I have two topics that have been fighting for dominance in my mind, both of which may elicit long entries. I think I've decided upon the first though. The Geek Ascension.
For colloquium this week I read a book called "Geeks: How two lost boys rode the internet out of Idaho." It was written by John Katz, made famous in the geek community for his Hellmouth series (/.) after the Littleton, CO. Massacre. (The first can be found here if you're unfamiliar. The rest here all good articles.)
The book is about a 19 year old Geek from small town Idaho who fights his way though life and eventually applies to a University that he is largely (on paper) unqualified to even consider. The story itself is largely entertaining, but it's the broader social context that is much more a intriguing.
What is a geek? My interpretation is much different than that of 40 years ago (carnival miscreants who bit the heads off of chickens for a place to stay) or even 20 years ago. In the mid-1980's persecuted groups began to adopt slang terms for their names as a self-defense measure. I don't want to equate Dykes on Bikes with Geeks. But in a a sense, it's correct. Websites like thinkgeek attest to the liberation of the Geeks. My definition follows Katz's, a Geek posesses a singular obsession about the things that he/she loves.
Nonetheless, we were persecuted. A person of my demeanor 20 years ago would have been locker-room food for the "Jocks" but now, we're indespensible. We have our own world. I know many people who spent their first 20 years of life in a kingdom outside of the United States of America; inside the community of the World Wide Web.
We are a community of social discontents, oddballs, of freaks and free thinkers, freer spirits. We tend to be libertarian, ignoring the social systems that are largely useless in their kingdom (politics and religion) and violently opposing anything that would disrupt the free-culture that they have created.
For some reason now, geek is chic. Katz spends a while trying to explain it, but I think it's largely irrelevant. It has come, the Geek Ascention. We're still targeted by the media when the hellmouth opens up. But we're in charge. More about it later...class is ending.
Welcome to the Hellmouth.