The “Geek is Chic!” headlines have been making the rounds — this time around — for more than a decade now. And it’s probably not surprising to anyone who has been listening to PopStuff that Holly and I both have geeky tendencies. But we don’t mean this episode to be a giant celebration of all things geek, or to appeal only to the geeks in the audience. For the non-geeks: What’s this “geek culture” that keeps making the news? And for the geeks: What’s up with this idea that being harassed and stigmatized — and doing work to maintain geekiness — is some kind of prerequisite? And how is the harassment and stigma harmful (beyond the psychological health of the little geeks and nerds in question)?

Some topics and tangents:

• Examples of the idea that “geek” is mainstream:  CNN’s Geekout blog as a very mainstream outlet’s targeting to geek,  the success of “The Big Bang Theory”  and MTV Geek as a thing that exists in the world
• The articles that prompted us to talk about this: Patton Oswalt’s “Wake Up, Geek Culture. Time to Die.” from Wired, Yuri Lowenthal’s “Geek Identity Crisis” in the Huffington Post, and Wil Wheaton’s blog post about the “I Am a Geek” video
• “The Lord of the Rings” and its giant appeal, vs. the glazed-over looks you might get if you start talking about Peter Jackson’s production videos for “The Hobbit” right now to, say, your trainer at the gym
• Will Greenwald’s “Geek Culture Will Never Die … Or Be Popular” in PC Mag
• Charles Ross of “One Man Star Wars,” and something he said while I was interviewing him for How the One Man Star Wars Trilogy Works
• “Nerds: How Dorks, Dweebs, Techies and Trekkies Can Save America” by David Anderegg
• Themes discussed in a prior episode, “Why are we friends?“
• “Groundhog Day“
• The question of whether there really is way more geek-oriented entertainment around today than before, by looking at box office figures, starting with 1977 thanks to “Star Wars”
• Our sadly unmet high hopes for Michel Gondry’s “The Green Hornet” and Ang Lee’s “Hulk”
• “Moon” (spoiler: We loved it)
• Duncan Jones’ other movie neither of us have seen and couldn’t think of the name of while recording, “Source Code“
• Our advice for young, geeky people out there, based on our own experience: Just own who you are. You can try to fake interest in things other people like to fit in, but they’ll probably see through it. In the long run, you’ll be better off if you follow what you like.

Other than the links up above that we talked about a lot in the podcast, Holly’s research on this one:

• Are you a nerd or a geek?

My research on this one:

• Bishop, John H. et al. “Why We Harass Nerds and Freaks: A Formal Theory of Student Culture and Norms.” Journal of School Health, Sept. 2004
• Tocci, Jason. “The Well-dressed Geek: Media and Appropriation and Subcultural Style.” Presented at MiT5, April 29, 2007
• Quail, Christine. “Nerds, Geeks and the Hip/Square Dialectic in Contemporary Television.” Television New Media, 2011

Episode link: Should it be hard to be a geek?

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