In our research project on the role of the geek as a gatekeeper in tech, we have an ongoing discussion about which of us in the research group identify as geeks. In an earlier blog post, Maria Berge reflected on how geeky we are in relation to board games. In this post, Eva Silfver analyses her own ungeekiness.
I must confess…
In comparison with the others in our group, I know I’m least geeky. How do I know? Well, I don’t have much ‘geek capital’. Pop culture, for instance, is not at all my area of expertise. While the other three members of the research team have seen a lot (and I mean a lot) of films and TV shows, Ghostbusters, Men in Black, The Social Network, and Ex Machina were all new to me. Not that I didn’t know of their existence, but I was never interested.
I have never followed sitcoms like Friends, The Big Bang Theory, or Silicon Valley either, and I would never think of playing computer games. I don’t even fancy board games or playing cards.
Still, it is not as if all these things have been totally non-existent in my life. When I was a kid, we played different sorts of games, including card games, and my now grown-up children have seen Avenger films and geeky sitcoms, and one of them is clearly a gamer. But how do some get interested in geeky stuff while others do not? Here, I reflect on this question drawing on my own experiences and memories.
Interested or not – how come?
As explanation, the first thing I thought of, is that, comparing my own life with my those of myresearch colleagues, I belong to a different generation. I was a child in the 60s and had already started my university studies before two of them were even born. But more importantly, when I was a kid, superheroes were only to be found in comic books and not on TV. During holidays, my siblings used to read “The Phantom” and “Superman” series and we had quite a lot of these in our summer house. Maybe I was too young to understand how to read comic books?
My parents were educated and ‘readers’. We had many books at home and we visited the library regularly. Although books were important in my family, I cannot say that comic books, superhero films or sitcoms were directly seen as inappropriate, but they were probably not as valued. So, social class may have also impacted on my (dis)-interest in, for instance, comic books.
When it comes to watching TV, one of my first memories is of my family gathered around it to watch Lucille Ball in the US comedy The Lucy Show: a follow-up to I Love Lucy, which is said to be the first sitcom . Although it was meant to be funny, I cried, because I thought it was awful when people laughed at all the ‘wacky misadventures’, and I did not feel comfortable when someone was ridiculed. I had the same feelings in relation to Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin. So perhaps bad childhood experiences – or good – can have some bearing on why interest is created or not.
As a young student in the 70s and early 80s, I very seldom watched television. When I moved away from home, I didn’t even have a TV for the first eight years. I think I saw time as too valuable to ‘just enjoy TV’. I was very much engaged in different sports activities and was hanging out with people who also did not watch superhero films or geeky sitcoms, so one’s social network is important. For example, I actually joined a (left-wing) film club because my friends did, and we saw arthouse films like Andrej Tarkoskivj’s Stalker, and Fritz Lang’s Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder.
When I was a child, we played board games, though I have no strong memories of this. But when people started to play games like Trivial Pursuit (first available in Sweden in 1984) and similar quizzes, I found that I could not answer nearly all of the questions related to pop culture. I still get annoyed, feel stupid and identify as an outsider when I’m forced into situations like that.
So, what I think I’ve also shown in this text is the importance of coming to understand the impact of identity work in our research on mechanisms of in/exclusion.