The truth about geek groupies
I'd love to be a real geek, but I just lack certain chops. Some of you may think that I am all geek, but that is probably more a testament to your lack of geekiness than any reflection on me. I tag along with real geeks, and my ungeekiness is demonstrated by how much I learn from them.
- Like the funny cool geek chops of BadGods, xkcd, and of course Penny Arcade. I can't be funny like that. In the food chain of humor, geeks make those less geeky than them laugh, and those less geeky people can make even lesser geeky people laugh, and so on.
- Like hearing ten minute blow-by-blows of decades old D&D battles, understanding exactly what they are talking about, but never having gone that far with role-playing games. My almost geekiness leaves me with lame The Chris Farley Show-esque responses and weak-ass tales of playing the Ghostbusters or Star Wars RPGs.
- Like finding incredibly pithy funny tweets that manage to include cool D&D references to modern subjects, but not be able to produce my own.
- Like fearing that the Comic Book Store guy may try talking comic to me when I'm buying the kids comics, which will force me to divulge that I have almost enough comics/superhero knowledge to be completely stupid about any of it.
- Like going to a Ren Fest, sci-fi con or ComiCon and realizing that some people have put way more effort into it than I could ever scrounge up.
- Like following real geeks on Twitter and the internutz and finding out about the latest geek tech, geek memes and snarky geek asides.
- Like knowing real geeks who clue me into comics by Patton Oswalt and awesomest gadgets like Apple's MacBook Wheel.
Physical sciences geek: I never took physics, chemistry was a nightmare and if there is an opposite to mechanical or engineering ability, it's me. I married into this category, but that doesn't count. What's an integral?
Programming geek: I only really program in SAS. No Perl, Python, much less C languages or anything else. Trying to learn C# doesn't count yet. I don't sudo anything in Linux either.
Gadget geek: I'm too cheap.
Sci-fi/fantasy lit geek: My eclectic tastes and no fantasy desire leaves me wanting. More about this later.
Sci-fi movie/TV geek: I can do okay here sometimes (I saw the Star Wars Christmas Special), except have never seen Dr. Who, Stargate SG: Cthulhu, Babylon 5 or Lost. So, uh, no.
Mechanical geek: I can barely operate a Swiss Army knife. No homemade pumpkin guns, no self-built gaming rigs or PS3 supercomputers.
Gaming geek: so many games, too little time. And first person shooters are not my thing. See Penny Arcade above for the real deal.
Lego Geek: have never been to Brickfair in DC and my building skills can't produce something like this.
Maybe all geeks feel inadequate compared to one another. Maybe, as Qui-Gon put it, "there's always a bigger geek." The truth is that I am a geek groupie. So if you are a real geek, thanks for letting me tag along and bask in your reflected glow of geekiness. As a geek, you probably haven't received that kind of attention before. Enjoy it. I'm not going anywhere.
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