Kicking off the first of what is sure to be many analyses of the awesomeness of the games we love, the Commodore talks today about Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. But oh there’s so much to love! The Commodore makes a good case using your comments and some thoughts of his own on why this game has stood the test of time. Then we move on tot he question for next week which will cause you to recall all of your most shameful geeky moments. It’s the Weekly Wringer!
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Greetings to all. This is my first time watching the weekly wringer. I found your analysis of SOTN very insightful and agreed with pretty much everything you said about it.
As for mockery of being a geek/nerd/what-have-you, I’ve never really gotten much flak from anyone for the things I’m most passionate about. Often I feel more embarrassed around my friends for not being as nerdy or geeky as they tend to be. I have a pretty wide range of interests so I’m usually not as knowledgable as them on certain subjects like science, music, anime, books (I’ve read maybe five books my whole life but I plan to start reading more). However I am first and foremost a gamer, which leads me to the moment where I at least felt the most embarrassed about my gaming fanatacism. For roughly a year I rented an apartment with a couple friends and they would have friends over for parties at least every other weekend. I would constantly come home from work to a living room full of people I’d never seen before. It did feel uncomfortable sometimes but I generally enjoyed them all. During one such occasion one of my roommates introduced me to a friend of his who was a fan of Megaman (same as myself). This new acquaitance proceeded to show me the Megaman 2 game on his phone. This immediately became the coolest thing I’d ever seen, at least for the remainder of the evening. I had lots of fun with the game of course but it didn’t take long to realize that while all my friends as well as total strangers were having fun drinking and socializing, I was sitting on the couch by myself playing a game on a phone for two hours. It definitely showed me where my priorities lied. I don’t really regret the experience per se, but it did make ask myself “Am I this big of a geek?” Obviously the answer is a proud Yes!
I have a hard time thinking of any specific “shame” I have. I’m a proud geek for the most part. I have had it especially good lately with two of my younger coworkers being just geeky enough to make me smile. I even work with some people my own age who I can relate to through games and old 80s references which is great…
I think my greatest shame in geekdom is a feeling of alienation. It’s like.. I do some great feat in a video game, like killing Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts 1 or 2, or clearing a particularly challenging song in DDR or some other Rhythm game on a new difficulty level… And I want to share that. I want to say aloud, I want to announce that the galaxy/planet/etc is safe once more because I totally rock. I killed Dracula so he would stop spouting bible quotes….
I feel like I’m a good artist. I take a lot of pride in my work. I have a lot of work stories and have had a life outside of gaming. But I feel accomplished when I do things in games.
Maybe I built a new house in Minecraft and it has a really creative setup. Maybe I just got all the stars in Mario Galaxy. Or getting really geeky, what about Pokemon? I still love the franchise. I’d love to talk about my team and what ‘we’ have done. How we put down Team Rocket, or whatever they are these days.
But, I go through my work day carrying those thoughts in my head. My folks like watching me play games, but my tastes are so different from my mom, there’s lots of things I do in games she cares nothing about… I basically have no outlet to brag.
And I know how selfish that sounds, but, I’m not an athlete. I’m not a competetive player, so at the end of the day, I have no medals to show for my achievements. Just a lot of trophy unlocks on Steam and a few 100% files that will only ever mean something to me.
When I do talk to my gamer friends or find someone who likes something (like this guy at work named Thomas loves the LoZ series, he taught me some things about Majora’s Mask I didn’t know), it’s great. But I bite my lip around non-gamers because it’s not something you can equate.
I recently beat Little Nemo: The Dream Master. I’ve beaten it before when I was a kid, but I got through it on my own, no cheats this time. I even made a video file of it. I showed my friends and my parents… And I don’t think they understood how good that felt to me. So…
All that, just to say I feel a bit alone in my gamer geekdom. God bless wifi.
PS: … Where is Horgay?
Quite honestly, I don’t get much mockery of the things I like even the “geeky” stuff. People that I associate with know that I like gaming and scifi and stuff but I don’t really get any flak for it because I’m a proud fan and don’t show any shame for liking those things. I think if people see you are passionate and a knowledgable true fan of something, they will generally respect your opinion and leave you alone even if they happen to NOT (EDIT: left out a very crucial “not”) like it. Maybe I have been lucky but that’s how it’s been among the circle of people that I associate with.
The only thing I really got any negative response for liking was from a roommate in college that couldn’t understand why I would listen to metal with yelling/harsh vocals. I responded “It’s like drinking black coffee.” That’s really the best way, I can describe it. Yelling vocals is not something I liked at first either but sort of came to get used to it and enjoy/understand as a style of music. I happen to listen to a wide variety of music. My ipod has a range from Michael Jackson to Slayer. This same roommate couldn’t understand why I would sometimes listen to instrumental guitar music like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani either because there were no vocals. I think he just had bad taste in music honestly. That’s the only example I can think of where my fandom of something was criticized. Most of the time, I’m confident of myself and my hobbies that most people respect my opinions.
I can actually relate a bit to this. Since graduating college, I’m come across less and less gaming oriented friends. Sometimes when you accomplish something in a game, you just want to express it and sometimes you just aren’t surrounded by people who understand the accomplishment. Sometimes, you want to express something about a game about a game you’ve played, in response your friends just look at you like “What the eff, whatever bro have you beat Modern Warfare 3 yet?”
