April 1st is National Soylent Green Day!
I cracked up when I read that listed on one of my Food Holiday websites the other day. But when I told some of my co-workers, they looked at me with blank expressions. And of course since I had to explain it, it wasn't funny at all, and if anything they thought I was even more weird.
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| The movie is supposed to take place in 2022. Go ahead and give it a viewing--the parts they got right will get you thinking. |
Why would I know about a mediocre Charlton Heston sci-fi film from 1973? Because that's the sort of crowd in which I move: the nerdy kind. The same people who know the origin of "All your base are belong to us," and can sing all the lyrics to one or more of the songs from "Labyrinth."* The social reinforcement for this kind of behavior has been frequent and life-long. I was making a presentation to some high school students the other day, and at the end I asked if anybody had any questions. One kid raised his hand and asked, "What's the answer to life, the universe, and everything?"
"Forty-two," I replied without missing a beat. About 85% of the kids looked confused. To the 15% who looked impressed, I added, "Don't question my Geek Cred."
But today, as I pointedly avoid eating anything evenly vaguely green or cracker-ish, I find myself wondering what exactly that means. Geek cred. What does qualify one as true geek? We used to be easy to identify: back in the 80's most people thought video games were stupid, and any affection for fantasy fiction labeled one a social pariah. Today, people can barely to keep from trampling one another to purchase the latest gaming console. And it's hard to find people who don't watch "Star Wars." Slowly, as interest and artistry has refined the industries, the audience has grown.
In today's conversations, the words "geek" and "nerd" get thrown about without any negativity. You hear people say things like, "I'm a fashion nerd," or "I'm really into music geeks." To those who associate the central nouns with being stuffed into lockers, the addition of such mundane specifiers is dumbfounding. Of course, the bullying has gone down, so most of us aren't complaining. But it does beg a re-examination of the identity claim.
It seems to me that an accurate contemporary use the words refers to an individual's intensity of interest in a topic, coupled with a fearlessness in it's demonstration. For example: it's one thing for an NFL player in designer threads to be in a chic club talking about the upcoming season of "Game of Thrones." It's another for an ordinary, middle-aged guy to be at the same location wearing a T-shirt with an 80's-like design of a big dragon.
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| When I see somebody wearing a shirt like this, I want to invite them to my D&D game. |
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| P.S. - if my husband is reading this, you can totally get me this T-shirt for my birthday. Totally. |
*Whether they can sing it in key is another matter entirely.