chaosphaere

This is a response I made (as a comment) to someone else's post, about my observations about the changes in geek culture. It would explain a lot to me about why some of my geeky friends (who have not been with the community long enough to change with it) feel alienated and don't seek out other geeks; there really is a feeling of "having missed a meeting" if you haven't done anything (socially) geeky in the last ten years, because you're literally not up on a good 80% of the culture that is being discussed.

I have noticed geekery changing for a long, long time. I particularly noticed it in 2007 or so, when I came up with the term "nuGeek" to describe how younger Xr and Millennial geeks were engaging geekdom.

NuGeekhood is borderline mainstream, and FAR more franchise and consumerist oriented than old geekhood was. Look, it's even got its own market segment!! Hot Topic and ThinkGeek. It even has a *name*. My friends and I never called ourselves anything: we were just *friends* first and foremost, who happened to click over liking Star Trek, sci fi novels (we're old enough to distinguish between serious literary SF vs "skiffy"), and tabletop role playing games. Most of us ended up either 1) computer people or 2) a hot mess because apparently computers/engineering seem to be the only middle class professions compatible with our personalities. We are also old enough and close enough with the older generations to identify the shout-outs in the DS9 episode that referenced the inner world of classic 50s science fiction publishing. Even if we don't know, we're probably friends with someone who does.

But younger geekery is *much* different. It's far more based on consumerism.

A new thing has emerged, too - META. META CULTURE.

I identify now why I fell out of the community (beyond my existing friends) when Firefly fandom began. It's not that Firefly started the trend, but it really is symptomatic of that trend. It was too genre savvy for its time, and for its own good, and to me, that's why it failed. It referenced geek culture and tropes so heavily that non-geeks just didn't get the show - so it (to me) just came off like Joss Whedon jerking off with his own interior universe. The show has much more geek-historic and nostalgic significance than it actually had at the time it aired. But it captured the imagination of a lot of younger geeks, who were tuned in to the emerging massified nuGeek culture.

Whedon may be the first real icon of nuGeekhood. People paid attention to things he said and he made things specifically for the geek community in a lot of ways, in ways that even people like Gene Roddenberry didn't - geek creators had, as of the early to mid 2000s, become self-aware of their geekiness. For the first time, people talking about geekhood became a major fandom in and of itself.

Whedon was the beginning of most geeky things consisting of lots and lots of meta and media that mostly referenced other things within geekdom; geek pop culture was starting to consume itself, and feed off itself, but by the late 2000s, it had enough of a following to allow for this. And while fanfic has always existed, it had never quite been more than a niche thing before. Now screenwriters even tease about it or throw bones to the audience.

You also have the birth of meta-culture and critique culture (and you see tinges of this postmodernist approach in "Buffy" as well). More of geek culture consuming and feeding on itself. Nostalgia Critic. Nostalgia Chick. TVTropes. Tropes vs Women. Doesn't matter which side of it you're on, because the kerfluffles which were spawned (GamerGate vs anti-GamerGate) are, to this OLD SCHOOL geek, two sides of the same coin: which group of Millennials is going to control geekery, the entitled and narcissist kidult boys, or the entitled and narcissist kidult girls? It's all the same, really. The new "battle of the sexes" is a battle between two equally entitled groups of adult-bodied, narcissistic children. Both of whom are duking it out for control of the geekosphere. And there is no better example of this than the debacle that was GamerGate.

As for me - I am pretty much an "old school geek". I started feeling alienated by the geek community at about the time that "nuGeekhood" arrived on the scenes. I know that there are still circles that cater specifically to our people. And there are even fandom subcultures (such as steampunk) that are equally popular to both kinds of geek.

tl;dr:

ALL of the geeks my age and older are starting to complain about con culture, and most have the same complaints.

You're not alone.

But if you're expecting modern geek culture to be the all-embracing social utopia for the freaks and geeks that it may have been to us when younger... it hasn't been that for a long time. It's both going more weirdly postmodernist (meta-this and meta-that... half of the culture seems to exist around critiquing the other half), and more mainstream. Absorbing all the mass-market consumer franchises has had the effect of turning SF/F literature fans and older franchise fans (Star Trek, etc) into needles in the giant Millennial haystack.

There are cons that are more focused on literature (such as my local FogCon), but the political and social justice discussions that pervade every panel talk probably will be something you personally find alienating, based upon knowing you. I wish your local area had a group similar to LASFS because it's one of the very last holdouts of old-geek culture.

In short:

Older geekhood referenced science, history, literature, and other things. It was "nerdier" for lack of a better term, more academic.

NuGeekhood references itself. It references geek culture.

(To me, this is one of many reasons why many geeks don't at all identify with "Big Bang Theory"; the guys in some ways - despite being into superhero lore and cosplay and con culture - are much more like older geeks, and someone who is a nuGeek is probably far, far more in the mainstream. Um - the guys on BBT may seem "really weird" compared to younger geeks, but they are actually MUCH more professionally and personally successful and socially functional than the worst stereotypes of "nerdy" older geeks. At best, we had Revenge of the Nerds. At worst, we had Comic Book Guy.)

And dang, the formatting of this post ended up way, way screwed up. Oh well. I don't feel like fixing it.