I totally understand the feeling of “alienation.” I still come across a few people in life that understand and appreciate gaming in the same light as light as myself so I don’t exactly feel “alientated” for enjoying gaming but I can see your viewpoint because I’m coming across less and less people who share common interest as I age. I would definately like to meet more people in my daily life that would understand stuff like that. A good point for sure.
I have too many to get into specifics from my past. I’m a geek from Scotland who emigrated to America, and in my youth I liked anime. Then I joined the US Marines. Yeah, there’s no single most shameful moment there, it’s a continuing parade.
Currently I actually get most of my geek shame from other geeks, for two main reasons. The first being that I prefer Deep Space Nine over The Next Generation. The second reason is that I play competitive Team Fortress 2. This is a game that not many consider a viable “e-sport” and I play in the highlander format opposed to the 6vs6 format. I don’t let it bother me too much, the marines gave me a thick skin, I’m having fun playing TF2, and I’m probably one of the top 100 medics in highlander.
To reply, Commodore: I’m not particularly a fan, though it was a nickname given to me by a very old friend of mine, though I do enjoy the group kind of ironically in the past few years. Also, to those who claimed S.O.T.N. is good because of the rose-colored glasses, I grew up in that era of gaming, but I never played it until 2007, and since it was only a few years ago, I hardly claim that as nostalgic, and I didn’t even like (for the most part, because I sucked at them as a kid) Castlevania games when I was younger. Even so, people should keep in mind that nostalgia isn’t a write-off for something. It doesn’t mean that the nostalgia becomes the only quality it has; S.O.T.N. is an awesome game, and it is not nostalgic for me at all.
I think the thing I honestly got the most grief for was the fact that I was a nerd at all.
Part of growing up in the late 1980s and 1990s in the southern United States was a bit of a challenge, because you’re often forced against your will to play some kind of sport and go hunting at least once (I in fact had to go hunting until I killed something. Yes, that was the actual stipulation. Luckily I was a good shot and only went twice.).
It became worse later into the 1990s and into the 2000s when I didn’t look like how my part of the country thought of the nerd population. I like training my body and mind, I do mixed martial-arts, and apparently people think I’m handsome. These things apparently aren’t allowed in the nerddom of my neck of the woods. Plus, most people stereotype nerds into thinking they’re all basement dwellers. I, however, am an educator, so it blows the mind of people where I come from. It probably contributes to why I don’t live there anymore.
I never really got made fun of, though. I think it was more of being a nerd at all, despite my other characteristics.
If I had to pick a specific aspect of it, though, for which people give me grief, I think it might be that I spread myself and my interests and passions across numerous things which are nerdy. I love movies, music, games and computers, and I technically and objectively look at the different aspects of all these things because I think if I’m going to spend time with them, I want the time to be edifying and wortwhile as a result.
Certain things don’t help my case for if anyone does tend to judge me, even subtly, though, and this is the fact that I collect random things, I have games that people think are childish, I watch movies that are typically counter-cultural, I listen to music that’s not in the public eye (Dream Theater, Kamelot, Bad Salad, video-game O.S.T.s), and these things are considered odd, but I do not recall being mocked or shamed for enjoying specific things, but instead that I haven’t “taken advantage” of partying and mingling with people (and particularly women), for instance. Meh, I have a handful of friends, and they agree with the things that I like. I don’t find that fact worth mocking. I found in my life what many never find their entire lives.
My wife likes to tease me about the “chick flicks” I like, but other than that don’t often get alot of flac about what I enjoy. This one time I’ll never forget though.
I’m a lot more boring now, but when I was younger ran with a pretty rough crowd. Lot of parties, drug use, and such. Well one day I was just sitting around by myself in the apartment I shared, reading. My roommate came home with a mutual friend of ours. My friend got a really puzzled look on his face and asks me, “What are you doing?”. I was thinking he must be pretty high, but said of course, “Reading.” He says, “Oh, for like school?”. I say, “No.” The look of utter shock turning to absolute distain was priceless. Like he’d just walked in on me eating babies. Awesome guy (died in car accident unfortunately), loads of fun to be around, but the idea that someone like me would read for pleasure was just completely unthinkable to him. It was hilarious. Makes me smile just remembering.
Picture time!
I’ve told the story one other time that I was in the band in high school. Here’s me with the rest of the saxophone section. http://i.imgur.com/PIpxo.jpg
For those of you who don’t know, I’m from Alabama. At my very first football game, three days before I started high school, we had a scatter drill during the halftime show where I had to run out onto the field and into my spot. The sidelines were made of Astroturf, and our shoes were essentially bowling shoes. I slipped and fell coming off the sidelines, denting my saxophone. Turns out there was a video of me falling on the field. One of the band parents recorded it. I didn’t live it down for a long time. I took it pretty well, and in strides, remained fairly popular, actually, but I didn’t think it could get any worse.
Then Star Wars happened.
