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Aug. 23rd, 2011 10:02 amToday I feel like shit.
Last night was awesome, though. Another Immodest Proposals salon at the Waystation in Brooklyn, the topic being 'nerd culture and its evolution and the implications for future culture'. An enormous, impossibly gigantic crowd showed up- perhaps 40 people crammed into the tiny venue. An enormous, nerdy, enthusiastic crowd that managed to be respectful, listen to each other, and keep a conversation going for hours.
We talked about a shift in the way traditional 'nerd cultural' objects are regarded in the mainstream, debated whether this is purely a marketing evolution or if it marks a cultural shift as well, speculated about origin points (Lots of disagreement here. People pointed to LotR, to Harry Potter, to the Simpsons... someone suggested the key point was when fans or nerds became professional creators, when shows like the Simpsons were being created by people who were visibly passionate about nerdy things. I pointed, though at three beers in I think rather clumsily, to the moment when Scott Kurtz created the Joss Whedon Is My Master Now shirt. It combined a reference to a Star Wars fandom joke with a Firefly/Buffy reference and also included the wearer in the nascent webcomics fandom... and it suggested that it was possible for there to be an ur-fannish consciousness that wasn't connected to a particular show.)
In retrospect, I think there wasn't enough care taken to distinguish nerdiness/geekiness from fannishness, and the conversation troved over a lot of territory related to both.
But we talked about what it meant to be proud of being a geek, how the nuances of the social hierarchy have evolved, how the internal nerd culture social hierarchy compares to the external mainstream social hierarchy (We talked about furries as the sort of outlaw fringe of the nerd community, but the disparagement felt somehow less nasty and clueless than usual. Sort of like, "Yes, we find it weird, but they're our weirdos, and we're grateful for nerd culture as a place that allows even things we find weird." And someone made the interesting and important point that the mainstreaming of nerd culture seems to involve shoving the sexual minority cultures to the side)... what all of this may mean for nerds growing up today.
And then we took a typical Immodest Proposals leap into discussion of what a geek political platform might look like. This was odd and fascinating and certainly the best part of the discussion, for all the different directions it took. I think the most illuminating part of the conversation was when we talked about copyright law and realized to my surprise that there is huge and compelling reason for many geeks to be pro-copyright, even as the present copyright regime hugely damages other sorts of geeks. Someone else at my table summarized the conversation as "We don't agree on the policy position, but we agree that paying attention to copyright law is part of the geek agenda."
Another interesting point of contention was the idea that if nerdiness involves a certain obsessive, fixating personality, this may or may not be a virtue in a politician. The point was raised that if nerdiness isn't so much a political ethos as a political methodology, it could be hampered by an unwillingness to explore new ideas. On the other hand, certain nerd subcultures such as the science nerd have openness to the possibility of being wrong drilled in from stage 1, and other people doubted that a person with the classic nerd lack of assertiveness could be an effective leader. In the end, though I thought this conversation was interesting, its reliance on stereotyping meant it only went so far, and everyone was pretty aware of that, too.
After the event was over I hung out with everybody for another hour or so. New friends, old friends, borrowed friends, it was a great crowd and the discussion was a great icebreaker for just jumping into conversations with people. "Hey, I really liked the point you made... by the way, my name is Ferret." For a pile of nerds, for whom no matter how mainstreamed we are the social awkwardness is still often a component, this was a good thing.
Also, Alai and I pulled into a corner and had a productive conversation about the TNG fic we're working on co-writing.
And then we get to the part I promised at the beginning. So I decided to try to not pay the exorbitant Verrazzano toll by taking the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan and the Holland Tunnel out. Little did I know... We reached the Brooklyn Bridge and found it was closed for night maintenance. So I putzed through detours for a while and eventually crossed into Manhattan at the Williamsburg Bridge. Then I skipped across town pretty easily until I hit the Holland Tunnel, which also had a lane closed for night maintenance. And then I was stuck on line for that tunnel for a long time. All told, the typical hour drive home ballooned into a two hour monstrosity and I didn't get home until after 2AM. And woke up at 6AM with, you know, typical hangover symptoms making getting the rest of the sleep I needed tricky. So yes, today I feel like shit.
