Can I Even Call Myself a Geek Anymore?

I’ve called myself a geek for longer than I can remember. It’s always seemed to just…fit. I enjoy science fiction, fantasy, videogames and (most of all) comics, I understand computers, I can produce useless bits of trivia at a moments notice. My credentials were pretty much impeccable. Lately, though, I’ve begun to question if I have the levels of commitment and obsession to truly qualify as a geek.

I like science fiction, but I’ve never sat through a single episode of the original Star Trek and have probably seen only a handful of episodes of any of the spinoffs like New Generation, Voyager, Deep Space 9, or Enterprise. Some would argue that skipping stuff like Enterprise is merely a sign of good taste and my ability to name all of the spinoffs alone qualifies me as a geek, but I’m not quite done.

I like the original Star Wars trilogy, but I realize that they really weren’t all that good. The prequels only made that more obvious.

And I really don’t care who shot first.

I’ve never seen most of the other classic science fiction series. I know what Babylon 5 and Farscape are, but I’ve never seen them. I missed entire season of Battlestar Galactica, including the last one. Twilight Zone may be a classic, but it also bores me to tears. I don’t think I could claim science fiction geekery. Hell, I don’t even care whether you call it SF, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, SciFi, or even the dreaded SyFy.

I’m probably even worse in fantasy. I read the entire Lord of The Rings saga once, but that was mostly out of sheer stubbornness. JRR Tolkien may be the god of world building, but the man was a boring writer. Robert Jordan was marginally better, but I wouldn’t delve into the Wheel of Time to save my life. My kid’s lives…. maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it. I love George RR Martin’s Songs of Fire and Ice, but I can’t even remember when the last installment came out. I stuck through Stephen King’s Dark Tower cycle, which marginally qualifies as fantasy, but I doubt that it really gains me any points in the fantasy geek department. The only fantasy books I read these days are Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books and occasionally others along that line (though never again will I touch Laurel K Hamilton’s books), but they’re about as fantasy as Avril Lavigne is punk.  You may think that liking that genre means I loved Buffy, but I missed probably three times as many episodes as I watched.  I think I may have finally watched all of Angel, but my point stands.  In the end, I think my only (miniscule) qualification is occasionally playing World of Warcraft, and even jocks and stockbrokers do that.

Computers? Don’t make me laugh. There was a time when I was on track to being a major tech geek. I majored in Electrical Engineering with a computer science emphasis, worked in tech support, and built computers on the side. Then I stopped really caring about computers all that much. I can still troubleshoot and read tech articles without my eyes glazing over, but it’s just not the same. That’s beside the fact that I now use Macs almost exclusively and thus have to learn alot of stuff all over again. I only learned how to release and renew the IP on this sucker last week.

If anything, I’m a comics geek. I can explain to you the origin of almost any comics character as well as the theme of their existence and usually I’m not even tripped up by the fifty continuity reboots that have happened in DC comics. I still love comics, but I can’t really bring myself to care as much as I used to. When finances went to crap, I quit reading comics and haven’t really been keeping up for the past few months. The other day I realized that it really doesn’t bother me that much to be missing out. I have very little idea what’s going on in comics today and I honestly can’t say that I miss it all too much. Batman’s dead, who knows what’s going on with Superman, pretty much anybody who ever died in the DC Universe is back and eating hearts, The villains run the Marvel Universe, and all I can manage is a resounding “Meh.”  I’ll undoubtedly start reading again and catch up with what I’ve missed, but I don’t feel a burning need to do so. That lack of passion makes me think that I may have lost my geek touch.

Which is the real problem. I just don’t care all that much anymore. Keanu Reeves’ performance in Constantine has very little resemblance to the John Constantine in Hellblazer, but I still enjoyed the movie. I may have enjoyed it more if they hadn’t called the movie Constantine, but it’s not that big of a deal. The same goes for Wanted. It was a fun movie. Nowhere near as good as Mark Millar’s comic series, and I still think they could make a very good, very faithful adaptation of the series, but I still kinda liked it.

This, more than anything else, is a cardinal sin of geekdom and I don’t care. I think they just may pull my card.

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