Let me preface this by saying that some of what follows may reveal me to be an arrogant, elitist asshole and I may indirectly hurt your feelings. But I need to get this off my chest.

I just got back from Origins, a huge convention celebrating all aspects of geek gaming culture. There were board games, video games, LARPs, and role-playing games going on pretty much 24 hours a day. Seems like a geek paradise. I had never been to a convention of such magnitude, so this was my first exposure to such a dense concentration of geekdom.

It started off great. It was neat to wander around and see all the cool events, play games, and wander around the dealer’s room. But a few days into it, something started to shift for me. I felt disconnected from the people I supposedly had so many common interests with. I overheard debates about Firefly, 4th Edition D&D, various movies, etc. I had no interest in participating. This growing unease culminated in a sudden realization: “I don’t *like* these people.” And by “these people,” I meant geeks.

All rationalizations about sports fans and other “mundanes” being geeks in their own way collapsed. All justifications for having a peculiar hobby fell apart. A lot of the convention-goers were smelly, rude, morbidly obese or borderline delusional. When “normal” people thought of geeks, they envisioned these people. I was embarrassed.

I was hit hardest by the dealer’s room. I felt like a veil had fallen and I saw everything anew. I was horrified by the thoughts I was having: “People who dress up like fantasy characters are morons.” “It is stupid to waste money on RPG supplements and miniatures.” “Look at all this stupid shit that people are into.” “I’d rather be somewhere else kissing a girl.”

I retreated to the concourse, sat down on a bench, and tried to get a grip on what I was feeling. I felt horrible for having those thoughts and horrible for judging total strangers. But I watched them amble by with their stupid t-shirts, talking about Joss Whedon like he was a god, and I felt revulsion.

Let me skip ahead to the two things I figured out about myself and my relationship to geekdom:

1. Context – I never, not even for one day, want to live in a geek world. A game convention is an artificially-created parallel world where the only things that matter are dice, character sheets, rulebooks, and caffeine. I realized that, while I have many geeky interests, I have no desire to devote vast amounts of time and energy to any one of them. For me, there was something obscene about immersing oneself into that world. I realized that I had integrated being a geek into the larger context of my life, not the other way around. I want balance in my life. In addition to learning someone’s opinion on whether Deckard is a replicant, I want to know what they feel, what their hopes are and what they are up to in life.

2. Consumers vs. Creators – I am a creator and I naturally gravitate to other creators. The majority of important, successful relationships in my life are with other creative people. I feel that my life has meaning when I am making art, writing a story, designing a game, etc. Wanting to add something to the world is a very powerful drive in me and I form connections with others who feel a similar way.

I don’t have a lot of room for people who just consume and contribute nothing. I think that, subconsciously, I feel rejected by non-creative types because they are depriving me of the way I am used to connecting with people. Standing in the dealer’s room, I realized that consumerism is a cornerstone for geekdom. We could not be geeks if there wasn’t something to buy or take in, be it a game, a movie ticket, a book, internet access, whatever. So I suddenly felt surrounded by people I could not have meaningful connections with, because, on some base level, my arrogance had manifested as a shield around my loneliness/artistic self-estrangement.

I felt way more at ease around the game designers, artists and writers there than I did around the people who were fans of those creators. I have respect and admiration for directors, writers, actors, podcasters, designers, etc., but I am not that gushing fanboy who elevates them onto some plateau above other human beings. I am discouraged when I encounter geeks who are really resigned about what is possible in their lives. It is like they have decided “I could never do that” so they’ll just live vicariously through role-playing games or TV shows. That’s bullshit. “You CAN do that!” I want to tell them. “There is something that only you can give.”

So at this point I am still taking stock of my life and processing this new attitude towards geekdom. I’m not going to suddenly stop being a geek, but I do need to take a look at the discrepancy between the geek I *say* I am and the one I truly am and how this impacts other people.

So do you think I need to turn in my geek card?

Tags: gaming, Geek