My 11th grade year, our band director made the decision our halftime show was going to be music from Star Wars. We covered the 20th Century Fox fanfare, the title credit song, Blockade Runner and the Imperial March in the first number. The second number was the Cantina Band song with a heavy drum feature. The final number was the medal ceremony theme from the end of the first film. Can’t name this song for the life of me right now. May come back and edit later.
Anyway, the director made the decision that we would have some of the characters from Star Wars on the field. Now, granted, I’ve always been more of a Star Trek fan, I’m familiar with Star Wars– don’t love it by any means– but here’s the story.
The director picked me to be Luke Skywalker. I didn’t have much say in the matter. I knew all the music for the show, but I ended up having to work with the cheerleading coach for choreography for this “show” we were doing on the field. We also had a 6’4″ Yoda named Bill. Anyway, Will, the guy to my left in the dopey glasses in the picture I included at the top was Darth Vader.
Here’s a picture from the show. It’s a yearbook photo and on the seam, so forgive me for the guerilla style image and not scanning it.
http://i.imgur.com/j0vKc.jpg
So yeah, you can see me dead center on the field in a dopey, cheaply made Halloween costume with a plastic child’s toy lightsaber.
At the start of the show, our massive Yoda “trained” me. Then we came off the field, Vader came on the field and the crowd booed at him. I returned to the field and fought Vader. We ran off the field for the drum feature. Then in the third number, I came back on the field (with a black glove) and fought Vader again. I killed him, he fell on the ground, I stood triumphant over him, the crowd cheered and the rest of our actors dragged him off the field.
It was really quite silly, but alas, we won all superiors at our band competitions that year. Even got best in class, and runner up to best in show. Probably would have gotten best in show had Will’s mask not fallen off before the drum feature. I had to run back on the field and grab it while the drum major was counting off the start of the second tune.
My story goes on. We did this all football season. As I went around my hometown, I would get recognized as Luke Skywalker on an almost daily basis. The local access channel would replay the Friday night game on Sunday afternoon, along with the guys in the press box for commentary. Normally the halftime show wasn’t shown, that way they could fit the whole game into an hour, but that year, they showed the halftime show every week and made fun of us (especially me) every time.
I went off to college at The University of Alabama and I still got recognized. Not quite as often, but still. My first job out of college was at the Bangor Daily News in Bangor, Maine. One Sunday afternoon I went to Arby’s wearing an Alabama football t-shirt and got recognized as Luke Skywalker. In Maine.
My 10-year reunion was over the summer. Even though I was senior class VP, I didn’t go (which got a lot of people upset with me), but I had to help Elizabeth, our senior class president (the girl on the far right in my top picture) get the video together for the reunion. Which included footage of my falling on the field and as Luke Skywalker.
So that’s my geeky story. Still not a huge Star Wars fan, but alas, I will always be known as Luke Skywalker. Where most people had a “moment,” my story lasted five months, and still hasn’t really ended 12 years later.
But I want to say thanks, Commodore. In order to get those pictures, I had to open my footlocker which holds all of my stuff from high school. Today was one of the few times I’ve looked in it since college. Made me laugh when I ran across a comment where my best friend called me a “smelly hoe.”
Great to see SOTN getting its own weekly wringer episode. Easily one of my all time favorite games of all time.
Now on the issue of parts of my geekdom that I’ve received grief, negativeness from others or what not from: I used to get ALOT of negative comments growing up in the nineties mainly due to the fact that gaming wasn’t as popular in the early part of it (the 90s) compared to how things are now where gaming has gone COMPLETELY mainstream. But back then people who played video games were mainly playing on:
A) An Atari 2600
B) Commodore 64
C) A Sega Master System
D) A Nintendo
E) A 386 PC with next to no hard drive space on it.
And games weren’t so much about the graphics and more on you filling in the blanks in your head (just like reading a book to an extent), so gamers were all called nerds (compared to now where there is a clear distinction between a geek and a nerd) and picked on by the more sports oriented people. I can’t think of any super bad experiences though. Just more of the public perception of gamers as all looking like James Rolfe in AVGN.
Jumping forward to past 2000, the friends that I surround myself with are all people who like playing games as well as others who are also into the games development scene who I met whilst at University a few years ago when I was doing a games development course. So there is no disdain for games at all. If anything there is a very large worship of it.
But if there were any areas where I do get any mockery it would be for 4 things:
1) The 5 years I spent playing World of Warcraft and in particular the fact that I ran a guild throughout the majority of that time. Of note I did get further mockery from within the WoW server side community itself for running a largely casual style guild in a time when hardcore raiding guilds were the norm. Especially in the Vanila and Burning Crusade years. But I enjoy standing out from the pack.
2) My love of retro gaming – Due in large part to my years playing WoW I have ended up with a VERY large back log of games that I either never played or never finished off. So after completely leaving WoW 2 and a bit years ago I have been playing a mix of old games and new games. More so on the old side. Now by old I am meaning anything from NES / Sega Master System to the PS2 era. I quite regulary read RetroGamer magazine whilst on the train and when on breaks at work, often getting amused looks from passers by when they see the cover.
