4.12.03
"You're so far back in the closet you're in fucking Narnia!" -- Gimme Gimme Gimme.
Not entirely applicable to my situation as I am speaking of the geek, and not the gay, closet, but still it makes for an interesting analogy as, if Narnia really were at the back of the closet, you can be damn sure I'd be there.
When asked if fantasy were not simply an exercise in escapism, C. S. Lewis replied:
"Who is most opposed to escapism? Jailers."
Wherein we have our tantalising dilemma.
Geeks are antisocial, society tells us. Geeks have communications problems. Geeks can't deal with the world so they escape to other places, but that's not healthy.
Once upon three years ago, I researched this. My A Level Sociology coursework submission was titled, "What has the label 'Geek' come to mean in the context of the internet?"
One day I'll pull it out, dust off my Welsh, and go through it thoroughly again. For now, I seem to recall that Geeks are overly enthusiastic. They know too much. Though it is acceptable to know the names of every player on your favourite football team, and impressive to know how many goals each has scored, it is not acceptable to be able to name every episode of your favourite science fiction television show.
I also seem to recall that the internet is doing strange things to the land of the Geek.
The antisocial Geek is actually not as antisocial as we are lead to believe. Pre-internet, Geeks went to great lengths to publish fanzines, to attend conventions, to get to places where there were *other* Geeks to speak to. Dungeons & Dragons, a long time favourite game in Geekdom consists of three to seven people sitting around with each other for hours, talking.
Still, due to their basic premise as escapist activities, all these things are used as cause for more concern, not less. The internet has allowed Geeks to develop their society and culture to an incredible degree, but again, this is only seen as further proof there is a problem.
With all the accusations flying around, is it any wonder I want to stay in my Narnian, escapist closet? Were I to come out, I would be seen as antisocial, with deep communications problems, despite the fact that I am/have neither.
So I stay in the dark, between the winter coats and the mothballs, and sneak onto the internet, and wait for friends to sneak down for weekends, when I can geek out properly, and safely.
A recent discussion led to the following conclusion.
Internet Handles. Here, I use "Rebecca S.", simply because I was too lazy to come up with something more dramatic. In other places, I use other names. But are the critics correct? Am I using these things, along with my science fiction television shows, my roleplaying games, my knowledge of useless trivia, to hide? Do they really need to strip these things away to find the 'real me'?
I don't think so. When people say they like the internet because they can be who they want to be; when people say they like choosing a name because that's a person they have created, it is invariably seen as unhealthy. But I would argue the reverse is true.
For many people, the name, in itself, is largely unimportant. It's picked because it sounds cool, because nothing else springs to mind, perhaps because it has some personal significance, but even then it is just a way of fusing the original person with this new identifier.
The change comes when the closet-geek goes online and discovers it is safe.
For myself, the person I am when I am online is the same person I am when I am in the real world. Only online, in the circles I travel, no one will deride me for being a Geek.
The naysayers will surely call this unhealthy, but my internet handle was unimportant to me, until it became a name that allowed me to be myself without fear.
The people who claim normality may find it easy to point out that we cannot be ourselves in public and say that this is the sign of a problem. But they never ask themselves *why* we have to resort to the internet, and our internet handles to be ourselves. They do not seem to think that if they were a little less judgmental, and accepted our insane enthusiasm without constantly trying to fix us, we could be ourselves from the beginning, and would not need to wander around the internet at three in the morning, calling ourselves, "Pryncess_Nyght."
The Geek society is insane and varied, and I understand less than a tenth of it. Still, when I'm not hopelessly panicked about ever being accepted again if anyone finds out my deep, dark secret, I love it.
I'm probably also just as judgmental as the people who would judge me. I don't even give them the benefit of the doubt. I've never tried to find the 'real' person underneath the clubbing, the getting drunk, and the dance music.
Not entirely applicable to my situation as I am speaking of the geek, and not the gay, closet, but still it makes for an interesting analogy as, if Narnia really were at the back of the closet, you can be damn sure I'd be there.
When asked if fantasy were not simply an exercise in escapism, C. S. Lewis replied:
"Who is most opposed to escapism? Jailers."
Wherein we have our tantalising dilemma.
Geeks are antisocial, society tells us. Geeks have communications problems. Geeks can't deal with the world so they escape to other places, but that's not healthy.
Once upon three years ago, I researched this. My A Level Sociology coursework submission was titled, "What has the label 'Geek' come to mean in the context of the internet?"
One day I'll pull it out, dust off my Welsh, and go through it thoroughly again. For now, I seem to recall that Geeks are overly enthusiastic. They know too much. Though it is acceptable to know the names of every player on your favourite football team, and impressive to know how many goals each has scored, it is not acceptable to be able to name every episode of your favourite science fiction television show.
I also seem to recall that the internet is doing strange things to the land of the Geek.
The antisocial Geek is actually not as antisocial as we are lead to believe. Pre-internet, Geeks went to great lengths to publish fanzines, to attend conventions, to get to places where there were *other* Geeks to speak to. Dungeons & Dragons, a long time favourite game in Geekdom consists of three to seven people sitting around with each other for hours, talking.
Still, due to their basic premise as escapist activities, all these things are used as cause for more concern, not less. The internet has allowed Geeks to develop their society and culture to an incredible degree, but again, this is only seen as further proof there is a problem.
With all the accusations flying around, is it any wonder I want to stay in my Narnian, escapist closet? Were I to come out, I would be seen as antisocial, with deep communications problems, despite the fact that I am/have neither.
So I stay in the dark, between the winter coats and the mothballs, and sneak onto the internet, and wait for friends to sneak down for weekends, when I can geek out properly, and safely.
A recent discussion led to the following conclusion.
Internet Handles. Here, I use "Rebecca S.", simply because I was too lazy to come up with something more dramatic. In other places, I use other names. But are the critics correct? Am I using these things, along with my science fiction television shows, my roleplaying games, my knowledge of useless trivia, to hide? Do they really need to strip these things away to find the 'real me'?
I don't think so. When people say they like the internet because they can be who they want to be; when people say they like choosing a name because that's a person they have created, it is invariably seen as unhealthy. But I would argue the reverse is true.
For many people, the name, in itself, is largely unimportant. It's picked because it sounds cool, because nothing else springs to mind, perhaps because it has some personal significance, but even then it is just a way of fusing the original person with this new identifier.
The change comes when the closet-geek goes online and discovers it is safe.
For myself, the person I am when I am online is the same person I am when I am in the real world. Only online, in the circles I travel, no one will deride me for being a Geek.
The naysayers will surely call this unhealthy, but my internet handle was unimportant to me, until it became a name that allowed me to be myself without fear.
The people who claim normality may find it easy to point out that we cannot be ourselves in public and say that this is the sign of a problem. But they never ask themselves *why* we have to resort to the internet, and our internet handles to be ourselves. They do not seem to think that if they were a little less judgmental, and accepted our insane enthusiasm without constantly trying to fix us, we could be ourselves from the beginning, and would not need to wander around the internet at three in the morning, calling ourselves, "Pryncess_Nyght."
The Geek society is insane and varied, and I understand less than a tenth of it. Still, when I'm not hopelessly panicked about ever being accepted again if anyone finds out my deep, dark secret, I love it.
I'm probably also just as judgmental as the people who would judge me. I don't even give them the benefit of the doubt. I've never tried to find the 'real' person underneath the clubbing, the getting drunk, and the dance music.
