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[PA Comic] Wednesday, January 16, 2013 - Simulacra
Geth
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
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2. Surely Gabe knows all of those words!
That being said, I find myself perfectly qualified to judge people based on all sorts of silly attributes and do so frequently. About 50% of the time they're even female.
I wouldn't say it's all that sudden. It's been a thing for at least as long as the Frag Dolls have been around. It's kind of popped up again thanks to the female-focused game research being done by...uh...that one lady whose name I can't remember. (Specifically, thanks to all the shit assholes have been giving her for it.)
Back cover advertisement in a number of DC comics, October 2012, Google says.
Missing the extra comment "You guys know you're still a bunch of losers right".
What about strawperson rights? Who will speak for them, if not us gamers?
STEAM
I Liked It Before It Was Cool was wandering around the internet, feeling insecure and irate that other people's way of labeling themselves had undermined her hard-earned outsider cool. Then one day, after thankless months of giving young women in Avengers t-shirts her profound side-eye of judgement, her lonely path of Geek Righteousness was blocked by the shadow of a massive figure. His magnificent golden hair streamed in the breeze like a banner to all of Geekdom. His bulging pectorals glistened in the sun like a beacon to those so easily lost to feminine wiles. Yes, it was the mighty Misogyny that gave her an assessing stare before smiling down benevolently as he held out his hand. "Wench, we have work to do," he rumbled, voice seductively full of noble purpose as he led her toward yet another 14 year old girl's unacceptable facebook post.
And so their union blessed the internet and the current incarnation of Fake Geek Girl was born.
Sounds like a song or something.
Nowadays, gaming is an accepted thing, so, to me, has lost some of it's "nerd cred." Just playing videogames doesn't make one a nerd. However, most people visiting this site can rest secure in their being labeled a nerd.
Bother me on steam: kabbypan
I don't want to run afoul of CT's fatwa... but this is not a healthy way of looking at things. That's all I will say here. Like the comic says, self-appointed gatekeepers are the worst.
That's the basic accusation. Frankly it's usually dressed in much more despicable undertones, but I'm not even going there because within two replies somebody will have broken Tube's prime directive up there and then we can't have nice things.
The comic reminds me of this guy I knew in college. Graduated high school at 17 and already had a half a day of college classes his senior year, socially useless and a nerd beyond any of the other people I hung out with (and this was the kind of group that could have the "What if Thor picked up the hammer and Hulk picked up Thor" argument in public and declare a Starcraft tournament the only way to resolve the matter). He was that kind of overcompensating "Dudes I'm getting so much ass" virgin. Had a "girlfriend" who never came by, never texted him, whose various personal details shifted subtly with each telling. Nobody ever wanted to get into the whole discussion with him, and any time somebody came close, we berated him like Tycho in panel 2 for the sake of social stability.
And that's Tycho. He knows Cheeto doesn't have a girlfriend. He knows it's just a scarecrow with a batman shirt. He just doesn't want to deal with THAT conversation.
So here's a question I can hopefully pose without raising too much ire. Completely ignoring the ridiculous gender issue here (obviously girls have every right to call themselves geeks, etc) can we allow any credibility at all to people who feel like they are being indirectly mocked when "fake" geeks enter?
Here's what I mean. And let me start by saying that Tycho hit the nail on the head with the gatekeeper thing. Geek culture, if there is such a thing, is about one thing, at least to me: Making a safe haven for people to not be judged for their interests. Whereas the outside world may reject me for my knowledge of my own tabletop RPG setting or my hours spent painting Space Wolves, here is a place where I can converse with those who share my interests and even those who don't will say, "Hey, I may not be into that, but I know what it's like to be into something not a lot of people understand." Even though there are subcategories of geek, I can get along with someone who has a passion for anime (even though I don't, and they don't have a passion for my interests). We both understand being an outsider and we welcome each other in. This is something I can't share with my real life friends because they either don't have such a strong passion for anything, or their passion is for something so long considered acceptable that no one recognizes that it's the same kind of devotion (ie football fans here in the US).
