhat unfair, considering that even the artsiest comics artists tend to imagine their work as sharing the same medium with Spider-man and Dragonball Z, but as Eddie’s post points out, it’s the critics who feel the need to make some distinction, and that’s a distinction that could make quite a difference for some publishers.

Nerd Politics: Z. and Matt S. refer me to this Time article on “The Ron Paul Revolution.” Apparently, this libertarian Republican is the nerd candidate:

“He’s about something that American nerd culture can get on board with: really knowing one subject and going all out on it,” says Ben Darrington, a Ron Paul supporter at Yale. “For some people, it’s Star Wars. For some people, it’s Japanese cartoons. For Ron Paul, it’s free-market commodity money.”

“The Internet’s Awesomest URL”: Kotaku refers me to Homotron, a new tech blog spinoff from GayGamer. Along with Pink Kryptonite (for comics) and Velvet Dicebag (for tabletop games), these form “an unassailable bulwark for gay geek culture to thrive,” according to Homotron’s welcome post. I’m not sure what makes it particularly “queer”—looks like your standard tech blog to me, so far—but I’m fascinated by the implication that there is a distinct “gay geek culture” separate from (or nested within) geek culture more broadly.

Penny Arcade and its Expo: Joystiq has a handy write-up on the Wil Wheaton keynote at PAX, full of assertions of geek cred. Also, Wired has a handy write-up on the fellows behind Penny Arcade, with further references to their own geek cred. I read this on the plane ride to Seattle and made a mental note to return to it later for all the juicy tidbits within, especially the bit about their new clothing line. (Also note that subscribing to Wired apparently earns you a Geekipedia of some sort.)

Nerd shows: Between Chuck and Big Bang Theory, the Onion AV Club points out that geeks and nerds seem to be popular material in the upcoming fall TV lineup.

Darth Vadertron: Comments following a Gizmodo post suggest the spectrum of fan reaction when Darth Vader is adapted to a Transformers action figure that turns into the Death Star. I guess some are of the mind that one geeky thing plus another geeky thing equals a really awesome geeky thing, whereas others are unimpressed. Much of being unimpressed apparently involves criticizing the details of the figure, such as pointing out that Vader never needed a gun, and asking, “What’s he gonna do in his transformed state? Orbit me to death?”

World of Puberty: A recent article at the Escapist follows the development of the World of Darkness RPG canon, suggesting that the earlier incarnations held their appeal in the world’s dark mirror of puberty. This article is also noteworthy for introducing me to the term ‘grognard capture’ (from Greg Costikyan), which refers to a game design’s ability to narrowly appeal only to hardcore gamers. I guess this stands somewhat in contrast to what I was trying to describe the other day when talking about the “casualcore” gamers Microsoft seems to be imagining must exist, who want less complex games but are expected to shell out prices only an enthusiast would ever contemplate.

Other blogs: Henry Jenkins links to a couple new fandom-oriented blogs by academics: Graphic Engine (about “special effects, videogames, film and television”) and Stranger 109 (exploring “gaming, culture, and technology”). They seem like they might be of interest to readers of this blog who are particularly interested in the formal aspects of traditionally geeky media—and I have to admit that I’m digging the flying saucer image atop the former.

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.