First, some notes on the event itself: Nerdapalooza is a gathering of bands featuring geek rock, wizard rock, game music, nerdcore hip-hop, and other acts along these lines. Z. explains on the Wired Geekdads blog: “Boasting a roster of more than 30 bands, the event is uniquely positioned to bridge the (sub)cultural gap that exists between various forms of geek music.” Moreover, proceeds go to Child’s Play, a charity started by Penny Arcade which puts games and toys into children’s hospitals.

Speaking of Z., I would next like to draw your attention to the “Nerdapalooza Bound” episode of the Radio Free Hipster podcast. It features a number of bands who will be at the event, and guest commentary by organizers. I let Z.’s podcasts keep me company the other day during a nine-hour train ride, and I thought that this one offered a particularly nice scope of the range of interests and attitudes we think of as “geek culture.” This array includes a song about lecherous pirates, a song about preferring nerdy ladies over more mainstream hotties, a song about whiney, depressed fifteen-year-olds on Livejournal, and various expressions of general playfulness and zaniness, among others. The commentary by Hex and mCRT (which name-checks Weird Al as an early influence in developing taste in geek music) also offers a quick glimpse at how this whole phenomenon of geek music has been developing. Next time I talk to someone who seems confused by the idea that ‘geek’ could be anything but an insult, I may just point them to this podcast.

And finally, to close, I’d like to link to Nerdapaloozers, a series of comics by Anthony of Game Music 4 All. As a sort of promotion or bonus celebration of Nerdapalooza, Anthony has replaced the captions from a bunch of old transformers comics with stuff referencing geeky musicians and members of the community at large. I sort of think of this as the Fenslerfilm G.I. Joe of the geek music world.

The conversation that followed the post, however, was mostly concerned with why nerdcore hasn’t had that sense of community more often, or in a more sustained fashion. Noting that the post was getting so many comments that it looked like a forum, participants moved over to the Game Music 4 All forum to continue. The conversation touches upon a number of related points, such as what “nerdcore” really means, what binds the various interests related to nerdcore, and whether nerdcore and wizard rock are better approached as genres, scenes, or movements. It’s very interesting reading, and I encourage you to go check out the whole thread yourself.

As it turns out, it’s not just the wizard rock scene that seems to have a more close-knit sense of community than nerdcore. Anthony echoes the observation brought up in the post, comparing nerdcore to various video game music scenes:

While I know pretty much nothing [about] wrock, it seems like you could have switched that with chiptunes, VG Rock, OCremixers, or a few other things. Floating around all these different VG inspired genres has made me proud, seeing so many communities sharing a common goal and working together, playing together, and being supportive of each and every person in the scene, whether promoters, musicians, or fans. Though, when I hit nerdcore, I didn’t get that same sense of community, which was a bit saddening.

The participants in this conversation—including fans, bloggers, and musicians—offer a good range of theories for why this is. I offered some myself (see the forum thread), but the basic thrust of my input right now is this: There’s a difference between a geek culture (or a subculture, if you prefer) and a geek community. Nerdcore draws upon a bunch of overlapping cultural domains, largely concerned with intellectual ability and media interests. You may feel that you connect with nerdcore music, or even describe yourself more broadly as belonging to “geek culture”—invoking all the enthusiasm, pride, and indignities that this may imply—but that’s not quite the same as connecting with a community of mutually supportive individuals.

The first time I really thought about this distinction was when I saw an ad in a hobbyist gaming and sci-fi store for a local writers’ group. I have a friend who has long hoped to make science-fiction writing his primary occupation, and I thought I could recommend the group to him to help spur him into action. Quite suddenly I realized that he would want nothing to do with the group: He loves science-fiction, but he has no particular desire to interact personally with fans (whom I suspect he regards as too likely to be smelly). He enjoys the material culture of science fiction, and considers it part of his own culture insofar as it interacts with his identity and enables certain kinds of interactions with the friends he already has. He isn’t really interested in interacting with a community built specifically around sci-fi writing, though.

