I tend to shy away from the term “geek,” despite my use of it all over this blog. It serves as a convenient shorthand for describing what interests me and what one can expect to find me writing about on a daily basis. That being said, I find it to be unnecessarily limiting, yet simulatneously ambiguious. To the latter point, there are plenty of established kinds of geekiness, such as record geeks or sneaker geeks or whatever that I don’t know anything about, I have no interest in, and have nothing of consequence to say about them. These people would be justified in calling themselves geeks and, while they may not spring to mind to you as geeky, for many people this is their primary interest. I mean, many vinyl obsessors could make comic fanboys look mainstream with their depth of knowledge and interest in minutia. So, the term “geek,” a former reference used to describe carnival chicken-head biters now co-opted by enthusiasts for whatever, really doesn’t describe anything in particular.
Not exactly Batman, but a new mythological figure in the lives of many "geeks."
I wanted to test the limits of geekiness by using it on an area many geeks would loathe to use it in: sports. Despite the common hatred of the common geek to the common jock, I really like sports. I am not a big sports enthusiast, finding myself drastically under-qualified to blog on the subject. Yet, why not sports geeks? Sports, like comic books and video games, are controlled by formulas stretching into history. Yet, despite the rather static nature of the rules, it is constantly being redefined by new personalities and new talents adding tons of enjoyment to the field. Sports often have more real action than a genre movie, more depth than most video games, and more statistics to keep track of than any roleplaying games. Rapid sports fan can rival any geek in terms of enthusiasm and knowledge. Are sports fans geeks? Can they be with the level of acceptance they enjoy in society? Or, with the continuing mainstreaming of sci-fi, comics, and video games, are they any real geeks anymore? The answer is yes, there are. They are called LARPers. Sorry for the rambling nature of this post. I am tired.
This is sorta what i was touching upon yesterday in the mario galaxy comment. When it comes to how much a person is addicted or craving more out the subject matter. Whats really the difference between a “sports fan”, comic book nerd, a hardcore gamer, porn aficionado, or a film buff? To me, really not that much.
i have seen people that like all of the above and people just one of those catergories. That idea of wanting/following and collecting knowledge and materials is just universal.
I read somewhere, something about how the Romans used the “arena” to basically subdue the masses, keep them in check. without it they would be spending that time being rowdy mobs and get this…pay more attention to politics. heh.
So i see some truth in that- imagine if the masses got as upset about a political issue the same way as they did when the yankees or giants lost a game.
just a thought.
Oh… have you seen “Darkon” or “Monster Camp” yet?
God bless the LARPers, they’re the new Babylon Five fans, meaning: they give us all someone to look down upon.
i definitely agree that obsessive sports knowledge qualifies as geeky, without a doubt, I just think that it’s a social thing. I would assume that sports fans would be far less likely to agree that their interest is geeky. I agree that the changing social norms and popularity of video games and super hero movies may bring elements of the geek culture into the mainstream a bit more, but no matter how popular the new final fantasy game is, kids who play sports are gonna pick on kids who play D&D. that shit isn’t getting old. I tend to think that mainstream familiarity and marginal acceptance of geeky things mostly means that jocks will just know a bit more about thethings they make fun of geeks for. If i was a high school student now i could be called a fag for liking the watchmen “nice glowing blue wang!” instead of batman or whatever.
As a sports geek I felt I should share a little.
Sport geeks exist, the MIT Sloan Sports Analytic Conference http://www.sloansportsconference.com/2009/home/ which ESPN.com writer Bill Simmons referred to as “Dork-a-palooza” was a conference that looked into the future of sports and how to look for new statistical ways to evaluate talent and build and maintain a championship team.
I think the average jock is as into sports as much as he is into pop culture as a whole.
It takes something extra to make them a sports geek where they can recite stats about a game that happened 20 years before they were born.
I think the show Stump the Schwab http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stump_the_Schwab is a perfect example of sports geekdom. He just chose sports as his area of extreme knowledge instead of superheros, yet I can still picture the same jocks kicking his ass in high school.
That’s all for now.
Bill Simmons is kind of my gateway into sports. A few years I started reading his column and was impressed with his humor and pop culture, in general. His description of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytic conference and the whole idea of fantasy sports sounded pretty geeky. I mean, how is fantasy sports different than Warhammer, really. Plus, his conversations with Joe House and Jack-O sound a lot like the conversations I have with my friends, just replace Kobe Bryant with the Hulk.
Plus, I should have used a Shaq or Dwight Howard/Superman comparison versus my LeBron/Batman. Would have been super appropriate and clever. Ah, well.
There’s an aspect of geekiness that were not talking about here. We seem to agree on a conventional idea of geekiness as an overabundance of enthusiasm for a particular topic but I think there’s something more. The kinds of geeks we’re talking about fantasize about the thing they’re interested in. In fantasy and sci fi geekdom that’s obvious, but the thing that separates stratomatic baseball from regular baseball card collectors is that you’re imagining baseball that hasn’t happened and never will happen. Regular fans do this a little bit (particularly boxing fans) but when you start to imagine the specifics of a match/fight/game, that’s something else. Stamp collectors, though intense, don’t spend time imagining fake stamps.
[...] wrote about the subject of sports as a geek interest before in this post, but what I am engaging in takes it to a whole new level. This is shit is huge right now and if [...]