Well, the important thing is that you feel good about the words you use to belittle people.

Leigh Alexander weighed in on this'un: http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/20…

@1 who's using them to belittle people?! I consider myself all three! Proudly!

The terms have shifted over time.

Fake Geek Girls need love too.

@ 1 may be old, like me. You didn't want to be thought of as any of those in the 80s.

I'm a geek and a bit of a nerd.

You're missing the key point, which is that being a geek or a nerd is not about consuming culture but about creating it.

It most certainly does not have anything to do with loving science fiction.

If you love Star Trek, or Star Wars, or Twilight, or Hunger Games, or Lord of the Rings, or even something more obscure like Frederick Pohl novels, you are not a nerd or a geek, even if you love it really, really hard. The number of action figures or first editions you have bought doesn't change that. The amount of time you spend in line for the new whatever doesn't either. Wearing costumes doesn't either.

What makes you a nerd or a geek is MAKING THINGS. If you run a cool program on your computer, you are not a geek; if you WRITE ONE, you are. If you buy a robot in a store, you are not a nerd; if you MAKE ONE, you are.

There was a surprisingly good article about this phenomenon in the Seattle Times Pacific NW Magazine this Sunday: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pa…

Where the confusion arose was that back in the day real geeks -- the kind who were hacking DEC minicomputers or inventing Unix and the internet and computer graphics or writing early boot sequences on homemade personal computers -- happened to be social misfits and science fiction aficionados. But that does not mean, then or now, that being a social misfit or a science fiction aficionado is enough. You're taking credit for something that isn't yours.

you're all nerds

I'm all for letting the posers pose. God knows that TRUENERDS could stand the company of a cute girl in a plaid t shirt and oversized glasses, even if she wasn't raised playing with WH40K miniatures.

@5, I remember the precise moment I noticed the change: I was walking downtown and saw a window display in the Bon Marche expressly called "Geek Chic" or "Nerd Chic", with the mannequins wearing Buddy Holly glasses and stripey tees and fuzzy cardigans or polos with piped sleeves and plackets. Not a million miles away from Kurt Cobain's look, but neater and cleaner (especially the hair and the emphatically NON-ripped trousers). As a fashion, this look was considered underground or rebellious at the time, almost confrontational, but that display marked the moment I noticed its mainstreaming. This was more than fifteen years ago.

Note that this "Geek Chic" also has nothing to do with real geeks or nerds. Real geeks or nerds dressed like that then, or rather ten years before then, because they were dorky. It didn't use to be cool to be dorky. Nowadays you see people wearing the ultimate dorky Napoleon Dynamite glasses, but those people are as far away from nerds and geeks as it is possible to get.

@1 is in serious need of being belittled. So is fucking Swearengen.

I'm just gonna drink my beer and shut up now.

@8 You're describing someone who fits more into the "DIY" or "Maker" category. I'd say there's strong correlation, but that they're not necessarily the same.

On the other hand, we're arguing about labels, which is about the stupidest goddamned thing.

Proving, once again, that nerds will obsessively argue and hair-split over anything, including the proper definition of "nerd."

As a rule, if one of these terms is being used favorably as a term of inclusion ("We're all über-nerds here") then efforts to police the borders can be expected to be strenuously pursued. The definition will be constructed in such a way to include the speaker and exclude as many others as possible. For a perfect example of how the geekier-than-thou approach looks in the real world, see Fnarf's comment above.

@12, "makers" ARE the real nerds. People who collect Pokemon or read comics or play Portal are called "consumers".

@13, I am not a geek or a nerd and have never claimed to be. I don't make things. I've had nerd moments in the past, and I've certainly worn the glasses, but I am not a nerd. I respect those who are, though.

I would actually go further and describe the moment you become an adult is the moment you stop pretending that you are a part of something because of something you consume. 100% of whatever grooviness emanates from an episode of Battlestar Galactica attaches to the creators, not the viewers. Your figurine collection doesn't make you cool any more than your record collection does.