(Side note: About a week after I suggested this distinction to my friend—who agreed I was about right in my assessment of how it applied to him—I read an article by Rhiannon Bury in the Post-Subcultures Reader that makes the same culture/community distinction in a discussion about X-Files message board participants. This was reassuring to me; it’s easy to be the first person to say something, but it’s harder to come up with something independently that anyone else finds worth discussing.)

In my forum post, I suggested that nerdcore may find it more difficult to build community because of its broadness. Or, alternatively, wrock and video game music scenes find it easier to build community because of the relative narrowness—and thus intimacy and lower barrier to entry—of their interests. Another thought just occurred to me, though: I wonder if nerdcore fans include a greater number of people who are more interested in geek culture than in geek community. I don’t know now why wrock or VGM would be any more likely to attract people who want to meet or at least more directly interact with their fellow fans online. Being much more overtly based on feelings of social isolation, though, is it possible that nerdcore attracts those who have little interest in meeting other nerds? If that were the case, the easy explanation behind that would be that those nerds are uninterested in socializing; even more plausible, I think, is the possibility that they, like my friend, would prefer to keep their distance from the nerds they don’t know yet.

Comics and Closets: Fellow Annenbergers Cabral and Paul F. send along an NYT article alerting me to Comic Book Club. The article begins:

At a recent performance of “Comic Book Club,” a weekly stage talk show at the People’s Improv Theater in Chelsea, an audience member declined to give his name. “I have family and friends,” he explained. “I’m a closeted geek.”

Alexander Zalben, 30, the show’s moderator, understood completely. Talking about being a comic book fan, he said, is “like coming out of the closet.” In fact Mr. Zalben only discovered that Justin Tyler, 28, another host, was a fellow aficionado when he spotted Mr. Tyler with a Midtown Comics bag. Pete LePage, 31, who rounds out the three, had a similar experience. “Justin busted me reading a comic,” he confessed.

The show, which celebrates its first anniversary Tuesday at 8 p.m., covers all things comic book, which these days also includes the worlds of video games, television and film. As that anonymous audience member put it, “It’s great to be in an atmosphere where you can sit and discuss these things without getting strange looks.”

I had thought the success of the “graphic novel” might have done away with this fear to some extent; when I talk to people about being “closet geeks,” RPGs come up more often than comics. I’d say the Midtown Comics bag is the right-ear-earring of comic geek culture, but of course, there was no implication here that the carrier of said bag wanted to get noticed. Incidentally, the show also has a segment titled “The Week in Geek,” and the regularly attending “fan” was reportedly “not happy” when the show went on hiatus for a few weeks and he was compelled to find a girlfriend in the down time.

French Geek Documentary: Chris C., a Geek Studies regular and stalwart co-founder of the UMass Comic Art Society, sends word from the News Askew blog that Kevin Smith will be discussing “such topics as the San Diego Con, geek culture, Simpsons ‘Vans’, and lots more” in a French documentary titled Suck My Geek. You can download the Kevin Smith portion here. The blog also reports that “The program was broadcast by the french Canal+ network … only in France,” and (aside from Kevin’s commentary) entirely in French, which I don’t speak. Still, I’m going to poke around on their website and some torrent sites, and if anybody has an easy idea how to get ahold of this (especially if in translation), please do let me know.

The Fight Against Voldemedia: You may have already heard (perhaps from Hipster, Please! or Pitchfork) about how Harry Potter fans and the Wizard rock community have been involved in efforts to fight media consolidation. I thought that this article in the Huffington Post, by the founder of the Harry Potter Alliance, was particularly worth checking out. Andrew Slack spells out pretty explicitly how and why this type of activist effort should be relevant to fans. I suspect that the vast majority of Harry Potter fans (which is an awful lot of people) could care less about such issues, but this does seem a potentially effective and sincere way of coating activist efforts with the themes from entertainment we find deeply affecting—much more so, anyway, than having Spider-man instruct kids to vote (when they’re old enough, I guess).