3) My love of JRPGs – Now I have to point out straight away that I love WRPGs as well, but I have a soft spot for JRPG’s of the NES/SMS to the PS2 generations. Not so much for the JRPGs after that. My love for them often results in negative comments from those who are more of your WRPG only variety type of person. I don’t see the point in attacking those who like them personally as it is to me alot like liking a particular style of music that others may not like. If anything I like good variety in all things, be it the games that I play, the music that I listen to, and in what I do from day to day.
4) For listening to video game music – This one requires no explanation. I often get amused looks and comments from family regarding the video game music that I listen to. For me it is some of the best stuff to listen to when I am doing programming, making music etc for the games that I make and continue to work on.
I relate to Red Mage completely. For the longest time, my hobbies were something that one would become a pariah in the society they grew up in.
Growing up, I lived in an ultra-conservative society where such things were frowned upon. You were supposed to grow up being virile, sporty, outgoing, driving a fast car and only consuming from the market that which is the “hottest” item in the mainstream. My nerdiness and that of the small group of friends that I cultivated went on behind closed doors and on the internet where we could find like-minded people in specialized forums where one could discuss Magic: The Gathering, videogames, anime, miniatures, roleplaying games, etc. It was quite unfortunate that due to the circumstances we all lived in, we spread apart the globe in great, insurmountable distances. Australia, the USA, Canada, Lebanon, France, Germany, Scotland…etc.
This symptom of needing to “hide” your nerdiness persisted even into my University years when I went overseas to a very liberal country and I began to cultivate a mysterious reputation because no-one knew what I did for fun, what I liked, or what kind of person I even was outside of a professional environment. This ability allowed me to supress my power-level completely. I appeared to be a normal human when in-fact I was a blazing sun of nerdy power, the likes the world has never seen! (Caveat lector: the last line may be false.)
So in all, I did not experience open mockery for long because I knew how to hide everything that I truly liked. So in a way, I was a completely fake person with those I was not comfortable with and even today I think I behave very differently when I am in the public eye. No way in hell am I ever going to advertise what I like to do, or even what kind of music I listen to when I go outside or to work/study.
For specific shames: I suppose the like for anything from Japan automatically has you pegged as a frothing at the mouth weeaboo and being borderline paedophillic in the eyes of the people around here. Manga is perceived as cartoon porn for closet-kiddy diddlers, after all. I’m not kidding, you sometimes have character assassinations of people who read/write manga, fanfiction (infamous case of a man who wrote naughty stories about teenage lesbians that some piece of shit FutureShop employee found and called the cops about), etc in the “Liberal/Open” country I live in now because the public reviles it and everything to do with it. :/
Long story short: I hide my nerd, because to be a nerd is to be a deviant. Deviancy in the public eye is reviled, paraded and correllated with a hideous array of hateful accusations. GOD FORBID THAT YOU HAPPEN TO LIKE GAY/LESBIAN FICTION AND YOU ENTER THE COUNTRY WITH IT, TOO. Okay, maybe I’ll mention this real quick. A friend of mine was pulled over by customs when they found that she had Yaoi manga with her. The officer was very cruel and insistent that she is sick in the head (demanding to know why she is being un-Christian) because she has something depicting the awful, utterly HORRIFYING thing known as “The Gay!”
It’s because of insanity like that, that you need to hide what you like.
I feel really bad for not respeonding to any weekly wringer for the last ten weeks or so, but I either didn’t have anything to say on the subject or felt everything had already been said. But, I have loyally watched all of them, and have read all comments
As for the question at hand, I finally have something to share, if little: for I too am one of those lucky individuals who has a very kind and open school community that does not degenerate or mock people quickly. I certainly have endured several well intented jokes, since I essentially function like Abed in Community in my school – I’m known for long lectures on seemingly useless subjects that few people care about, reciting speeches and poetry and disliking most films others watch, which really isn’t difficult seeing as most of the girl’s favorite film is still Twilight and those of the boys something along the lines of American Pie - but noone has ever made me feel bad about it at all.
The thing most often ‘questioned’ is, I suppose, my love of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax. Others ofen have trouble understanding how someone could enjoy watching others make fun of films. This effect is only worsened when they actually look up MST3k, the theme song and little opening sketches aren’t exactly up to modern standards. But hey, to each his own – I’m just glad I don’t have experiences like some of the others here.
my love for retro gaming/game collecting is easily what has brought me the most mockery. All of my friends tend to be “in the now” with entertainment, while I am more of discovering pieces of the past I may have missed out on.
Just the other day was a good example. We were all playing trivia at the sports bar and talking about what games we had been playing. Everyone was mentioning games that are no older than like a year…for example skyrim mods, resident evil 6, some of the newer fighting games, etc. Me? Mega Man 1 through 6 (for the millionth time lol), Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, and the .hack games. They all looked at me dumbfounded with “what the hell is wrong with you” stares.
They have never seemed to grasp my love for retro gaming, or even understand it. When some of us went to dragoncon, they were all excited for the firefly-type panels (somewhat old show, but it experienced a massive increase in cult following around 2008 or so). My enjoyment? One year there was a retro discussion panel I was amped for (none of them were), and any retro shops that were around the con floor. Had to do most of that stuff by myself while they all did their things together lol.
