In that discussion, Jordan commented that he doesn’t see geeks harassing jocks online as much as he sees them harassing women, and Aenna noted that geeks’ harassment of jocks seems to be mostly in the form of weak, homophobic insults. I’ve actually noticed much more pervasive, vitriolic, and even creatively involved responses, though. I wanted to make note of a couple examples and invite others to chime in with their own thoughts on the matter as well. I sat on this post for several days as I worked on other things, but now, with the release of Joss Whedon’s geeky supervillain musical, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, it seemed like a particularly timely issue.

Let’s start, then, with the first example of resentment toward jocks I’d like to offer: the poster art for MC Chris’s “Revenge of the Nerd Tour.” It’s a particularly visceral visual example of how “jocks” are constructed as the natural enemy of “nerds.” I suppose this poster could have featured the nerd atop a pile of popular kids’ corpses, including cheerleaders, but I think that the disproportionately male, nerd audience it targets has more angry resentment stored up for athletic men. This image is fairly representative of the stage persona MC Chris projected when I saw him perform in 2005, where he called for nerds to rise up against the oppressive jocks.

The second example I’d like to offer comes from the “Pitch Your Game Idea” panel at PAX 2006. One of the most popular entries was for a “jock simulator,” marketed as the best sports game ever, but secretly designed to help high school athletes build their skills at bagging groceries for their future careers. The first four minutes of gameplay are a football game representing each year of high school, but then players begin the grocery-bagging game, and finally witness “the cute chicks they used to date go off to date those they made fun of.”

In this example, we get a glimpse at how gamers feel threatened by athletes and sports fans becoming a target demographic for the medium they considered their own (also touched upon in this Slashdot thread I stumbled upon after a moment of googling). I found this interesting because it moves the notion of sexual fitness away from hypermasculine/physical norms, emphasizing professional/financial success. Of course, women don’t make out any better in this deal, still treated as “chicks” and trophies to be won.

Granted, neither of these examples (or the insults in that linked Slashdot piece) is of interpersonal interaction between geeks and athletes or sports fans. Geek-on-jock interactions in the adult world are a bit harder to stumble upon than interactions between sexist geeks and beleaguered women, but I’d argue that has more to do with where people are likely to share real or virtual space than with the relative intensity or pervasiveness of the hostility toward either group. The best example of somewhat more direct geek-on-jock interaction that I could find offhand is in the interactions with “Rodney” in the comments following Tango’s “geek chic” story from awhile back. Rodney wonders why “strange” geeks are getting all the love, while “normal” guys are left out in the cold. Another commenter replies:

Yo Rodney, that’s the point…you just don’t get it…while you are spending your time lifting weights, fixing your hair, and applying too much cologne, smarter people are trying to cure diseases and make the world a better place…if you are such a great guy why dont you help these geeks you work with, be more fashionable etc? maybe they will help you realize that when you are 70 years old and all you can talk about is your old sports stats and how buff you used to be, your wife will be looking for her ear plugs or worse a pistol to end her misery.

That’s pretty harsh stuff. You might infer that Rodney identified himself as a sports fan, athlete, or jock. But actually, according to Rodney’s follow-up, he’s not a sports fanatic at all. Rather, it was the other commenter who who assigned certain stereotypes to Rodney based on his default construction for the “enemy of the geek.”

Reflecting on these examples, however, I wonder whether it was worth introducing this topic in a direct comparison with misogynistic geeks’ treatment of women. I have imagined them as related phenomena—in both cases, a way for some geeks to construct a nemesis and bolster their own ego in the face of feelings of inadequacy. However, I expect that these sorts of resentment would manifest differently, given the fairly different ways in which these groups are constructed as enemies or outsiders. Sexist and misogynistic behavior online is part of a larger system of mistrust and hostility toward women throughout our culture; there’s a much broader precedent for it than for hostility toward hypermasculine males, a traditionally culturally dominant group.