Music for Magicians: David Pescovitz at Boing Boing has a couple recent posts up about “occulture” music:

[Occulture is] a term for the space explored in recent years by a loose network of British electronic musicians. Groups like Mount Vernon Arts Lab and Raagnagrok are weaving together their interests in the occult, strange phenomena, fantastic fiction, and horror and translating the moody mindset into enchanting and/or challenging audio.

I’m not sure if this is geek music per se—seems a little more Alan Moore-ish than Neil Gaiman-ish in its roots—but it seemed potentially of interest.

The Diffusion and Evaluation of Geek Chic: Geekadelphia refers us to some neat Space Invaders rings. Curious as to how one might come across such a product, I followed the “via” link to Technabob, which in turn refers us to Geeksugar, a blog which I’ve seen before but I don’t think I’ve linked. I was particularly interested to see that Geeksugar—which belongs to the Sugar Inc. network of female-oriented consumer blogs—runs a series of posts tagged “Totally Geek or Totally Chic?” Visitors can vote in an informal poll on whether an item is “Totally Geeky,” “Geek Chic,” or “It’s so ______” (with the blank filled in the comments). I haven’t checked many of the products’ poll results (as you can’t just view results without voting yourself), but from the few I’ve glanced at, I wonder if fashion-oriented items get the most votes for “Geek Chic,” whereas more utilitarian items—the contemporary equivalents of pocket protectors—get dismissed as “totally geeky.” (Side note: I should’ve been following this blog before Christmas. It is a treasure trove of presents for my girlfriend.)

Sexiest Geeks Alive: Z. also refers me to Violet Blue’s top 10 sexiest geeks of 2007. Frontalot nabs the #2 spot, the highest ranked male on the list, with the #1 spot going to Veronica Belmont (who not only walks the walk and talks the talk, but sounds like she should be killing Dracula). I might’ve also given a nod to Schaffer the Dark Lord after seeing the video for “The Rappist” (courtesy Nerd World). Check the “update” at the end of Violet Blue’s post for other sites that have something to say about the list.

Science Tattoos: And as long as we’re talking about the chic and the sexy in the geek world today, check out this Flickr set assembled by a guy who wondered whether scientists get tattoos. The set includes molecule diagrams, complex equations, alchemical symbols, and more, with some comments by submitters.

Carrie Brownstein, former guitarist of Sleater-Kinney (a band I happen to enjoy, as well) recently wrote a widely-linked article for Slate on Rock Band, offering a fairly representative example most common criticism of the game:

When I looked carefully, I realized I was having a party where people were sitting around playing video games. And, really, if you are going to play the game with a group of friends for more than a night, shouldn’t you just form a real band? There is something sad about the thought of four teenagers getting Rock Band for Christmas and spending all of their after-school time pretending to know how to play.

This paragraph came, of course, after several paragraphs explaining that she and her friends rather enjoyed playing the game together. Then it was followed by extended consideration of why being in a real band is better.

In other words, like most critics of the game, Carrie offers a condescending evaluation of the game and its players and completely misses the point of the game. This is a testament, I think, to how deeply ingrained we are with certain cultural ideals: Even after playing, enjoying, and thus, at least on some visceral level, understanding this game and its appeal, Carrie still effectively dismisses this activity because playing a game—presumably to the exclusion of all other activities—is “sad.”