Its weird, because all of my friends enjoy very “nerdy” things. Animes, video gaming in general, computer science stuff, etc. But none of them seem to understand my love for retro gaming. My only thought of why it could be was because most of my friends are the oldest guy in their family (my group of friends are all 24 to 27 years old), so they got into gaming in late SNES era at the earliest. I had an older brother and was one of the youngest people in my neighborhood as a kid, so I also had a lot of love for the tail end of the NES and the whole SNES/Genesis era. Just a theory though.
My buddies and I were huge pro wrestling fans especially in high school in the late 90′s. At school we would constantly be engaging in geeky wrestling behavior like dropping an elbow from a stair case between classes, hitting a reverse knife edge chop to the chest accompanied by a woo as a morning greeting, or nailing a 20 point pinning combo before gym class. We weren’t really targeted for ridicule, but we definitely confused a lot of people with our behavior.
Considering how much geek culture has become an accepted, “Cool” thing these days, what’s considered geeky has
really changed. I remember when i was in Junior High and early into High School, the prequel trilogy had not yet released
and I was hella excited for them. I was even more stoked when the original trilogy was rereleased in its Special Edition
in theaters just in time for the twentieth anniversary of the first Star Wars film. I was so into Star Wars at the time, that
I even wrote the dreaded fan-fiction based in the expanded universe. All my fan-fiction took place after the end of Return
of the Jedi, and I was super into it, but when the start of eighth grade came along and my History teacher wanted to
know what everyone had done with their summer, the fact that I had written a story based on Star Wars, garnered A
LOT of stares and ridicule. Thank Christ for the fact that with High School, I transitioned to a new, much bigger school
and no one knew about my nerdy shame. I found it really funny how several years later, when I was in college, I
ran into one of my biggest critics (so to speak) and he was a DIE-HARD Star Wars fan.
These days however, the thing that gets me the most funny looks, from other so-called nerds in particular, is the fact
that I still play Japanese RPGs, and that I passed up Skyrim without a second thought. That or the fact that I would
rather play something like WoW or Castle Crashers than move on to The Old Republic or whatever is the current
multiplayer flavor of the week. Its hard to explain too, that you have invested a lot of time into a WoW character
and can’t see that going to waste. Its as if WoW was never fun or popular. Its a shame that the majority of the geek
ridicule these days comes from other self professed geeks who are more interested in mainstream geekdom, than
not caring what others think and doing your own thing, which always stood out to me as one of the core tenets of
Geekdom and being a Nerd. Doing what makes you happy, not what everyone else says you should do to fit in.
I didn’t mention Game music in my post, but my fiancee loves to scoff at me when I make comments about
wanting a games soundtrack while playing it, or wanting to break out a certain OST and listen to it sometime.
Retro gaming doesnt seem like such a sore spot where I live, and amongst my circle of geeks, but WoW
definitely gets me criticized as does loving JRPGs.
Commodore-
The first thing that came to mind when you asked this week’s question about geek mockery was a story from my childhood. I had a pretty extensive action figure collection when I was a kid. At some point between 4th and 5th grade I invited a friend from school named Joe over to my house to spend the night. I had never had Joe over before and we were really only casual friends. In the days leading up to the sleepover it somehow got brought up between our mutual groups of friends that I still actively collected action figures. For some reason Joe seemed to think collecting toys was a completely unacceptable and immature hobby for an elementary school student and so he basically started mocking me. So, here I am about to have this kid over to my house full of action figures and he has been mocking me about my hobby for a couple of days. Oy Vey. I had a decent sized collection of He-Man & Masters of the Universe figures, X-Men figures, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figures. However, the action figure series that I was most worried about him seeing and criticizing was my collection of Bucky O’Hare figures. I’ll get to why in a minute.
For those of you not in the know, Bucky O’Hare was a semi-obscure cartoon series in the early 90s that was based on an independent comic book by Larry Hama. Bucky O’Hare is the rabbit captain of a spaceship called the Righteous Indignation, and he and his animal crew fought armies of intergalactic toads in the Toad Wars. It’s basically Star Wars meets TMNT. The series was popular enough to spawn a cool toy line (which was very similar to the TMNT toys) as well as two cult video games: The Bucky O’Hare beat ‘em up arcade game and the Bucky O’Hare Nintendo platformer (Most definitely an 8-Bit gem). Anyway, I had everything Bucky O’Hare, including the complete toy line.
The main reason I was embarrassed that he would see my collection of Bucky O’Hare figures was that it was a newer series. I couldn’t make up some sort of excuse that it was toys I had from when I was younger like my other toys. The reality was that I was actively collecting Bucky O’Hare toys as they were currently coming out. Hell, I was really anticipating the unreleased second wave of toys. Ultimately though, I gave into peer pressure and systematically hid all my action figures before he came over to save myself the annoyance of his pointless criticism. I don’t really remember much else from the actual sleepover besides spending a good portion of the night setting up elaborate cat traps for my cats (I should state they these were harmless cat traps. We weren’t psychotic masochist.) It was only one night that I hid my toys, but to a certain extent this is still a decision I really regret.
I’m now 29 and I currently manage a comic shop where I fly my geek flag high. The funny conclusion to this story is my friend Joe from elementary school recently wrote me on facebook and expressed how cool he thought it was that I’ve been able to find a job and make a living off my geeky, childhood passion (He didn’t phrase it that way but you get the point). Not everyone gets to do that.