Moreover, as I noted in recent comments, I haven’t seen any research indicating that young, male geeks are particularly picked on and excluded by girls more so than by boys; more likely the opposite, actually. Given this point, sexist geeks’ hostility toward women seems more a way of channeling feelings of bitterness and resentment toward a target that is already subject to widespread cultural denigration (and therefore perhaps easier to justify or claim dominance over in their imagination). There’s plenty of evidence, on the other hand, that boys training to be hypermasculine males specifically target geeks for physical and verbal harassment. Of course, having been the victim of harassment and oppression doesn’t make it okay to stereotype or discriminate against (those whom one imagines to represent) one’s former oppressors in adulthood. Nevertheless, we can point to persecution in childhood by dominant males as a component behind jock-hate—I get the sense it’s uncommon or non-existent among geeks who weren’t picked on—whereas I wouldn’t claim that it is rejection by women that fuels geek misogyny.

Reflecting on this distinction leads me to wonder how these forms of resentment might manifest themselves and be expressed differently. If geek fashion is any indication, for example, women might be constructed as the trophies of male geek power, whereas jocks are constructed as having too much power. I might not have used that first shirt (”Press and hold X to pick up”) as an example if only there had been a male or unisex size created for it. I wouldn’t argue that the design is inherently offensive—as some commenters point out, there are some contexts where it might be considered acceptable to wear, and others where it would not—but I think it represents a broader trend in how we construct women. Among geeks, and perhaps generally in our culture, outspoken misogyny seems somewhat rare and contained, but subtler forms of sexism and reinforcement of traditional gender roles remain exceptionally easy to find because they’re still considered widely inoffensive. Jock resentment, on the other hand, seems outrageous and overt when I see it.

This point finally brings us to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, the aforementioned supervillain musical. Joss Whedon (of Buffy and Firefly fame) created this miniseries of web-video shorts during the writers’ strike. It is not an example of outrageous jock resentment, but a story about it. All three parts are available online for free until the end of the day today (and for a small price on iTunes thereafter), so go check it out before I start throwing out spoilers in the next couple paragraphs.

As some have pointed out already, Dr. Horrible presents a comedic (but ultimately tragic) allegory of the tension between geek and jock. The expected audience is pretty clear: The front page of the site even has an ad for related gear sold through J!NX, the same geek fashion retailer linked to above. In the series, Neil Patrick Harris plays the intelligent, idealistic, and generally gentle-natured supervillain, who hopes to rule the world in order to fix it, and refuses to do battle around children or to kill his foes. Nathan Fillion plays the dumb, cruel, and arrogant Captain Hammer, who promises to sleep with the woman Dr. Horrible has a crush on just to make him uncomfortable. This propels Dr. Horrible to plot to kill Captain Hammer. It doesn’t work as planned, but he does gain admittance to the Evil League of Evil, finding acceptance among a fringe group and even gaining a degree of mainstream popularity, while Captain Hammer ends up weeping on a psychiatrist’s couch—but all at the expense of the ideals and the person that meant the most to the Doctor.

I have to applaud Joss and company on this one. It’s hilarious, professionally daring, and a joy to listen to. Much to my own surprise, though, the moral of the story wasn’t just that the underdog beats the jerk in the end. In this age of “geek chic,” where a pitch for a “jock simulator” leads a room of nerds to erupt in applause, this message may be one the target audience desperately needs to hear.

I recall this now because of an article in the Harvard Business Review, “Should you invest in the long tail?” The author’s research indicates that attention to blockbusters may actually be increasing, rather than decreasing, online; she suggests, “the tail is likely to be extremely flat and populated by titles that are mostly a diversion for consumers whose appetite for true blockbusters continues to grow.”

I found this via a column in the Wall Street Journal, in which the writer characterizes Chris Anderson’s book as “something of a sacred text in Silicon Valley,” following a “template” he declares common to Wired articles: “take a partly true, modestly interesting, tech-friendly idea and puff it up to Second Coming proportions.” He also links to a response to the article on Chris Anderson’s blog, but kind of dismisses it with a summary about some disagreement of “heads” and “tails.” I suggest taking the time to actually read that response, however, as it presents what seem to me some considerable corrections and critiques. Notably, Chris Anderson points out that this assessment of the online music market describes a “head” representing roughly the stock of Wal-Mart, with sales for everything else being “even more tail-heavy than the data I cited in my book.” Unless I missed something, then, one way to interpret this new data might be that online access to media isn’t pulling attention away from the niche products, but that sales of blockbusters are moving online (and potentially away from Wal-Mart).