As a gamer myself—not to mention a Guitar Hero and Rock Band owner—the common criticism of these games seems so obviously misguided as to be puzzling. I can’t speak for all the players I’ve never met, but between me and various other players I do know of—e.g., my friends, my brother, the bloggers I read, and the random woman I met in The Body Shop who told me that she doesn’t play games but she does like Guitar Hero, and that’s how she got into Freezepop (which was playing on a mix CD in the store)—I don’t get the impression that people play this to the exclusion of other, “productive” activities. I don’t get the impression that people actually believe they’re making music, either. I get the impression that people know it’s a game, and it fills a niche in gaming that isn’t being filled by the games that require mastery of imaginary weapons and abstract, multi-button control schemes. And games aren’t necessarily supposed to be productive (though they can be). Traditionally speaking, at least, are supposed to be fun. We play these games because it is fun to pretend to be a rock star, not because we actually want to be a rock star.

Penny Arcade writer Jerry “Tycho” Holkins addresses the usual criticism of such games, but also attempts to redeem their productive value:

Invariably, when reasonable people are discussing Guitar Hero or Rock Band, that forum smart guy oozes in somewhere near the middle of the thread and tells people that they should be playing real instruments—presumably, like he does. Put aside that Mozart has missed the point completely (i.e., why don’t you play for the real NFL, etc). The fact of the matter is that he is quite simply wrong.

Once such toy instruments can be harnessed for the actual composition and performance of music, Jerry goes on to suggest, that will be just as valid as any other type of music. That’s a fine point; I’m not sure I agree that that’s likely to be a successful direction for the technology to take, but I can see how one might find it an appealing idea.

Personally, though, I don’t think we should have to “put aside” that the critics have missed the point. I don’t think we should have to justify our interests by suggesting, no, really, something productive could come out of this. And if we did need to do that, we could just point out that some guitar instructors believe these games actually encourage people to learn guitar. My younger brother is an example of one such person who loves Guitar Hero and also got inspired to sign up for guitar lessons after playing the game.

The point here, though, is that neither pursuit necessarily interferes with the other—and those of us who don’t play the guitar at all likely have other perfectly valid hobbies and productive activities as part of our normal routine. There is a certain value or satisfaction to be found in playing the guitar (or drawing, or singing, or lifting weights), and perhaps another sort of value or satisfaction in playing a video game simulator of being a rock star. Even if you do go start a band, it’s no guarantee you’d ever get to experience anything remotely like being a rock star; jamming on a real guitar is not necessarily an adequate substitute for spending a bit of time pretending.

My friend Jordan had a recent realization about how Rock Band Works, comparing Rock Band to a social role-playing game like Dungeons & Dragons:

The experience feels like a simplified role playing game. You and your party members are assuming the roles of musicians. It has classes (drums, mic, guitar, and bass), levels/dungeons (gigs), experience points and gold (fans/stars and cash), inventory management (purchasing outfits and changing your character’s appearance), NPCs (managers and roadies), death/rebirth (failure and being saved), and even special abilities that are slightly different for the different classes (overdrive modes). When I play Rockband alone, I feel like I’m sitting at home reading the D&D Player Character guide to learn the mechanics, rather than playing the actual game with friends. Having people in the room with me makes it feel like we’re going on an adventure together.

That similarity between Rock Band and D&D, of course, is right at the root of why people criticize these video games. While the guitar games have certainly found a following among adults, the instruments are still toys, and the medium in question is still the video game, so people will still invariably say condescending things about kids living “sad” lives.

This is how video games currently occupy a precarious space between embarrassingly juvenile and acceptably adult, between geeky-hip and geeky-ridiculous. Rock music is cool, but “let’s play pretend” is not. Video games are finally finding content that reminds adults of how personally valuable it can be to pretend, but adults are not yet ready to let their guard down. Maintaining an appearance of coolness or of sophistication (to oneself or to others) takes a certain amount of commitment. In the adult world, such an appearance seems more immediately and obviously valuable than allowing oneself to pretend. Thus, we adults must either shake our heads in disapproval or shrug our shoulders and admit we are geeks.

That is my brief take on this matter (though perhaps not as brief as I meant it to be). For a more nuanced look at such issues from an ethnomusicological perspective, check out Kiri Miller’s Guitar Hero Research blog.