So to sum this up I’ve got two quick points. First, I really try to emphasize around the comic shop not to use geek/nerd/dork as derogatory terms. If you’re passionate about some sort of pop culture geeky fade good for you. Don’t give into peer pressure, because most kids grow up to realize there’s nothing wrong in having a healthy hobby or two. Second, I think the bigger crime is not having any sort of hobby or interest at all. I would much rather go over to an adult’s house who has tons of geeky hobbies prominently displayed and shapes their personality than go to someone’s house who doesn’t seem to have any interest at all… or who is still so ignorant to mock other people’s interest.
I can say that although I never remember being mocked for the things I enjoyed, playing oldschool video games, and listening to video game music. I do remember judging people for the things they enjoyed pretty much all the way through highschool infact. In high school I used to lable people as “jocks” or “nerds”. But these days I really don’t like it when people use labels to describe someone. The funny thing is I also used to really care what people thought of me. I used to think of actibites llike D & D and W0W as “nerdy” and would make fun of these activites. But Now I see it’s just something people enjoy, and that people shouldn’t be judged on what they enjoy doing.
Since the 80′s, I played videogames for much of my time, even more trough high school and college. Never been really mocked about that. Maybe when I was playing Magic in my first year of high school but not that much. I really liked JRPG since the snes time and even before that on the nes. At the time, I didn’t even know that most of the game came from Japan.
So 2 years ago, I started studiying japaense in my free time to play the game in there original format if possible. I think that’s when the people have mock me the most (mostly people from family and close friend), since they asked me why not spanish or anything more useful (I’m french canadien from Quebec and I already fluent in english so why not learn a 3rd language). For me, japanese is more useful in anyway than any other language since I love japanese culture and I want to go there someday.
But I learned 1 thing in my life, even when people mocked us it all come down to the fact that you must accept you choice and habit in life and that your happy with them. I think that some people can’t conceive that you can’t be that passionated about something.
Most people associate geek with computer, videogames, D&D, magic, etc but I a think a geek is simply a person with a passion for something. It can be cars, music, tv, movies, literature, etc.
passion for something = geek
In the end, if we don’t have passion of some sort, we are not a living being anymore.
I think most people are geeks about something. In germany almost everybody is a soccer geek. But we are socially programmed to think that soccer isn’t geeky. It’s normal.
I have no problem telling people that I like video games or chess or other “geeky” stuff. But for some reason, if someone asks me what kind of music I like, I always say either “I don’t know” or “Everything!” That’s the kind of non-answer nobody wants to hear.
95% of the music on my ipod is video game soundtracks, stuff from ocremix.org (btw, there is an FF6 album coming in december, just saying…) and other vg related music. Even the other 5% sound very videogamy and tend to have no lyrics. Only 2 friends of mine know about this and I don’t know why this is even an issue. When I play some of it in front of other people I sometimes get comments like: “What’s this crap? Let me turn on some REAL music.” Well, to each their own.
Throughout my geeky life, I have been lucky for the most part to not really have taken much criticism for my nerd tendencies. A lot of this may be due to the fact that I have pretty much only hung out with people that share similar interests. I starting having LAN parties with guys in high school playing Counter-Strike and TFC and we remains friends to this day. Besides these 3 or 4 guys and my brother, I don’t hang out with other guys. I have come to the realization that if these guys moved away, I wouldn’t have any friends anymore. Not because I am unfriendly but no one gets me and our humor and our specific interests. Even if I did meet people like this, it would just be weird to hang out with someone else at this point.
But to specifically answer the question, the areas of my geekdom that have brought me the most ridicule are Magic: the Gathering and anime. My interests include boardgames, comics, movies, gaming – console but mostly PC, and the two I have already mentioned. Most of this ridicule has happened at my job where I have worked in a factory environment and am now in a management job. When other guys are just bullshitting about whatever, I was checking out the new Magic cards that have been revealed for the upcoming set. When guys are talking about sports and their fantasy teams at work, I am watching Naruto on my computer. When I worked on the shop floor, my boss saw me looking at Magic cards on break on a shop computer. From then on, to him I played Pokemon. If he said we had to work on Saturday, he would say something like “Yeah, I know you have to miss your Pokemon tournament.” That stuff is still funny. People would ask me what I am watching when I am watching anime; to them you are watching cartoons. So while I have many geeky tendencies and interests, these are the two that have really labeled me for what I am.
What I think is more important about this conversation is not what aspect of your geek brings disdain from others, but how you react to it. I think the amount of ridicule you receive is in direct correlation to how much it bothers you. When I started this management job about a year ago, I was working with a bunch of people I had never met before. If I never told them I was into geeky shit, they would never know. Instead, I was just myself around them. I would watch Dota 2 replays or anime on lunch, and do and say other geeky things. The reason being is that I don’t care if they think it is stupid or weird. It’s my thing and that is not going to change now. I have embraced it among the people I work with and to them I am just the resident geek. They make fun of me about it, but it’s all in fun and I poke fun at myself too. Just today, someone threw something at me and I missed the catch horribly. Right away, one of the guys started laughing and I had to laugh too because I knew what they all were thinking. After that, I made the comment that if he threw a fireball at me, I would have deflected the shit out of that. That got them going pretty good. The moral of the story kids is to be who you wanna be. If the people around you don’t like it, oh well….
