Greetings everyone!
I hope you had a brilliant weekend! Mine was pretty busy. On Saturday, I wrote a post about video games that I will be publishing on Wednesday. Make sure to have a look at it as I am starting a new series this week. It’s not that I’ve exhausted everything I wanted to share about anthropology and science-fiction (see posts 1, 2, 3 and 4), but I want to spend more time researching before I write on that topic again.
Today, I am publishing an out-of the ordinary Sunday morning post. I had to. Because I could only write so many comments on this Freshly Pressed post by Word Games, “Geek Culture: Where Originality Goes to Die“. And because, and I say that with all the respect possible, I think the author is wrong. Here’s why.
Hello Geekverse!
I posted about science-fiction and Star Trek this week, so it seemed fitting that I stick with this theme for my Friday recommendations. I selected a few videos about Star Trek for you. The first one is the documentary Trekkies. If you haven’t seen this one, I strongly recommend it! And although I’m not crazy about the intro song in the second movie, Trekkies 2, I like that it explores a more international fan base. Notice the Stargate fan?
My first contact with science-fiction was through Star Trek the Next Generation. I can’t say for certain at what age I started watching it, but I believe it was in 1992 that I asked for the series figurines for Christmas. I was 6 years old. As a kid, I did not speak English. Being a francophone, I kept asking my father to translate the episodes, to his great despair. He would do so during commercial breaks after trying to listen as best he could to the show. Many of my early memories of Star Trek TNG are unclear, probably because I din’t get the story.
I discussed in my previous post about geeks and nerds that I would rely on people’s self-identification as one or the other to consider them as such and include them, their hobby or interest in the study of geek culture on this blog. I will continue, however, to pay attention to the many definitions people attribute to these terms. It is fascinating to see how people create mechanisms to determine empirically determine one’s geekiness or nerdiness. Two of these mechanisms were part of my recommendations for week-end fun last Friday: the Geek Code and the Geek Test. Did you check them out? I did, and here is a summary of my experience building my very own geek code and taking the test.
The Geek Anthropologist 