{"id":118038,"date":"2009-12-30T22:44:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-31T03:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/archives\/open_thread_mainstream_media_discovers_geekery_is.php"},"modified":"2009-12-30T22:44:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-31T03:44:00","slug":"open-thread-mainstream-media-discovers-geekery-is-this-a-good-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/118038","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread: Mainstream Media Discovers Geekery, Is This a Good Thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/nerds.jpg\">Facebook&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/mashable.com\/2009\/09\/23\/facebook-movie-cast-2\/\">getting its own movie<\/a>, Ashton Kutcher is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geeksugar.com\/2821661\">social web&#8217;s unpaid spokesman<\/a> and now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/34316207\">NBC is launching a show<\/a> dedicated to mobile apps.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s the world coming to? Call me old fashioned, but where I come from, a geek is a geek and a mainstream actor with an iPhone is still just a mainstream actor with an iPhone. The Oprahtization of technology is at least a bit demeaning, from my point of view. <font style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px;\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\">tweetmeme_url = 'http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/archives\/open_thread_mainstream_media_discovers_geekery_is.php';tweetmeme_source = 'rww';<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/tweetmeme.com\/i\/scripts\/button.js\"><\/script><\/font>Sure, this trend brings exposure to our heroic exploits, but it&#8217;s often done through stereotypes about geeks and an air of na\u00efvet\u00e9 about how technology really works. <strong>What do you think?<\/strong> Am I being a curmudgeon? Is all this mainstream-tech integration really a good thing?<\/p>\n<p align=\"right\"><em>Sponsor<\/em><br \/><a href='http:\/\/d.ads.readwriteweb.com\/ck.php?n=a6d5ead9&amp;cb=17597' ><img src='http:\/\/d.ads.readwriteweb.com\/avw.php?zoneid=14&amp;cb=17597&amp;n=a6d5ead9' border='0' alt='' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Granted, we all have to discover technology at some point. None of us were born nerds. But there&#8217;s a certain <em>je ne sais quoi<\/em> that is unique to geeks: a melange of smarts, social pickiness, a willingness to be different, insatiable curiosity, a desire to learn and create new and amazing things, and frequently, a very necessary shell to protect oneself from the rejections of the larger world around us. As a people accustomed to being ostracized for speaking in terms too technical, having a bizarre sense of humor or caring more about bandwidth than baseball, we have generally existed far outside the cool kids&#8217; club. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/jeremywright\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/open-thread-1.jpg\" align=\"right\"><\/a>Not to frame my entire argument in a high school analogy, but we have mostly been useful for one thing: Doing other people&#8217;s homework. When they &#8211; the non-technical of this world &#8211; want an application, device, website or feature, we built it and teach them how to use it. This has been the geek&#8217;s role for eons: Doing the jocks&#8217; dirty work and then skipping prom. Can you imagine Einstein hobnobbing with Marlene Deitrich? Or a young Steve Jobs on an early &#8217;80s red carpet with a young Harrison Ford? Yet we are seeing more and more crossover between mainstream media and our little world of technology to the point that you can&#8217;t tell the tech from the tinsel.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps it&#8217;s just disconcerting to see those two worlds meshing for the first time. Perhaps all my angst is simply discomfort. Yet when I see and hear innovators and geeks referred to as ugly, graceless basement-dwellers, even in jest, by mainstream talking heads, it still gets to me.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/kristin\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/open-thread-2.jpg\" align=\"right\"><\/a>But what gets to me more is the new set of faux geeks &#8211; folks who know just enough about tech to send a misspelled Twitter update from their mobiles but who thrive on the attention and revenue they gain from this scene. They wouldn&#8217;t know an API from a IP; the red carpet is more likely their natural habitat; yet they incessantly appear in blog posts, pictures and videos until the real geeks don&#8217;t even remember how they got there. It happens on a small scale (every tech scene has its skill-free new media douchebag), and it&#8217;s starting to happen on a larger scale, as well (why is Olivia Munn a geek, again?).<\/p>\n<p>Call me bitter, call me jealous, call me cynical &#8211; but let me know what you think, too. Some of our friends on Twitter told us they didn&#8217;t like mainstream media&#8217;s encroachment onto geek territory, but others who responded to our query see this exposure as a good thing, and we want to hear this point of view, as well. After all, I was excited the first time I heard Twitter mentioned in a news report, too.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Give us your opinions in the comments, and don&#8217;t hold back!<\/strong> We love a good, long-winded discourse at ReadWriteWeb.<\/p>\n<p><em>Note: Lest you throw stones at the writer for not being geeky enough herself, she was building LANs and playing the first version of King&#8217;s Quest when you were still in diapers.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/archives\/open_thread_mainstream_media_discovers_geekery_is.php#comments-open\">Discuss<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/XDFuIyYYSUwBkIiGYWHgt0jjZAA\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/XDFuIyYYSUwBkIiGYWHgt0jjZAA\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/XDFuIyYYSUwBkIiGYWHgt0jjZAA\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/XDFuIyYYSUwBkIiGYWHgt0jjZAA\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=goplD-A1vh4:liXiWZYrRmM:FFnlKYwJmN0\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=goplD-A1vh4:liXiWZYrRmM:Ij26kaj3iuU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=goplD-A1vh4:liXiWZYrRmM:C2pbw5bZMiI\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=goplD-A1vh4:liXiWZYrRmM:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=goplD-A1vh4:liXiWZYrRmM:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?i=goplD-A1vh4:liXiWZYrRmM:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=goplD-A1vh4:liXiWZYrRmM:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?i=goplD-A1vh4:liXiWZYrRmM:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=goplD-A1vh4:liXiWZYrRmM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?i=goplD-A1vh4:liXiWZYrRmM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=goplD-A1vh4:liXiWZYrRmM:OqabYuBsmOY\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/readwriteweb\/~4\/goplD-A1vh4\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Facebook&#8217;s getting its own movie, Ashton Kutcher is the social web&#8217;s unpaid spokesman and now NBC is launching a show dedicated to mobile apps. What&#8217;s the world coming to? Call me old fashioned, but where I come from, a geek is a geek and a mainstream actor with an iPhone is still just a mainstream [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":553,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/553"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}