Courtney posted a link to the geek test. So I took it. Scored a 55-ish value, which I guess is “Extreme Geek.” Okay, I can live with that, but as I was going through the many, many checkboxes, I came to a realization or two about the general state of geekdom.
It’s hard to really know how the test is scored, but clearly it’s anime-deficient — no Belldandy in the “I Want…” list? What were they thinking? Seems hard to believe considering the source of such prime geek canon as Otaku No Video.
Likewise, it’s too TV-centric. Anime doesn’t count as TV — if you’re watching anime properly you’re seeing a fansub on VHS (okay, DVD fansubs are sort of okay). But not on TV. Buffy? 7 of 9? Feh! Why would you watch TV when you could be trying to see how high Aeris’s level can get before she’s kakked? Or better yet arguing about how she’s better (or not) than Yuna? Too many splinters to geekdom, and hard to coalesce into a single score.
What’s more sobering, I’ve realized, is how much geekdom (at least as measured here) involves complex patterns of consumption but very little creation. One can write fanfic and still be an accepted geek, but if you write new novels (other than ST licensed-ones), you’ve wandered off the path. So: Jim Cameron? Not a geek. Steven Spielberg? Jerry Pournelle? Patrick Stewart? Joss Whedon? Nope, too busy creating new things for fans to get geeky about. Gene Roddenberry? Sadly, yes — his later, fallen works show true signs of geekfestation, as he came to believe his own geek hype (obvious example concept: V-Ger) The very people who create the things most-prized by this definition of geekdom are probably not geeks. There ought to be some new definition for the state of meta-geekdom, where the annointed, Boddhisatva-like, can rise above the cloud of normal geekiness to a new state of blissful geek-creation.
(And likewise we need a term for the antithetical examples like Harry Knowles — not at the zenith of geekdom, but its nadir, bound and determined to suck the creativity out of everything that could possibly be cool)