Mr. S showed Sci something hilarious today when she got home from work (yes, she works on a Sunday. She’s a post-doc). The something he showed was this:
This is the geek heirarchy (bigger version here), and is a basic flow chart of who is considered to be the most nerdy among the nerds, they geekiest of the geeks, the dorkiest of the dorks.
Actually, they just say geek. It’s often easier than adding in Nerd and Dork because you then have to distinguish between the three definitions (there IS a difference. If you did not immediately KNOW that there was a difference, you are clearly none of the above). But many people perceive geek as being the most “cool” (relatively speaking) of the three terms, and so geek has become kind of a catchall.
So Mr. S and Sci laughed over this flowchart for a while. And then, being the MASSIVE nerds that we are, we started critiquing it. Where were the magic cards? Where was Warhammer? What about STAR WARS?! What about the people who may not buy replicas of famous swords, but DO proudly wear Star Trek corsetry and that necklace Arwen gave to Aragorn in LOTR?! And what about the people who attend anime conventions in costume?! They feel woefully underrepresented here. Furthermore, how do you rank if you, say, have seen all the Star Wars movies, know them by heart, AND are a Heinlein fan, AND refuse to watch anime unless it’s in the original Japanese with subtitles?!
Obviously this flowchart is flawed.
And Mr. S and I think WE CAN DO BETTER. We can do better for ourselfs, and for all our geeks out there.
We need a ranking system.
So here we go.
Continue reading →
Filed under: Uncategorized | 40 Comments »