You're a geek? Oh, really?

There's a somewhat disturbing by-product I am noticing in the trend towards the mainstreaming or popularization of what has been deemed "geek culture". Suddenly it's cool for people, especially young women, to dub themselves "geeks". It seems like every would-be starlet in Hollywood is ticking off names of obscure comics and animation during interviews in hopes of garnering support from desperate male fandom, who will then in turn flood the internet to lobby for her appearance in some crappy tinseltown rendition of the source material in question. Never mind that the girl never knew a thing about any of this stuff until some agent plugged the names into her head ten minutes prior (I'm looking at you, Megan Fox. You and that cable running from your skull to the agents laptop he's using to feed you answers during interviews, you android!)* It's cool for women to dub themselves "geek girls" now!

Hey, let's look at the original definition here for a moment:


"geek: -noun ;a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken."

Next time you hear some girl refer to herself as a geek because she thinks it's cool, pull out a chicken and ask her for proof.

Of course, there is also the origin of the word.

"[C19: probably variant of Scottish geck, meaning fool, from Middle Low German geck ]"
(source:Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.)

So, maybe there's some bit of accuracy to that, after all.

I don't know why this is bothering me enough to write about it this morning; perhaps because I'd like to see people embrace individuality a little instead of swaying whichever way the pop culture breeze takes them no matter how silly it gets. It's fake, it proves how easily so many people can be led around and manipulated by media, and it's just annoying to people who actually follow this stuff.


* I feel like I should add one of these " ;) lol j/k" deals here, since I'm noticing a decided lack of ability in many people these days to understand satire, irony, or anything that requires analytical thought. So no, I do not in fact believe Megan Fox is an actual android....she just has all of the acting ability of a robot.