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This guy on the right is Scott. He graciously allowed my friends and I to invade his boat at Marina del Rey. Scott makes movies. It would behoove you to get to know him while he is still an indie filmmaker. See what is up at Sirena Studios.

As you can tell from the pictures, it is impossible for us not to document our activities to the rest of the world via Twitter and digital photos.

That was a good time. Chilling on a boat, drinking beer, talking movies and games.

Played Colossal Cave, Aurora Feint, and Cube Runner.

Taken photos of my cats.

Ordered a pizza.

Found the nearest convenience store.

Remotely accessed my entire music collection and streamed music to my office.

Let the iPhone listen to a song I didn’t know. It identified the song and told me where I could buy it or watch the music video.

Updated my Twitter.

Kept track of an eBay auction.

I dictacted a note which then got transcribed into text on a To Do list.

Watched an anime music video.

Got directions to a concert.

Texted my friends.

Remotely controlled my Mac via VNC.

Made a few calls.

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?