Probably it was worth it, though.
Last night was awesome, though. Another Immodest Proposals salon at the Waystation in Brooklyn, the topic being 'nerd culture and its evolution and the implications for future culture'. An enormous, impossibly gigantic crowd showed up- perhaps 40 people crammed into the tiny venue. An enormous, nerdy, enthusiastic crowd that managed to be respectful, listen to each other, and keep a conversation going for hours.
We talked about a shift in the way traditional 'nerd cultural' objects are regarded in the mainstream, debated whether this is purely a marketing evolution or if it marks a cultural shift as well, speculated about origin points (Lots of disagreement here. People pointed to LotR, to Harry Potter, to the Simpsons... someone suggested the key point was when fans or nerds became professional creators, when shows like the Simpsons were being created by people who were visibly passionate about nerdy things. I pointed, though at three beers in I think rather clumsily, to the moment when Scott Kurtz created the Joss Whedon Is My Master Now shirt. It combined a reference to a Star Wars fandom joke with a Firefly/Buffy reference and also included the wearer in the nascent webcomics fandom... and it suggested that it was possible for there to be an ur-fannish consciousness that wasn't connected to a particular show.)
In retrospect, I think there wasn't enough care taken to distinguish nerdiness/geekiness from fannishness, and the conversation troved over a lot of territory related to both.
But we talked about what it meant to be proud of being a geek, how the nuances of the social hierarchy have evolved, how the internal nerd culture social hierarchy compares to the external mainstream social hierarchy (We talked about furries as the sort of outlaw fringe of the nerd community, but the disparagement felt somehow less nasty and clueless than usual. Sort of like, "Yes, we find it weird, but they're our weirdos, and we're grateful for nerd culture as a place that allows even things we find weird." And someone made the interesting and important point that the mainstreaming of nerd culture seems to involve shoving the sexual minority cultures to the side)... what all of this may mean for nerds growing up today.
And then we took a typical Immodest Proposals leap into discussion of what a geek political platform might look like. This was odd and fascinating and certainly the best part of the discussion, for all the different directions it took. I think the most illuminating part of the conversation was when we talked about copyright law and realized to my surprise that there is huge and compelling reason for many geeks to be pro-copyright, even as the present copyright regime hugely damages other sorts of geeks. Someone else at my table summarized the conversation as "We don't agree on the policy position, but we agree that paying attention to copyright law is part of the geek agenda."
Another interesting point of contention was the idea that if nerdiness involves a certain obsessive, fixating personality, this may or may not be a virtue in a politician. The point was raised that if nerdiness isn't so much a political ethos as a political methodology, it could be hampered by an unwillingness to explore new ideas. On the other hand, certain nerd subcultures such as the science nerd have openness to the possibility of being wrong drilled in from stage 1, and other people doubted that a person with the classic nerd lack of assertiveness could be an effective leader. In the end, though I thought this conversation was interesting, its reliance on stereotyping meant it only went so far, and everyone was pretty aware of that, too.
After the event was over I hung out with everybody for another hour or so. New friends, old friends, borrowed friends, it was a great crowd and the discussion was a great icebreaker for just jumping into conversations with people. "Hey, I really liked the point you made... by the way, my name is Ferret." For a pile of nerds, for whom no matter how mainstreamed we are the social awkwardness is still often a component, this was a good thing.
Also, Alai and I pulled into a corner and had a productive conversation about the TNG fic we're working on co-writing.
And then we get to the part I promised at the beginning. So I decided to try to not pay the exorbitant Verrazzano toll by taking the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan and the Holland Tunnel out. Little did I know... We reached the Brooklyn Bridge and found it was closed for night maintenance. So I putzed through detours for a while and eventually crossed into Manhattan at the Williamsburg Bridge. Then I skipped across town pretty easily until I hit the Holland Tunnel, which also had a lane closed for night maintenance. And then I was stuck on line for that tunnel for a long time. All told, the typical hour drive home ballooned into a two hour monstrosity and I didn't get home until after 2AM. And woke up at 6AM with, you know, typical hangover symptoms making getting the rest of the sleep I needed tricky. So yes, today I feel like shit.
Probably it was worth it, though.