"Like other self-selected groups, geeks/nerds/dorks LOVE to point out the posers and tell them how they're doing it wrong. Which is exhausting. Because who cares? Are they somehow destroying your ability to enjoy the thing you love?"

Ultimately I hope it leads to women being more welcomed in and becoming more of the gaming community, but i do think that along with the whole '80s insta-nostalgia, the whole talking about playing games and D&D as a substitute for an identity can get a little rolleyesworthy, no matter the gender. I agree with Fnarf that interesting identities are crafted from more than whatever pop-culture memes are popular and acceptable.

Are there really that many "social misfit" subcultures anymore? Juggalos and furries?

@8: Says the Deadwood fanboy.

@7 is really really wrong. Fen have lived and died on ARPA*NET and its successor the Internet in the Flame Wars between Trekkies, Trekkers, and filksingers.

At one time, electronic music was mostly created by math professors and listened to in house parties where you paid a few bucks (so they could buy more parts) by math majors. Eventually those became computer science majors and then the math majors who were DJs on campus radio made it popular.

Stuff changes. Revel in it.

I'm not about to argue about it on the internet, but I don't really like it when the average jerkass uses the terms interchangeably; the implication in such a case is that all geeks are socially awkward, and all dorks are intellectually fixated, and so on. It's a way to dismiss large groups of people by establishing some kind of wide-reaching baseline of charisma and consumer preference and then sorting others on one side or another. It's very high school.

It's not as bad when someone (such as Mary, natch) is cavalier about each definition in a manner that places them on the "bad" side of things, since in such a case it's not really being used as so obvious a method of exclusion. But whatevs.

@16, I present you as the canonical example of a wanna-be nerd who has absolutely nothing to offer but his desire to be seen with the cool kids. But of course your efforts will always fail, and the cool kids, whether they call themselves nerds or geeks or dorks or makers will always, always, always find you ridiculous and repulsive, because you are fake to the very core. The Trekkies and Trekkers and filksingers hated the stink of you then and the creeped-out Hunger Games fans hate it today.

You think that you can get away with faking it here, with your bonehead talk about "ARPA*NET" (misspelled, as usual) but you cannot. Go away.

@ 10, I didn't have any moment of realization like that; just an awareness that a growing number of people were calling themselves nerds and geeks as the 90s wore on.

This conversation reminds me of an online debate I read recently. Someone was talking about the band Venom being the "kings of Black Metal" because they coined the term in 1981, but the label was one that didn't catch on for a decade. By the time bands were seizing it, the style of music was about as far removed from Venom as Venom had been from early Black Sabbath.

Other labels have had a way of being coined to mean one thing but ended up meaning something else entirely. "Alternative" at first meant underground bands, maybe getting a little college radio airplay, far too developed to be punk or hardcore, and most playing too many different styles for easy classification. It ended up meaning the two or three of those bands that broke big in the 90s and all their sorry imitators. "Indie rock" underwent the same metamorphosis. It seems to happen when the mainstream embraces outsiders.

@15: You left out LARPers.

I think there's a kernel of truth here, even though it's overwhelmed by an outpouring of pent-up shame and resentment. Esoteric pursuits are not seen as a negative anymore, aside from a few cultural whipping boys. It's this shift that's allowed the campaign to co-opt insults like "nerd" and "geek" to succeed.

XKCD answered it best

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/geeks_and_ne…

@20: True!

One thing to muse on is that there are far more walking meme regurgitators of the male persuasion, misogyny could certainly be why the "i'm a gamer girl!" crowd seems to be (more) singled out and viewed as especially "inauthentic".

@19, "Alternative" always meant "corporate white-boy college rock". Always. By the time the term was coined, by some radio schlocker, it had lost all meaning as a word, as very few "alternative" radio stations ever played much indie at all. "Indie" used to have a very specific meaning: the Indie chart in Record Week in the UK, which was based on independent distribution. But that distinction eventually lost its meaning when major labels set up "fake" indie LABELS that used the indie distribution system while other indie labels signed distribution deals; and naturally when bands who were indie in the UK signed major-label deals in the US or vice versa (e.g., The Smiths, indie in the UK, major in the US) -- right around the time the word "alternative" started to be used.