So when we tell diehard fans of anything that they are not welcome, we're becoming exactly what geek culture was created to escape. "Hardcore" vs "Casual" gaming is probably the worst offender here, even worse than the "no fake geeks allowed" thing. We complain about geekdom becoming popular, but we don't realize that it's changed even those of us who have inhabited it for so long. Entitlement and Exclusion have no place here.
All that said, I have no problem with anyone, male or female, "fake" or "real", who wants to take part in my interests. What I don't like is being mocked. I don't think girls dressing up at conventions are mocking me. I'd be flattering myself there. But when someone wears a t-shirt or backpack with an emblem of something I like, but they're wearing it "ironically", that basically means that to them, the idea of anyone legitimately liking this is a complete joke. This article says something similar to what I'm thinking, albeit in a much more gatekeeper-y, obnoxious way: http://www.wingdamage.com/why-i-hate-hot-topic/ TL;DR: Hot Topic was, at least before Woot and ThinkGeek, one of the only places to get video game or superhero stuff, and even now it's the only brick-and-mortar place I can get that. But to get at that stuff I have to go into a store which is uncomfortable to me almost to the point of being hostile.They put the geek shirts at the front to draw me in but deeper in I realize that this place is not for me. And when I see a 14-year-old wearing a Jack Skellington armband and a retro-Justice League t-shirt, I get the feeling I'm being made fun of. Anyone who actually likes old school superheroes is being mocked by the people who make a joke out of liking it. Now, I'm just as guilty of this. I participated in Chuck Norris jokes when they first came out. But I can imagine how ticked off someone who actually liked Chuck Norris must have been by that whole thing.
All this is just to say, we need to get rid of the gatekeeper mentality, but I think we can do it without villainizing anyone who's ever thought, "do they really like that, or are they just wearing the shirt to be ironic? Have I found a kindred spirit or am I going to be laughed at if I start a conversation about it?"
I love Gabe's expression in panel three, like a barely contained unspoken freaking out Dude, what are we going to do about this, dude???
But does that ever actually happen in real life? About geek culture?
And even if it did, what are you going to do? They're mocking you. They won't listen to your complaints so just ignore them.
I've seen it in either gender. Personally, I always wonder why they don't just do what they enjoy and build that culture...OTOH, maybe they are 'fake geek' geeks. Obsessed with fake geekery. whoa, Geekception...
I don't think anyone in the 'outside world' cares.
Of course it does. That's the point of having a club, or cons for anything. Whether it's "comics" convention, Golf Convention, sporting event.
FYI: Target also has that stuff now.
Or she likes jack skellington? That character is pretty much aim at a 14 year old girl demographic.
We live in an era where people can easily see great media from the past. Don't confuse that with someone mocking you...cause no one cares that much about some random person.
People who like Chuck Norris thought it was awesome.
And who actually makes a joke out of liking Superheroes? Do you think only you can like things from your childhood?
The is like me seeing a guy wearing an Anarchy jacket that has Black Flag and Anarchy stamped on it at the factory. Sure , it means he doesn't get it, but I don't think he is mocking me.
IF there are people spending money just to mock you, well then the jokes on them.
I see kids with AC/DC shirts. Are the mocking me or do they just like music that was written to tap into teenage energy?
I am the gatekeeper, and I keep the gate in my basement.
Maybe I don't get it, becasue in 1977 I would have killed for a young lady to be in out DnD game, or for there to be far more of them at the Star Trek Con.
Teenage boys today got it made.
It's the long con, that.
If I'm honest, it doesn't really happen now that I'm out of high school and not so petty. But it did happen then, and maybe high schoolers are where most of this issue is coming from. And you're right, in the end, whether I'm mocked in one form or another, complaining isn't going to do anything. I've long gotten past really being bothered by it myself. My only point was that we shouldn't lambaste people just for being bothered when they are in fact being mocked. Just because I've gotten over it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt them, especially if they are, in fact, high schoolers to whom that kind of stuff can really hurt. Growing a thicker skin is usually the best response to verbal bullying, but that doesn't mean the blame lies on the one being bullied. Bullied may be too strong a term, especially with how charged that word is today, but still, no one likes to be made fun of.