I have – luckily – never been openly mocked about my geekiness – about other things but not that. There is a reason for that though because basically allthrough my time at Secondary School (Back then in Germany, from 5th to 13th grade) I wasn’t OPENLY geeky.
Okay in 5th and 6th I played a lot of Nintendo but that was back in 1994-96 so everybody did it and it was cool to talk about it. Granted I was the only one in my circle of friends to have a subscription to the Club Nintendo Magazin (German version of Nintendo Power) but that made me more awesome because none of my friends had it. After that I turned my back on console game and only played the occassional PC game.
In 1998 I became a huge fan of Buffy though. I wasn’t mocked by my friends but my parents really couldn’t understand why I liked the show so much. Because I had nobody to talk to at home I turned to the internet and immersed myself there – especially by reading fan fiction. So as otheres have mentioned already I found geek friends online.
My situation nowadays is a very perculiar one. I got back into console gaming in 2009 after a brief stunt in WoW. At the same time I started my Archaeology programm at university. The perculiar thing now is that at university we Archaeology students among some others subject with which we shared the same building were mocked by the others students. We all were the socalled freaks. It’s true that in our subject one can find a lot of people from different subcultures but we’re no freaks. However, that was/is our label. The other students never targeted an individual with their mockery but rather they mocked us in generel. So I guess one could argue that I was mocked because of my profession of choice. Among the students of my department though everybody is geeky in some way: be it gaming, retro gaming, anime, manga, TV shows/movies, etc. It’s a bit like geek heaven and I’m happy that there are so many people that I can talk to. Granted not everybody like everything but you have somebody you talk to about games and somebody else to talk about movies, etc.
Star Wars.
I’ve probably mentioned it before, but I got made fun of for pretty much everything. I got made fun of for liking Star Wars, Star Trek, other sci-fi, or any fantasy. I got made fun of for playing video games as a hobby. I got made fun of for not liking most sports. I got made fun of for liking Legos (I’m still talking about when I was a kid, mind you). I got made fun of for liking and being good with computers. I got made fun of for not liking rock and roll enough. Sometimes I got made fun of for drawing. I even got made fun of for taking karate. And not just at school, my family would tell me I was wasting my life by enjoying these things (except for the last one; my family wouldn’t tell me that karate was a waste of time). No, according to the world I needed to play football or soccer, watch TV, listen to some rock and roll song for the 100th time, go tread water or swim back and forth repeatedly in a pool or the ocean, and lay in the sun with smelly sunscreen on myself. Because none of those things are wastes of time, surely. So if I’m not supposed to waste my time, I guess I should study a lot and be good at academic subjects (like I did). But oh, I got made fun of for that too (with this one again, not by older family members).
It didn’t take me too long to completely stop caring about anyone but my close friends and family. But I got made fun of for liking Star Wars probably more than anything else. I suspect this was because other kids liked what few video games they had played, and just didn’t want to admit it to themselves or others. I never played Legos except at home or with close friends, so few people realized I liked that. And it’s not like there’s a lot to talk about with Legos. I talked about Star Wars with my friends more than any other sci-fi or fantasy movie/TV series/book/etc., and I think a lot of the kids had either never seen it or didn’t really understand it so they felt comfortable making fun of me for it a lot. Truth be told, it’s kind of hard to remember specific insults or anything, but that’s just my vague memory of what I was made fun of for the most.
But instead of crumbling from these insults from every direction into what everyone else wanted me to be, I was compressed and solidified into who I decided I wanted to be.
Also, people start to try to make fun of me for liking video game soundtracks now, but I have learned to nip them in the bud every single time.
I was in 5th grade when Pokemon came out. Back than most of my friends played the games , but the older I got the less my friends played the games. They would later ask me why do I play theses games meant for kids? I would simply tell them “I don’t care who the games were made for, I like the games so I’ll play them”. Even to this day people look at me weird when they see a person in there mid twenties playing the games or buying the merch, but now it doesn’t bother me now. I could care less if people find what I do geeky or childish anymore, because I am who I am and love what I do.
From about 7th grade on, I became incredibly interested in writing my own stories. Seeing as I was a huge Lord of the Rings, Zelda and growing into the role of DnD nerd, it wasn’t much of a stretch for me to start writing fantasy stories. As I didn’t have a computer of my own, I did most of my writing either on paper (eww), but mostly on the school library computers. Therefore the school jocks could get behind me and then it all started. Every where I went from 7th till senior year, I was asked how my goblins were, or where my pointy hat was. I didn’t take all the jeering very well. That is until I started to grow a spine. I had been inspired by one of R.A. Salvatore’s books, specifically one of his character’s Jarlaxle, who would stand before his ‘better’s and would disarm them with wit, intelligence, and the fact that he was invaluable. So I armored myself in wit and let barbed tongue fly. May of helped, may not but eventually only acknowledgement of my writing by my fellow students was to ask if I was still doing it. Yep
Still doing it! Working on a novel!
constant Simpsons reciting
That’s completely bizarre to me. Everyone used to like Star Wars. I had a friend that went as Darth Maul complete with toy lightsaber to a Halloween party (I mean that’s even from the prequels) and no one said boo to him about it.
