Thoughts on the Acceptance of Geek Culture in The Mainstream
I remember a handful of years back, I wrote up a post about psuedo-geek-girls and comic-book posers. The Tumblr community was NOT happy about it. I was called a chauvinist, misongynist and so on. I had no intent to say “girls can’t love comics as much as men!” But, many female readers wanted to believe that’s what I was saying. I wasn’t.
This is what I was talking about. The movement of “geek-culture” into the mainstream as acceptable and even “cool” is awesome. I would give anything to get to be in High School now, instead of a decade ago when true nerds were few and far between, ridiculed by the majority.
The San Diego Comic-Con works as a solid analogy. Over 10 yeas ago and earlier, SDCC was a comic book based event focused on writers and artists. Today, it maintains a focus on TV, movies and celebrity. It’s as if all of the nerds said, “Hey, let’s have a party where we can enjoy all of the things we love”, but then a bunch of jocks and dickheads crashed the party and said, “go to the corner, losers, this our party now!”
We’re living in an exciting time where movies that, before, I could never imagine, are being made into Summer blockbusters. The Avengers are common knowledge and almost every household knows what The Walking Dead is. If you had told me that in 2004, I would have called bullshit. But, its happening now and its great. As with the growing popularity of anything, the chances of a few assholes liking the things you love is going to happen. But, they were always assholes to start with, so, fuck it.
If a couple hot babes want to wear fake frames and say they love comic books because they watched Scott Pilgrim VS The World, then so be it. Because, hell, I get to enjoy a world where Iron-Man 3 is more anticipated than the next Bond film and that’s fucking cool.