My main point was just that we shouldn't target people who are insecure and possibly being mocked by "fake" geeks when the real enemy is people like Tony Harris who most geeks would agree are out of line.
It's pretty terrible how twisted this whole thing has become. I think it stems from this: no one ever likes when someone fakes being a certain way for the sake of manipulation. For example, I dated someone who confessed to me that she faked interest in "geeky" things because geeks were easier to take advantage of, and made it easier to get things from them in a relationship. She'll go to a con and do one of two things: Hunt for boys or look for parties. Now, both of these things I don't have any real problem with (I enjoy prospecting members of the opposite sex, and I definitely enjoy parties), but the fact that she was faking interest in subculture for the sake of obtaining someone she could take advantage of was pretty low. What we need to remember though is that this isn't just a culture-specific phenomenon. Such people aren't "fake geeks", they're manipulative, and they're in all walks of life.
Basically, please learn to see the difference between someone who's got a fledgling interest in subculture, and someone who's being manipulative, or risk harming yourself and others.
if you, as a person, are drawing a line of demarcation betwixt yourself and fake geeks or whatever
chances are high i fall on the "fake" side of the line
in which case fuck yooooou?
(ooo ooo oooooo)
There was also this thread in some "Gurrllzzzz"-board were they told each other stories how they teased nerds in online chats with fake interest and then made fun of them.
But not so much "Fake Geek Girl" as "Whatever the female variant of bully" is.
a bully?
bullying is not gendered
you go into any high school anywhere it will not be hard to find female bullies
culturally speaking, it is more common for male bullying to be physical and involve physical assault or physical harassment
whereas, female bullying tends to be verbal and emotional, it comes in the form of gossip and cruel pranks and exclusionary social circling and that sort of thing
but it's still bullying, and even then that's only a tendency
physical female bullying absolutely happens and it's not even always women on women
and on the flipside, verbal and emotional bullying by dudes is absolutely a real thing ("did you hear that girl's a slut?" "did you hear that guy's a fag?")
bullying just
is
Like I said, rural area. No Target. And I'm not just talking about T-shirts. I looked and looked for a Dragonborn plushie for my wife to no avail.
I'm assuming she likes Jack Skellington. The point in saying that was to point out there's a good chance if I handed her a copy of the original Action Comics she wouldn't like it. The entire point behind most retro merchandise is irony. At least in my experience.
Most people I know. Different circles treat things differently. That was the main point of my original message. Don't assume that because you haven't experienced something that no one else's experience of it is legitimate.
Again, as someone who is married to a real "geek girl" I'm glad there are more of them now. The people who say otherwise are way off base. I'm just trying to say that there is a middle ground between "all female gamers are faking it to get fawned over" and "everyone who wears a Mario hat is a geek and there's no such thing as ironically liking something" (which is the same as mocking it).
It's pretty well summed up in that article someone linked. The dude freaks out that people who *gasp* only watched The Watchmen (heh) movie were wearing the shirt. They couldn't be authentic fans, because they didn't read the comic book, or rather, their declaration of fandom decreased the uniqueness of his fandom.
I get that, but originally that wasn't the "club". The club was for people who had more outlying interests. Star Trek, Spider-man, and D&D may not have anything to do with each other. But they are often enjoyed by the same people just because of the personality types and "skills" they target. But they also have (or had) in common that mainstream society didn't seem to like them as much. So when I go into the gaming store in town, it's a place for comics, D&D, 40k, LoL and Magic. I don't play LoL or Magic, but we still all get along. I realize it's not so much that way anymore, but that's why those places exist. When these clubs started no D&D player would tell a Magic player "You're just a loser because you play that loser game". He had probably heard that enough from his family about his own hobby.