More blather has been expended on what is "real indie" or not than was expended on the Cold War, and exceedingly tiresome it is, too. Meanwhile, actual events on the ground eventually made the whole concept impossible to grasp. My favorite example is The Wedding Present, who have moved back and forth from indie to major and back again more than once. Indeed, I can pull out dozens of individual records that have been issued on both indie and major.

The lesson I learned in these "indie wars" is the same lesson I've stated here: no matter how badly you wish it were true, you are not defined by your commercial consumption.

@22: I was pretty much ignoring the way she specifically singled out "geek girls" for the purpose of my previous statement. I think there's definitely a misogynistic tendency among self-described nerds (nice guy syndrome has its roots here, after all), and that tends to force some girls out of hobbies they would otherwise enjoy or to hide their hobbies. Although, a full half of the LARPers I know are women, and in my tabletop gaming circles women are well-represented. So hopefully that's changing as gamers/nerds/whatevers average age goes up and the subculture is less thoroughly dominated by children who still think girls have cooties.

The other thing to think about is that there is business in getting celebrity women to pander to geeks. There's only so many times you can see a conventionally attractive twenty-something go on Conan and describe herself as a geek because she watched Star Wars before you get jaded.

@ 23, that's false. I remember the term being used in Maximum Rock n Roll and Flipside in the mid 80s, about bands like Sonic Youth, when NONE of them had a shot at even radio. It had originated elsewhere but was being used as an umbrella term for New York noise, post hardcore, college rock, and bands that were all or none of those.

Anyway, my point is that enough people can make any term mean anything at all. If people want to be defined by what they consume, you can't stop them from making it so.

@Fnarf: Perhaps this is a difference in the cultures where we came of age, but DIY was a decidedly punk way of life when I was a teen in the early 90's, while geek/nerd (a label applied to me by others for most of my life) was reserved for those with obsessive interest in any niche area. "Making" was never part of the geek/nerd culture in my youth, but it was most certainly part of the indie and punk scenes.

I only get upset when someone takes things I like, lumps them in with zOMG GEEK CULTURE, and then tries to use that to recruit me into something or sell me crap, and in so doing burns all the charm and value out of the thing itself.

In other words, people can wear whatever t-shirts they want, and that's totally fine, but I don't have to like the cynical fuckers churning out t-shirts with every imaginable flavor-of-the-week "geek" fad on them, from faux-retro Nintendo designs to Will fucking Ferrell movies to whatever most recently crawled out of the muck of 4chan.

And I don't have to tolerate the likes of Olivia Munn, either.

@28: and jerks complaining about nitpicky comment threads are as lame as the people doing the nitpicking. If you don't want to read a bunch of nerds arguing about the definition of "nerd" vs "geek," why on earth are you reading these comments?

Geek-upsmanship has been going on for decades.

In the 1940's Forry Ackerman tried to ban Francis Laney from using the L.A.S.F.S. club house because Francis had brought a girl there, and was dancing with her.

This activity was deemed unrelated to Science Fiction (or possibly scientifiction) and Forry tried to have Francis thrown out of the club. Frances wasn't being geeky enough, I guess.

Francis went on to form his own club, which was EXACTLY like the one he had left...except that it probably allowed dancing.

My point is that the whole "Geekier than thou" thing is one of the cornerstones of fandom, and it always has been. There is no point in trying to solve it because it is a basic part of what it means to be a fan.

All you fuckers are wrong. Everyone knows that geeks are the weirdos that bite the heads off chickens. Because, you know, word usage never ever changes over the years.

As someone with lifelong geeky interests, I don't get the distinction and never have worried about it too much. Except that I've decided people who really care about whether they're called geek, nerd or dork are not people I'm interested in talking to.