Overall, though, what I find fascinating about all of this is not in the rightness or wrongness of the theory, but in how these writers all insist upon applying it: as business advice. I think the underlying theory itself is pretty well supported even by the data described in the HBR article, but the conclusions about what businesses should do about the increasing relevance of niche markets remains murky at best. Taken on a case-by-case basis, I’d have to imagine that some models work better for some businesses, and other models work better for other businesses. (Warner Brothers is doing decently enough, thank you very much, but Jonathan Coulton has no need for your old-fashioned record labels and blockbuster models.)

Something of a wild card in assessing the business impact of the increasingly long tail is that a lot of things being produced and consumed in that tail are by volunteers and enthusiasts, not businesses. To some extent, perhaps this helps people arrange themselves into loose mini-market segments, which could potentially throw their weight to businesses. For example, the audiences of twenty different nerdcore artists and webcomics creators, who don’t make a living off their creative work, all follow links to a site of mutual interest—and bam, that leads to more word of mouth for that site, and now that person makes a living off creative work. By the same token, when you look at the long tail as a theory that describes consumption patterns, there’s really no guarantee that the majority of the producers distributing materials in the tail will be getting paid for their work. I suppose that’s not a problem if you happen to be a venture capitalist funding 100 different webcomics, but it’s not clear to me where the welfare of the individual creator fits into this model.

By now, those of you who are more familiar with this theory might have guessed right now that I haven’t read most of the aforementioned “sacred text” yet, so perhaps Chris Anderson already addresses this more ably than I have here. (For now, reading this one is somewhere on the increasingly long portion of the to-do list falling under “finish dissertation.”) I welcome you denizens of the tail, however, to jump in and set me straight.

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.

On Media Theory
This blog was created by graduate students at Michigan State University, including Nicholas Bowman and Allison Eden, whom I met at last year’s game studies panels at ICA. (You may remember me describing Nick as someone you should hire to build mazes on top of your garage. More recently, I have decided that Allison is my new go-to person for novel recommendations.)

The blog includes contributions not just by MSU students, but also from researchers from other universities, including my friend and fellow Annenberger, Moira O’Keeffe. Recent discussions include a couple different takes on the recent Incredible Hulk movie (and what it says about popular understanding of media effects) and some discussion of interesting communication theories and findings.

Media Oracle
I was invited to contribute to this blog by CarrieLynn Reinhard, a grad student from Ohio State University. She is one of the few colleagues I met not at a big academic conference, but at a fan convention. I am indeed listed as a contributor to Media Oracle, but between writing about geeks and gaming here, writing very occasionally about policy at Shouting Loudly, and doing, you know, actual writing for the dissertation and papers and such, I tend to forget my name is on yet another blog. (I resist the urge to speculate about how many other blogs have I’d agreed to write for that I’ve forgotten about completely.)

The site features contributions from writers from academia and beyond, with lots of attention to the marketing and promotion of geeky pop culture. CarrieLynn’s been particularly active lately with links about viral marketing for The Dark Knight; other topics include musings about Wall-E, Speed Racer, and Nintendo.

free_geek
Last for today, but certainly not least, is the newly rebranded tsuibhne.net—formerly known as “Headphone Sacrament,” and now “free_geek.” Matt S. (a frequent commenter around here, Z.’s Hipster Please, and other nerdy venues) has decided to expand his focus to include not only music, but geek culture. This site hosts The Geek Culture Manifesto (still making the rounds on the web, I believe), The Geek Culture Debate (which I’m probably late to contributing to…), and posts about geeky activities where a discussion of convergence culture seems a fine fit. Matt’s blog is not “academic” in the same sense as those above in that his career isn’t tied to teaching and researching this stuff, but I’m sure you’ll find his commentary just as thoughtful and interesting.