On the Music Front: Z. (via Church) refers us to an interesting article in Medill Reports about nerdcore. I was glad to see one of these articles finally address where Deltron 3030 fits into this (one of my favorite sci-fi-oriented albums, which is kind of outside the nerdcore scene but not quite popular enough to be “mainstream” either). Also, here’s an SF Weekly article (also via Z.) by someone who everyone seems to agree simply doesn’t get it. And finally, check out this New York Times article about this weekend’s second annual Blip Festival for chiptune music, which notes:

At the Blip Festival nerdiness is proudly displayed: Last year one man came dressed as a piece from the game Tetris. There’s also free beer and a fair amount of dancing — or at least fist-pumping and joystick thrashing — in the audience and among the performers.

I wish I could’ve made it there for the weekend, but alas, there is much left to do. Incidentally, this is hosted by the same venue as the Come Out and Play Festival, another geeky/artsy event I managed to attend last year.

If You Thought “A Series of Tubes” Was Bad: The new “non-geeks don’t get it” point of mockery is Universal Music CEO Doug Morris’s admission that the record industry dropped the ball on digital music and was simply too ignorant to hire capable technologists. The most amusing take on this I’ve seen so far comes from HijiNKS ENSUE (“geek comic”). The comments that follow the blog post remind us, of course, that there are indeed people over the age of 50 who are quite competent with technology. It’s really just the ones in positions of power who seem vilified for not getting it.

Randall Munroe, Geek Psychologist: I’ve been seeing a lot of articles about xkcd lately, including interviews with creator Randall Munroe. Wired’s interview struck me as most interesting. It suggests that Randall has tapped into geek psychology and even helped to encourage changing it, simultaneously celebrating how we over-calculate our lives and encouraging us to take some chances.

Geek Politics: I haven’t seen what I would call universal geeky political values (probably because no such thing exists), but I do often see geeks approaching political issues in proudly geeky ways. Consider, for example, EcoGeek, which blends a love for technology and whatnot for a love of baby seals. Check out a recent post on Greenpeace vs. Nintendo, for example. Meanwhile, though Newsweek suggests “How to Get the Geek Vote,” there’s a decently wide range between how Barack Obama would do that vs. how Ron Paul would do that, so far as I can tell.

Nuance in the Game Violence Debate: Henry Jenkins has a great post up about why you should see Moral Kombat, the new documentary by Spencer Halpin about the video game violence debate. I’m very much looking forward to the documentary itself (even though Spencer unwittingly stole the title for a paper I took too long to submit for publication!). In the meantime, I appreciate Henry’s post for pointing out that the media violence debate is so frequently reduced to “games cause violence”/”no they don’t” that we lose so much of the nuance of what research has actually shown. Some of what I have written on this topic may make me sound like an enemy of researchers who conduct media violence research, but people on every side of the debate often agree more than we disagree when you get right down to what we think would be good parenting or good research. Where we often disagree, of course, is in what we think should be done with that research in terms of public policy.

The Men and Women in Black: The Escapist has a nice little piece up on the community of Penny Arcade Expo volunteers, the Enforcers.

The Final Stage of the Grieving Process: Slashdot commenters discuss the question, when did Star Wars jump the shark?”

Managing Our Hyperreal Lives: A couple links from Slashdot and CNET point us to some interesting food for thought on balancing and integrating our on- and offline lives. First, should we be giving employers our online nicknames in addition to our real names? And second, what do you do when real people with virtual identities pass away? More specifically, what should the role of Second Life publisher Linden Lab be in memorializing a famous SL citizen, now passed away? Some called for an official day of memorial announced by Linden Lab, while others argued that SL residents should handle a memorial on their own—treating Linden Lab more like a watchmaker god than an official governing body. (I just noticed that Linden Lab has taken sort of a middle ground on this, declaring a memorial day for all deceased SL’ers and donating real estate to be used for services.

