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I felt . . . unsettled, thinking "I type in domains, does that mean I'm not a geek?"
Then I thought "Only a geek would worry about that, so you must be a geek."
Now, as a child, I was called "the brain", wore glasses starting in 4th grade, was described as thoughtful by my teachers, and so on. On the other hand, I did play varsity basketball in high school, but to balance that I was in the marching band during football season.
I also married the first girl I ever kissed.
I could go on, but prefer to pause to ask:
What makes a geek a geek? Is geekiness no longer relevant, a badge of honor? Has it become a mass commodity?
Do you consider yourself qualified for the label? What are your qualifications?
Lastly, is geek still chic?
OBTW - If you're a nerd you can play along, so long as you explain the important distinctions between being a nerd and being a geek - in your own terms. I mean, don't do something geekly like Googling "geek vs. nerd" and report on your findings.
nerd, by definition, is socially inept.
I also think "Only a geek would worry about that" is backwards... A geek wouldn't really care, IMO. I think a nerd might worry, out of a desire to associate themselves with the more socially adept geeks.
If you own a PDA or a laptop, and get really excited when you find a spiffy new freeware or open-source program for it, you're definitely either a geek or a nerd. The deciding factor between the two is whether or not you have any friends to rave about your new software to... If Yes -> Geek. If No -> Nerd
whether or not you have any friends to rave about your new software to
But if you have social skills, you might just be sensitive enough to realise they don't want to know (even if they understood).
So how do you tell the difference between someone who has friends, but respects them enough not to rave about freeware, and someone who would rave to their friends about freeware, if only they had some?
BTW, didn't I read some survey that showed that those who used the internet regularly had better social skills than non-users? Or was this a fantasy caused by too much typing at my PC?
BTW, didn't I read some survey that showed that those who used the internet regularly had better social skills than non-users? Or was this a fantasy caused by too much typing at my PC?
From the Canadian Oxford Dictionary:
nerd: North American slang: a foolish, feeble, or uninteresting person, esp. one ridiculed as studious, puny, or unfashionable.geek: North American informal: 1: a nerd; 2: a person thoroughly devoted to one usuually technical interest, study, etc., often at the expense of social interaction (computer geek): (from the English dialect geck fool).
What that makes someone who immediately heads for the reference material I resemble.
<query>Does WebmasterWorld constitute social interaction?</query>
Sorry, I was operating on the assumption that the geek in question would have like-minded friends, who would appreciate the tip (or at least belong to an internet forum with interested members)... ;)
And I think someone who heads straight for a reference book could be either a geek, a nerd, or a librarian. However, a librarian is highly likely to be either a geek or a nerd as well.
This debate sounds a lot like "what is difference between a widget and a gizmo"...
I think geekyness has become more of a character aspect then a whole character. I've met "geeks" who are sporty, socially popular, who are dating (plentyfully), who are interesting in a non-technical sense, and who can also be lazy and silly.
So I think geekyness is more a matter of interest in geek-like endevours and objects. Perhaps a good definition of a geek is "somebody who get's along extraordinarily with other geeks", which is of course recoursive... which probably makes me a geek too...
SN
Geeks, obviously. Unless the person in question only wears it in the privacy of their own home... in which case they're a nerd, and possibly a fetishist as well.
Ouch!
Certainly not. There are just enough of you out there to understand what I mean when I jabber about backlinks and screen scraping. But you're the one's I turn to when I need help or want someone who understands me.
*sob* *sniff* thanx
And there's just the right amount of clueless masses who make our jobs real, unique, and interesting.
So, a certain amount of geeky knowledge is not enough to make it on WebmasterWorld, We must be uber geeks then ;)
SN
To be politically correct, they aren't geeks, they are people with geek characteristics. Their geeky disabilities do not define who they are. ;)
I favor geek to cool.
It's like that old addage "It is better to be thought a fool then to open your mouth and remove all doubt"
Same goes for geekinees - better to be thought of as a geek and than cool, as opposed to being thought of as cool and then outed for an accidental webtechfoonixmacingooglism.
You're only "entertainment" bookmarks are WebmasterWorld, Slash-Dot, and Dilbert Online.
You view Wired Magazine and it's online counterpart in much the same way the masses view the Weekly World News.
You threaten to break up with the one girl who's actually put up with you for more than a week if you don't get one of these [happyworker.com] for Christmas.
You've named all your computers and have etched their cases accordingly.
You work from home, make your own schedual, and yet still manage to be oblivious to what the weather's like for days on end.
Someone gives you an expensive daytimer for Xmas/birthday, and you immediately wonder how to "mod" it so it can better hold your PDA.
You have SETI@home installed on every computer you own because you don't want to waste valuable processor time.
You define the four food groups as Dorritos, Cheetos, Coffee, and Pizza (All can be eaten/drunk one handed so you don't have to stop typing).
You look back on all those RPG sessions with your high-school buds as the glory days of your social existence.
You know what RPG, SEO, IMHO, FUBAR, and "three fingered salute" mean.
....
anyone else got a few more?
...you find yourself wondering where the "next" link is when you reach the end of a page in a magazine.
...you were on the official "testing team" for the RPG one of your best friends wrote himself.
...you're frustrated by the inability to cut and paste text while writing longhand (on paper).
...you write on paper so rarely, you get hand cramps filling out holiday cards.
...you find old sketchbooks full of drawings of you and your friends' RPG characters (bonus points if you still remember the special abilities/stats of each one).
heh... I'm down to 2.47 seconds as of yesterday, but they have known me a while.
~buffs her badge~
...you can induce 'The Glaze' in a person's eyes within 20 seconds at a first meeting.
That's why I liked pubcon so much - people's eyes light up instead.
Define Geek [google.com].
a person who may be very smart yet lacks the social graces of those who are considered cool , a "computer geek" is someone who spends too much time on the computer and has no social life.
Define nerd [google.com].
Someone so unfortunate as to believe that all conversations might productively revolve around computing and IT issues. Interestingly, only a nerd might know that the word derives from the 1950 Dr. Seuss book 'If I Ran the Zoo' from which: "And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo - And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo - A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!" See Geek.
And clearly anyone that knows how to use that particular search operator can be considered either.
A nerd is someone with extraordinary knowledge about subjects that a layperson has heard of and can feign some sense of familiarity with.
A geek is someone with extraordinary knowledge about technological subjects that even most nerds are not likely to have heard of.