I was about to launch into descriptions of half a dozen other sites, but I’ll leave those for another links post. Don’t take it personally if I haven’t gotten to yours yet. The combined greatness of the sites I read cannot be contained by any one post!

Anonymous vs. Scientology: A couple months back, Henry Jenkins hosted an extremely interesting and link-filled post by an unidentified graduate student at MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program, detailing a group of internet pranksters’ battle against the Church of Scientology.

The group, which was born from sites such as 4chan (itself founded by communities born from Something Awful) goes by “Anonymous” (as in, anonymous forum posting). Such forumgoers were at first content to post LOLcats and throw around some porn, but got into the habit of defacing or shutting down sites they considered stupid. This all came to a head when the Church of Scientology attempted to shut down a Gawker post for featuring an internal video. Despite the lack of any clear leadership, Anonymous focused its energy on attacking Scientology for attempting to suppress free speech on the internet. Their (admittedly successfully frustrating) methods caught the attention of the “Old Guard” of Scientology protesters, who were impressed but saw the pranking as unproductive. Rather than lashing out at this group too, Anonymous actually enshrined one such critic as a meme (“Wise Beard Man”) and refocused efforts on his suggestion of trying to destroy the church’s tax-exempt, non-profit status. This led to some rather colorful, widespread protests (check out some photos).

Just before reading this post, I had come across one such protest myself, here in Philadelphia. (Sadly, I did not have my camera on me.) What struck me about it was just how delightfully geeky the protesters were, decking out their signs (and themselves) in the imagery of video games, comic books, and internet references. Examples from various protests include signs proclaiming Scientology an “ePIC FAIL” and directing passers-by to google a controversial story, and plenty of protesters wearing Guy Fawkes masks, as recently popularized by the movie adapted from Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta comics (though you do get occasional other kinds of geeky masks). From where I stood, the protesters decked out in costumes and t-shirts bought from Threadless and comic book stores made it look like an unusually rowdy segment from Comic Con International.

The grad student behind the post suggests how this phenomenon offers a number of opportunities for academic research, and offers some additional links and citations for further consideration. Interestingly, the Anonymous members who comment on the post seem to tend to agree that the phenomenon bears study, and offer some additional suggestions and food for thought.

The (Other) Flying Penis Attack: You may remember when the self-proclaimed “Second Life Millionaire” was attacked by (virtual) flying penises during an interview with CNet. But had you heard of the offline follow-up at a Russian political assembly?

It seems that some pro-Kremlin activists attempted to disrupt Garry Kasparov’s speech with a, um, peniscopter, I guess you could call it. Game Politics has a summary and some video, with additional quotes from the Sydney Morning Herald report. Waxy has some side-by side pictures and videos for comparison. That last post raises the question of whether the protesters even realized they were mimicking Second Life, but that seems an oddly specific sort of distractor.

From a personal standpoint, I’m not sure what it is that I find so fascinating about these forms of protest. I mean, people use the internet to organize politically all the time, right? Why is it that these seem to me like a separate phenomenon from making a Flash game to make fun of rival presidential candidates, or using Meetup to organize a rally? Perhaps I see those as events that allow mainstream culture to effectively exercise politics using the internet—but the events noted above feel like “internet culture” bringing its politics (and sometimes shocking flair for the dramatic) out of the niches and into plain sight.

I’m sure I’ve felt this more than once, but never was it more pronounced than when I finished the story line of Grand Theft Auto IV. (There will be some SPOILERS below, so quit if you’d rather read nothing about the missions and no hints about the game’s ending.) The story features Niko Bellic, a Serbian immigrant who comes to live with his cousin in the U.S. and finds himself mired in a criminal life he (supposedly) never wanted. I say “supposedly” because I never wanted it, but had no option to avoid it [assuming I wanted to progress in through the narrative, as discussed below in the comments]. First I tried playing without committing a crime, even carjacking, which meant I walked a whole lot and took a lot of cabs. When that became obviously impossible based on what you’re required to do, I relented and stole cars for convenience. Then I tried going as far as I could without killing anybody, which I again had to give up on based on the requirements to advance in the game. Finally, I figured I could at least limit myself to killing other criminals, and just try to escape from police, but I was only able to keep that up until an exceptionally long and difficult bank robbery mission. It was a frustrating sensation, but perhaps that was purposeful; perhaps the game designers wanted the player to sense a near-inevitable slide into criminal life that consumes the protagonist.