Also, I should note that that second article is from CNET’s “Geek Gestalt” column by Daniel Terdiman. Daniel explains that he’s been writing about geeky stuff for awhile now, but they’re just now getting around to overtly calling it geeky.

Webcomics and Community Service: Comixtalk has a series up (part 1, part 2, and part 3) about how webcomics creators can do comics-oriented community service projects—both as a genuine act that reflects well on the webcomics community, and also as “a move towards greater real world visibility.” Part of the reason I’m making note of this is that I did a paper on “comics activism” that I need to update and revise for publication.

Cream of the Comics Criticism Crop: The Guardian blog offers suggestions for the best of the comics blogosphere. Part of the reason I’m making note of this is that I’m working on a paper about blogging as a form of internet-based research to supplement the forum-based research I see so often, and I figured this quote might come in handy when discussing audiences: “avoid the forums, where the anonymous pedants make Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons look like Edmund Wilson.”

Scott Pilgrim Appeals to Nerds, Fags (but in a good way): Nerds Gone Wild reviews Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together. Everyone seems to love these books (and I count myself among them.) What fascinated me about this review, though, was its use of the terms “indie fag” and “indie-arts-fag” as separate but equal groups to “comic nerds” (and both, as I’m reading it, groups you should be happy to be a part of).

A Trip Through Comic Con Visual History: Mary in Comic Con Land is a blog posting photos from many years of Comic Con. It’s a neat resource, giving a sense of how things have changed with the con over the years.

Reading Comics Online: Tod Allen discusses the new digital distribution systems for print comics, touching upon subscription models and technical limitations. And on a related note, Sean Kleefeld suggests why the formal elements of digital comics favor short strips over long books. It’s an interesting argument—but the post was guaranteed a link by being the first blog where I’ve actually seen the writer’s geek code so prominently displayed.

Whew, that helped clean up my browser. I’ll be back again soon for something a little more commentary-oriented.

Anyway, as long as we’re talking links, here’s a couple from Dan (another friend from middle/high school). First, Barack Obama in front of a Superman statue in Metropolis, IL (which we visited on our cross-country trip). Dan wasn’t sending it for the article so much as the photo, but it’s worth noting that Obama has begun to “network with the nerds,” as Gizmodo’s Benny Goldman writes of the candidate’s outspoken stance on technology. And finally, Dan also sends a geek alphabet. I got most (but not all) of the references, and was shocked I remembered what a “glitter boy” was (which I know thanks to Evan, another middle/high school friend, with whom I am staying in Chicago right now).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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.

The site’s welcome post explains:

SSS is a listing of geek music concerts from all over the world. By clicking the Calendar link, either in the heading or over on the side bar, you’ll see all the listings that we currently have for geeky shows in the near future. The pickings are a little thin at the moment since I’ve primarily been focused on getting the overall site up and running. Over the next couple of weeks though, I plan to continue to flesh out tour dates for other artists.

The longer answer is that SSS is a site dedicated to promoting geek culture as a separate and distinct entity equal to the Mainstream and Underground cultures that dominate our world. Geek culture is not a new idea, but it has gained in popularity over the last several years and it is now time for it to get the recognition that it deserves. While the site is currently focused on only concerts and musical gatherings, my goal is to expand it to include listings for all kinds of various geek gatherings.

Church notes that the site will be covering a variety of genres including nerdcore, chiptunes, VGM (video game music), and Wrock (that’s Wizard Rock, or Harry Potter tributes for the uninitiated). If you’re interested in helping out on the project, they’re looking for it, so go take a gander.

In the long term, I’ll be interested to see where this goes insofar as the geek culture manifesto is concerned, which makes a pretty clear statement about insiders vs. outsiders and “the Geek Community’s” resistance to co-optation. In the meantime, I’m just so thankful that I can finally find some concerts.