Attention Star Wars Nerds: You Are No Longer Nerds
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Yeah yeah yeah, it’s May the Fourth the most wretched of unofficial “geek culture” holidays in which thousands of slack-jawed geek hipsters take to the internet to loudly proclaim “MAY THE 4TH BE WITH U LOL!” from their Twitters and Facebook statuses. It’s a day everyone can admit their nerdiness and their unabashed love for all things Star Wars.
Move along, I say. This is not the geek cred your are looking for…
You kids today have it easy. Not too long ago it was a bad thing to be a nerd, geek, dork, dweeb, or doofus. Actually, I think doofus is still pretty negative, so scratch that. Anyway, if you were uncool you were persona non grata, you were ostracized from any recognizable clique and you were doomed to socializing only with fellow outcasts. And for the most part, that was okay. Being an ostracized nerd taught you a lot about accepting people, and more importantly it motivated you to crush your enemies and make sure that you would one day rule the world by inventing computers or the internet or erectile dysfunction pills or something.
Somewhere along the line, though, the streams crossed, and geek culture showed up as an unassuming blip on the radar of soulless bastards marketing executives. “Ah,” they hissed through clenched, blackened teeth, “the GEEK dollar! Yesssssssss!” and they proceeded to pump out myriad piles of pandering shlock, all while furiously air-humping the giant gold dollar sign that is their god. Here was an untapped demographic, a group of people sitting on untold disposable income, feeling disenfranchised and vulnerable to anyone who would pay them some attention.
Boom! Star Wars, Dr. Who, Star Trek, and every single Marvel character as quickly as they can be licensed were being slammed into movies, video games, television series, and books. Soon a cultural sea change happened: not only was geekiness tacitly accepted, it was quickly becoming encouraged and even celebrated. And now we’ve come full circle, as Film Drunk explained with a great piece: “I watch Star Wars” has become some kind of shorthand for geek cred, especially among young, attractive actresses trying to get their big break (see also: Olivia Munn syndrome). As if you’re sitting at home, money in hand, just waiting to hear that password to your wallet.
Do Munn, Roasario Dawson, Annalynne McCord, Jaimie Alexander, Adrienne Curry, et. al. really geek out? I don’t know. Do I believe them when they say the do? No. You see there is only so much time, effort, and dedication a human being has in life. Guys who work out all the time building up huge muscles tend to be stereotyped as meatheads because they spend more time working out than reading books. Similarly, women who spend their time focusing on working out to stay television thin and beautiful while flitting from audition to audition don’t have the time to read up on the latest fanfic. Liking Star Wars isn’t a bold declaration of your counterculture geekery. Star Wars is a classic popcorn flick. That’s like saying you’re a bit of an avant garde film aficionado because you liked Independence Day.
I’m not trying to pick on just women here, either. Does anyone believe Robert Pattinson is curling up with some manga every night before he falls asleep? The point of this angry, get-off-my-lawn-type of post is that the rules have changed and there needs to be a tightening of the ranks. You don’t get to claim geekdom because you bought an ironic Yoda shirt. You’d better be rocking a Nas Choka tattoo underneath it. And I don’t care if you’ve got a paperweight shaped like a Dalek: talk to me when you’ve got one shaped like Skaro. I think it’s great that geek culture is out in the open, but just be sure you know when people are pandering in your general direction. And help support the true geeks out there rather than the people who play one on TV.
Agree? Think I’m just a raging neckbeard? Let me know in the comments!
Flickr photos (in order):
supernerd by istolethetv,
Lotus sports car by Auswandern Malaysia,
and Classy Nerd by letmebeyourswearword
used under a Creative Commons License.
Comments
Comments are closed.