By the end of the game, this criminal life has come back to haunt you. The game offers a number of situations in which you can choose between murder and mercy, or killing one target for money or another for justice; but in the end, the only choice that really makes a difference is whether you decide that Niko wants cash or that Niko wants revenge. And in either case, somebody innocent will pay the price for his greed or his bloodlust. “You won,” Niko’s ally assures him at the end, but you certainly don’t feel like you won. You feel like there is no winning when you sink so low, like the American Dream is not all it was cracked up to be. It’s not the cleverest or deepest story in a video game, but by this time you’ve spent enough time with these characters for all the pain to actually feel a little meaningful.

So, cue credits, and then Niko’s voice afterward: “So this is what the Dream is like. This is what we longed for.” And then you see Niko standing in his safe house. You see, GTA games don’t really “end” after the story is completed. You’re welcome to come back as long as you like to drive around, find easter eggs, shoot pigeons, drive off ramps, complete optional missions, and so on.

One might argue that this is a fascinating narrative device peculiar to video games: giving the player the ability to live out the character’s life after the ending, never letting the story end at “happily ever after” (or, if you prefer, “tragically ever after”). I’m not going to argue that in this case, though. Actually, I think this is better understood as a holdover from older GTA games, and one that rather hurts any sense of meaning implied in the story. It’s hard for me, at least, to get a sense of how this character feels, of his sense of loss, and then turn right around and decide to jump some ramps. It’s not that I don’t want to go and have fun in this big city that has been designed as our playground. I just don’t want to do it with Niko Bellic—and you only get rewards for doing it with him, not for doing it with any of a number of pre-programmed avatars available in the multiplayer “free mode.”

This kind of paradox—between what the moral or message says you should feel, and what the gameplay implies is the real point—is not just limited to GTA games. I criticized Bioshock for a similar sort of paradox. And Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw sums this up rather succinctly in his recent review of Haze, a first-person shooter about drug-powered mercenaries:

The overall message of Haze’s story is that WAR IS BAD and there are no true heroes when death is on the menu, but combining that with whiz-bang shooty fun strikes me as trying to have one’s cake and eat it.

Why is this so problematic? Well, for one thing, it gives opponents of gaming something to point at, a pretty credible argument that game developers are just trying to brush away criticism about violence and crime by tacking on a disingenuous message saying that these things are bad. I don’t have a strong sense that the “crime is bad” message was just tacked into GTA to deter critics; Rockstar hasn’t really seemed concerned with negative controversy before. (The strongly negative depiction of hard drug use does give me pause, as if D.A.R.E. commissioned that on the sly, but then again, one of Niko’s best buddies in the game is smoking pot constantly.) Nevertheless, I would be hard pressed to argue against someone who makes this accusation.

More personally relevant to me, however, is that this paradox simply ruins a sense of narrative believability, and cuts short the likelihood of provoking meaningful reflection on what the storyteller might have actually wanted me to reflect upon. Many other games offer some means of separating the game’s function as a story from its function as a toy. Halo 3, for example, separates these functions between multiple “lobbies,” cordoning off the protagonist to the “campaign.” For some reason, I respond to this as more than just a token gesture, but as an acknowledgment of differing purposes designed into the product itself.

It’s possible, though, that I’m more accepting of this multi-menu loophole than non-gamers might be, or that I’m more sensitive about the overlaying of “weighty story” and “fun toy” than many other gamers might be. I’d be very interested to hear about what any of you readers might have felt upon completing the game yourself, or whether you too see such paradoxes as problematic or easily ignored in any other games.