Hmmm.. mockery. I’d have to say the drugs. Sometimes I’m trying to explain to someone why I prefer my Persian to Black Tar, or even China White and they just look at me like I’ve grown a third head or something. Then they say something obtuse like, “Go to rehab.” or “Take a shower.” or “Those scabs look infected.” But what do they know? Right? Oh yeah, I just beat Super Metroid, it was awesome. SWEET!
Never been able to pull off a Monty Python reference without a confused look or someone rolling their eyes. Possible, I just hang out with the wrong people, but I can’t help but think I would do the same when hearing someone say, “and now for something completely different.”. If it takes four decades for these jokes to die, they are worth a nod at least.
Albatross!
My husband calls me a nerd all the time. =(
In school I usedto get called one a lot before I got boobs because I had Honors classes, or corrected the teacher about some minute detail only I would be ocd enough to ever care about, or messed up the grading curve on a test.
I got more shiz for listening to hardcore/punk then I ever got for being nerdy though.
I had a similar experience to Mog w/ a coworker once. I always brought a book to read on my break. She saw me reading once and was like. “Wow. I haven’t read a book since High School.”
But I’ve never had a really embarrassing experience based on my geekishness.
I don’t think most people would get mocked for dressing up as a Star Wars or LotR character at a costume party. That’s the one social situation you could dress up as a character and not be seen as “geeky” because every9ne is dressed up as something at a costume party. However, dressing up as a character when going to seeing a movie or going to a convention, that’s when cosplay is seen as “geeky” by the general public. I remember in college going to see Kill Bill vol 2 in the theaters and several people came dressed in hakama and keiko gi. I didn’t mock them but I did think it was a bit “nerdy.”
I don’t think anyone would either. I guess it was more my friend’s obvious fandom I was thinking about, but at the same time Star Wars or LotR why you wouldn’t is because they’re part of popular culture (or I guess I would have thought part of popular culture). Someone came dressed as an obscure Star Trek character or like Dr. Who and I think you might get some looks. He didn’t say he was going to school dressed as Luke. Someone being made fun of just for liking Star Wars feels to me like someone being made fun of just for liking turkey sandwiches.
In all honesty, I really don’t recall ever being mocked for my geekyness. Closest thing I can think of is that my sister, who still enjoys playing older classic Nintendo games, thinks me weird for how much I enjoy listening to game music on it its own for hours on end. Especially (but certainly not limited to) Sonic music from the Genesis days. That’s really about it.
All the people I associate myself with are just as geeky as myself and understands me completely….except my mother. But that’s just expected. I think, at least nowadays and moving forward, you really aren’t going to see much and progressively less (if any) mockery for someones geekyness. Video Games, (Much like books, movies and music), are now considered mainstream. Everyone is a geek over something, to some degree. Such behavior towards any media is widely accepted for the most part.
There are of course varying levels of geekdom. This community here, I would say, is fully submerged in it as apposed to those that are knee deep. For people like us, we have our own cliques where we let loose our love for such things without fear of raised eyebrows. When we are amongst those that do not feel how we do, we hold back or turn off that part of our minds to blend in. Like most things, we have different versions of ourselves for different situations, atmospheres or amongst different people (Family/Friends/Coworkers/Public..etc).
I think that the few likely occasions that you might see mockery towards geeklike behavior, is when that person decides to talk too much and/or goes to far, amongst those that don’t share the same feelings/attachments towards what that person is celebrating/expressing. In these cases, the person either forgot or doesnt realise it was not the right place or time to do so. It ultimately boils down to proper timing and moderation based on where you are and who you are with.
I could go into a long essay about this one, but i decided not to this week, I’m gonna keep it simple.
I grew up with “geek culture”. It’s in my blood. I played Atari 2600 at age 3, and watched Star Trek TNG religiously in the 80′s & early 90′s before I even understood half of it. I spent my weekends with a 2 Liter of soda, a 286 PC, and a copy of King’s Quest and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Hillsfar on a 5 1/4″ floppy. The first time I turned on my 486 PC later in life and got a copy of MYST and Doom II around my 12th birthbday, I don’t think I left home for 2 or 3 days. It’s just who I am.
As a kid I got of lot of flak for it. I too was made fun of for my interests/styles/etc. as most of our kind do. But that’s just it: “Our kind”. I was never alone. I have always been proud of my geek/nerdness, because it’s always brought me joy, and I accept that and it’s not going to change. It’s my life and I am happy with what I do with it, in those regards.
So I guess I can say it brought me shame/embarrassment more times than I care to count, but I never really cared. I am proud to be part of the Culture and Community that are labeled and Geeks or Nerds. If someone doesn’t like it, fine. You have that right. Just be respectful about it. For example: I cannot stand Basketball or Football. I just don’t get it, I cannot find any entertainment value from it. But that’s ok, and I see no need to shame or embarrass anyone for liking them. If it’s what brings them happiness, I can respect that. I hope that made sense.