Sparkly New Year, Sparkly New Computer

by adminwp in Gay Geeks | 0 comments

I caved, geeky ones.

For Christmas, I asked for and received one of those cute little netbooks which have been all the rage for the past, oh, I don’t know, two years or so? It’s compact, sleek (if disappointingly a little too fragile) and light weight, perfect for my back that can no longer haul my gigantic 2002-issue laptop whenever I travel or need to get out of the house/office/building to write while I commune with nature or whatever (yes, I was once That Geek With the Super Big Laptop. It was the early 21st Century and we were all younger and more foolish then.).

And did I mention that it’s cute as a button? Because it so is.

I’ve named it Ivanna, and it reminds me of these tiny cars that were popular in Utah during mid-1990s, when I was in middle school. God help me, I don’t remember what they were called. But they looked like boxier, jeep-ier prototypes of Smart Cars, and seemed to come in only hot pink, neon blue and other assorted 80s throwback colors. Every year, I swear the world just gets smaller as it gets bigger. Facebook is making our social networks as tight knit as they are global, Blackberries and netbooks are letting us take the internet everywhere we go, and if they make an iPod any smaller, I swear they really will be invisible, just like that joke on Saturday Night Live that was actually funny.

Or it is, unless, of course, you don’t have the money, the technology, or the interest.

See, there’s something about geekdom that has been bugging me for a very long time, geeky ones. Now, as a whole, we’re a pretty accepting people when it comes to all sorts of differences among our numbers: fandoms, crafts, Star Trek vs. Star Wars, cats vs. dogs, WoW vs. whatever the hell game the cool kids are playing at the moment, hell even kinks (because geekdom is usually quite accepting of every sexual orientation and gender identity out there). You name it, we probably won’t mock it, because there are probably more than a handful of us who like it.

All that said, geekdom isn’t free from any number of unpleasant and/or socially toxic influences including racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism and, well, garden variety snobbery, which 99 percent of the human race is apparently incapable of leaving behind in middle school along with those boxy proto-Smart Cars. And yeah, I know the latter is a relatively small issue when it comes to all the –isms geekdom needs and regularly fails to address, but at the same time dealing with it can be anywhere from aggravating to disheartening to exclusionary.

So what is this snobbery of which I speak? It takes many forms, actually: The geek who just cannot shut up about the fact that you OMG didn’t read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy at 12 years old like all proper geeklets should; the geeks who role their eyes if you prefer dubbed anime to subtitled anime; the geeks who think that pretty girls and women (or, in gay male geeks’ case, hot guys) can’t possibly be into gaming/Robert Jordan/They Might Be Giants/painting die cast miniatures/reading Beowulf in the original Old English/whatever. And my favorite: the geeks who think you’re not one of the crowd if you don’t have the right gadgets, the right updates, the right cool toys because, don’t you know, that’s what life is about.

Maybe this sounds like a straw man argument, or at least like I’m jumping at shadows. Given my sometimes admittedly short fuse, I well could be, especially because my experiences as a geek in fandom have been overwhelmingly positive. Nevertheless, I have encountered some of this snobbery firsthand, and it has sucked. Majorly. But while I could devote tripartite columns to each of the chestnuts listed above, it’s the last one that has really been bugging me ever since I was lucky enough to get my netbook.

Because often that’s what having things like netbooks (or laptops), iPhones, iPods, Blackberries, and high speed, Wi Fi internet access and all the cool things you get with each comes down to: luck, or at least the fortune to have the money to afford these things and the time to use them. While geeks often share a love of any number of fannish things and activities, we don’t all come from the same racial, gender, orientation or class backgrounds. In other words, not all of us are going to be able to afford the newest doodad, or even want the newest doodad in the first place for a number of reasons that include culture, a lack of free time and politics — for example, if you don’t know about the connections between personal electronics and game systems like PlayStation, tantalum and child labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo, you should go educate yourselves now. In fact, some geeks connect to the internet on dial up (like I did until 2007) or not at all, use decrepit cell phones (or no cell phone at all), haven’t seen a hot new movie in theatres since the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (almost true in my case), couldn’t tell D&D from WoW and haven’t spared Tolkien’s work so much as a backwards glance while reaching for His Dark Materials, The Chronicles of Narnia or A Series of Unfortunate Events (though I must say I quite enjoyed The Hobbit when I read it at the ripe old, unenchanting age of ever so much more than 20). And yes, they’re still every bit as geeky as you and me, or any other geek out there in fandom.

Don’t get me wrong. Having a netbook is fun and useful. It lets me write more often and in more places without breaking my back. If smartbooks take off in the upcoming decade, having one of those would probably be even funner and more useful. But the technology does not make the geek anymore than liking or not liking fill in the blank with your choice of geeky thing makes the geek. Like any number of identities, including gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, I might add, saying that you’re a geek makes you a geek. Period. Full stop. And playing games of who’s more hardcore geek than who or who has the best toys only ends in tears, hurt feelings, bad karma and columns like this one.

As we move into 2010 it is my hope that geeks everywhere can shed a little of this kind of snobbery and learn to be more accepting of each other’s interests, needs and involvement in geekdom, that technophiles and luddites can join hands and sing Kumbaya. That the lions can lie down with the lambs. Er. Well, you get the idea.

Though when it comes to computers in geekdom, I must say that I see no end to the ongoing conflict between Macs and PCs. Seriously, you just know that shit’s only going to end in a world war, right?