At Sciencewoman, for example, Alice Pawly describes the article as “problematic”:

I’m glad women feel like they can dress how they want, look “girly” and all. … I just challenge that now women are experiencing a simple choice for how to display themselves, and that they just happen to choose to do so in hegemonically feminine ways.

And over at Salon, Catherine Price expresses her own mixed feelings:

My confusion … stems from the fact that the Nerd Girls video makes it seem like sexual appeal is a necessary component to being part of their group. …

[P]erhaps the Nerd Girls aren’t as all about their sexuality as the video makes it seem. I certainly hope that’s the case — ideally, we’d convey to young women that they shouldn’t be afraid to be into science even if they aren’t holding down part-time modeling gigs, and that there’s more than one definition of what it means to be “hot.”

The commenters on those posts seem divided on how much of a problem it is that the nerd girls promote “hegemonic femininity.” And, as Catherine notes, it’s hard to say how much of this is actually relevant to the group.

Gizmodo, meanwhile, doesn’t offer much editorializing. Its (mostly male) commenters, on the other hand, occasionally offer some friendly or critical notes, but mostly either hostile or blatantly sexist interpretations, from what I saw:

Ferg1 at 11:06 PM on 06/15/08
no thank you

smcallah at 11:10 PM on 06/15/08
I don’t like when people try to act like a nerd. Because god damn it, I was born a nerd, and I went through school in the 80’s as a nerd, not a great time to do so.

So I get uppity when someone who appears to have never gone through middle and high school being considered a nerd suddenly wants to say she’s a nerd.

Hello_Newman at 12:06 AM
It’s just a normal picture of young women casually dressed and not a photo shoot. Cut them some slack, I think we’re too used to booth babes dressed to the nines, this is what nerds look like. I’m sure if it was a story about women who go out to night clubs they’d look a lot hotter, but it’s not.

cubensis at 01:43 AM
I’d hit #2, #6 and #7.

I put the link there in case the post goes back online, but at last check, the post was deleted. I like being able to refer back to comments for research, though, so it’s a good thing I was able to find it in my Safari cache and print a PDF of the basic text and images, sans CSS formatting. (Thanks, Retrospective!)

I can see why some people are wary of the Nerd Girls’ approach; the reaction among many Gizmodo commenters is a neat demonstration of how some nerdy men will respond to sexualized nerds (especially with the veil of anonymity). And, of course, there’s the danger that the ladies who don’t have self-esteem about their looks will fear that majoring in engineering will compound their social woes.

That said, from the perspective of social psychology research, promoting female nerds as possessing feminine sexuality may actually be an effective (if not ethically unproblematic) means of shifting nerd stereotypes. According to some research (which I hope I can be forgiven for not digging up right now), stereotypes are linked in our minds. Someone who believes that young black men are criminals, for example, would also be likely to believe that such men are natural athletes, have good rhythm, etc. If you present such a person with an example completely atypical of their mental construction of the group—e.g., a young black man who is shy, unathletic, and good with computers—that person will conclude that your example is an exception to the rule. If you only tweak the stereotype slightly, however, such as by presenting said person with a young black man who is into basketball, freestyle rapping, and studying medicine, you have a better chance of getting a prejudiced person to reconsider the belief that young black men are criminals.

One actual example of this strategy, if I remember correctly from my Social Psych class a few years back, involved an ad campaign for women’s soccer which promoted the women as both athletic and sexy. This is basically what the Nerd Girls are (purported to be) going for. This takes on an added sense of urgency, perhaps, considering that the “unsexy” stereotype may actually be part of what steers girls and women away from studying engineering in the first place. That’s one of David Anderegg’s biggest concerns in Nerds: Who they are and why we need more of them. Adolescents and post-adolescents are especially concerned about seeming sexually desirable, and this plays a role in the career choices they’re considering around the same time.

I hope I covered my back enough by acknowledging how problematic this strategy is, if that’s really how the Nerd Girls are promoting themselves. I suppose it raises the question, then, of which stereotype demands greater resistance from a group of female engineers: the idea that women should be attractive according to traditional norms of femininity, or the idea that nerds can’t be women? I’d like to think that any one person can resist both of these in her own life if she so chooses, but that is different from making a unified, public statement to gradually prod a stereotype into a slightly more acceptable direction.

Perhaps, though, going for “nerds are sexy” is overshooting a bit. The nerd stereotype is still bad enough in the eyes of many that asserting that “nerds are attractive” really doesn’t take much more than pointing out: “Look, we bathe regularly (and we’re getting much better at noticing that your eyes glaze over when we start talking about Battlestar Galactica).”

The core of the project was an analysis of just about every bill proposed at the state and federal level, between 1999 and 2006, which proposed some sort of regulatory intervention. This analysis suggested that politicians have been approaching games as if they were just like movies, but devoid of cultural value and especially dangerous in their effects by virtue of being more interactive. Operating under this understanding, the game rating process probably seems woefully inadequate—but as anybody who has played a video game in the last several years can tell you, that’s not exactly how games work. I avoid the the tricky and sometimes misleading concept of “interactivity” in favor of explaining a few formal properties of games that make rating their content worthy of being approached differently from movies. Ultimately, I explain how the video game industry has come under disproportionate scrutiny relative to other media industries with regard to its content rating processes, but some minor adjustments to that process (and other means of regulating games besides legislation) may still be worth considering. I conclude with a number of “practical alternatives” to state-mandated regulatory reform, including resources that parents might find useful and the game industry might consider expanding upon.

In writing this, I knew I was kind of skirting or replicating existing theoretical paradigms of how games are played (notably Espen Aarseth’s theories of games as “ergodic”). My hope, though, was to write something that would be equally approachable by media researchers, policy wonks, industry insiders, parents, and gamers alike. This is a somewhat time-sensitive issue, too, as some states—including my own home ground of Massachusetts—are still pursuing unsound and uninformed game-restriction legislation at the cost of taxpayers. Because of these reasons, I wanted to make sure this article got into an open-access journal, not sealed up in something that only a small group of specialists and scholars would ever see.

The writing style (especially the analysis of legislation and ratings processes, before the “Theoretical and Practical Considerations” section) is, I must admit, a bit dry compared to my tone here on Geek Studies. And, because IJOC has no real printing overhead, this is probably about twice as long as most peer-reviewed papers. Still, I think the review process helped me fashion a much more clear and precise argument.

IJOC offers the ability to comment directly on its site for articles, and I’d be happy to engage in discussion there. If you’d rather comment anonymously and without registering with an email address, however, I’d be just as interested to field feedback and criticisms here on the blog, so please feel free to let loose.

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.

The Alpha Geeks. David Brooks writes a fairly standard “triumph of the nerds” sort of op-ed for the New York Times (thanks to Cabral, Deb, Gen, and Elizabeth for the link). This article comes complete with the proclamation that the “geek shall inherit the earth” (a turn of phrase that has been used about 65,000 times before). You know the drill: Geeks became cool with computers, nerds remain uncool, jocks only stay in charge through school and then the world turns upside down. Lev Grossman of Time’s Nerd World blog used the “geek shall inherit” phrase for the title of a similar article three years ago, giving more consideration to the pop culture associated with geekdom than David Brook’s tech-centric view (with a dash of Harry Potter for good measure).

There’s nothing wrong with this format, per se, but I’ve seen so many articles of this template by now (and I’m not the only one) that I was kind of surprised that the NYT, of all papers, would simply rehash it without any further consideration of what this whole phenomenon all means. I’m also unconvinced that it’s necessary to speculate about which of the president candidates is the “nerd” of the bunch, though I’ve seen that popping up in a few other articles and interviews marveling over the new nerd phenomenon.

Why link this, then, if it’s such a cookie-cutter take on geekdom? Well, for one, I’m a sucker for completeness. I also think it’s an interesting sign of where geeks register in popular consciousness overall that a paper as high profile as the NYT would print something like this so late in the game, as it were. (Then again, it took them awhile to get around to discovering xkcd, too. At least in that case, I appreciate the acknowledgment that the strip isn’t just about programming, but the transition to adulthood.)

American Nerd Excerpts. In a sea of lightweight pieces on the geek inheriting the earth, however, a few pieces emerge as particularly noteworthy. Lately, I’m seeing excerpts popping up here and there for Ben Nugent’s new book, American Nerd: The Story of My People. Nerd World offers praise accompanied with a segment on gaming and the Society for Creative Anachronism:

Are these really nerds? Yes, but they’re nerds who have banded together and found a way to make themselves non-nerds within a separate universe. They’ve put the game of pretend in a logical grid of titles, allegiances, and hierarchies, but they’ve also made it outdoorsy and valorous.

“We were dorks in high school,” one of the stick jocks tells me. “But we’re dorks who can kick your ass.”

The New York Press, meanwhile, offers an essay musing on the connection (or distinction) between nerds and hipsters (thanks to Church for the link).

I’m fascinated to see that Ben and I (and those I’ve interviewed, and those who comment around here) reach some of the same conclusions, or similar angles on analyzing the “rise of the nerd.” Consider this segment:

To understand how the nerdiness aesthetic works, let’s go way back to 1950s Norman Mailer. In 1957, Norman Mailer wrote an essay called “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster.” … The Negro … was used to living under threat (Mailer believed), and so by adopting his mentality white hipsters could find a way to preserve that which was precious in their souls during the atomic age.

What we have right now, in Brooklyn, the Bay Area, Portland, East Los Angeles … is a similar choice on the part of the privileged to identify with the outsider. The outsider in this case is the nerd, because nerds are people incapable of, or at least averse to, riding cultural trends. When your greatest fear is that you will become a loser because your intuition will fail to keep up with tastes, you embrace the nerd like a little harmless teddy bear who’s the one creature in the whole wide world who would never do anything to hurt you.

This doesn’t mean that being a nerd is like being black, let alone being black in the 1950s. (Mailer’s account of being black in the 1950s is maybe sketchy anyway.) It means that nerds are a group by definition incapable of riding trends the ways that people in the creative professions need to ride trends. Nerds are the outsiders that hipsters gesture toward as a way of signaling an awareness and rejection of those forces that shape their lives.

The fake nerd, like the white Negro, is a way of dealing with constant threat. The threat, in this case, is a lot milder than that of nuclear war, but it’s the single largest threat that hangs over the lives of creative professionals in major cities: losing momentum in your career, losing the aura of an up-and-comer, acquiring the odor of failure.

Now compare this sentiment with a comment that Z. recently made here:

I believe what we’re witnessing is this phenomenon wherein people see it fairly easy to buy into that nerd lifestyle. By definition, it’s a bit of a ragtag confederation of disparate individuals and elements, and as such the “secret handshake” ain’t so secret. Nerds are beginning to represent a sort of punk rock-flavor brand of anti-hip that is almost bulletproof. With geek chic, anything that’s nerdy marks the conspicuous consumer as bearing a keen self-awareness as an outsider, while anything that’s cheesy can be easily laughed off as ironic.

There are differences in how we may conceptualize these things, of course. I stop short of labeling anybody a “fake nerd,” prioritizing my role as an ethnographer over a position of authority as a member of the culture in question. The nerd-styled hipster may hail from a different subcultural lineage from the geek who acutely recalls high school torments, but I’ve known too many “real” geeks who grew up into the hip kind of geek to claim that they’re different animals altogether. Ben acknowledges this transition as well, but implies that the “real” nerd is the kind that really can’t interact socially at all. I wonder whether other geeks and nerds would approve of the “real” vs. “fake” nerd distinction implied in this way. (Please feel free to chime in.)

Reflecciones on Nerd Pride Day. In closing, let me just offer up a handful of links (La Rioja, La Rioja again, Informativos Telecinco, Actualidad—all in Spanish) about el Día del Orgullo Friki, a.k.a. “Nerd Pride Day,” in Spain. The unofficial, internet-organized holiday was recently celebrated for the third successive year on May 25th, the anniversary of the release date of Star Wars. Also worthy of note: You may be interested to learn that, even in Spanish, the phrase “revenge of the nerds” remains culturally salient.