Computers Are Suddenly Cool

Having grown up a geek, I've always been seen as a bit of an outsider. My frame of reference was slightly out of focus with the rest of my friends. The same goes for my sense of humour. You find things funny that other, seemingly normal, people don't. It's what I like to call The Geek Effect. There's even been a comedy series made on exactly how debilitating the Geek Effect can be.

People with this disorder also tend to have the same type of general knowledge: "3000 miles wide but 3 inches deep". You know enough about everything to understand it on a very high level, but you're not really intimately knowledgeable on any subject. This causes dangerous leaps in relevance during conversation. I've many times replied in what I considered to be a perfectly rational manner and was answered "How the hell did you get to that topic?".

Your work environment also tends to influence this notion, as all work environments do. If you're a geek by day (superhero by night maybe?), you spend most of your day contextually shifting between a few tasks. By extension you can do the same during conversation. For instance, you would be discussing cars, then move on to movies, and you would suddenly say: "Hey wasn't that car in this movie?"

I also have the habit of interrupting someone as soon as I know what they're going to say. Not finishing their sentence for them, but actually starting my reply. I always thought it was a character flaw all my own, until I realised my colleagues and I do it all the time. Once the notion of your talking has been passed, there's no reason to keep talking, so why do you?

But back to the topic.

Whenever I mentioned a computeristic notion in general conversation it was received with a slight sourness. "Oh you're talking about computers right? I don't know about computers." I've since developed a method of explaining geeky terms to a laman with relative ease, but that's for another post.

A few years ago I noticed things start to change. MySpace tried to make people cool, but only ended up creating a slightly less geeky geek. But when Facebook arrived it all changed. You would hear seemingly pop-culture-driven people say "I'll add you on Facebook!" It shocked me the first time a non-geek asked me if I was on Facebook.

After this initial shock, I started noticing other things. I would watch a TV show and the people in the show would be playing a game. Several movies would, soon after the movie, release a game based on the movie. These games inevitably sucked, but in my opinion it went a long way towards acclimatising people to the idea that sitting behind a computer for a few hours constitutes a respectable form of entertainment. And when they played a proper game, oh my word were they surprised! The detail! The atmosphere! The plots! It was all so much better than they thought!

Another big help in this notion was the next generation consoles. You always had your Playstation 2 players, but not until the active advertising for the xBox360and Playstation 3 was it really seen on TV or the mass media. Now it's pretty common to see that shape of the controller lying on the coffee table.

In the relative beginning of the previous century, much the same series of events transpired. The subject was also technology. It was also initially used in business and later for everyday use, and now for entertainment. It was cars. Motoracing is such a large part of our culture these days that it's hard to think at some point your average person never even considered owning a car, much less afford one within their lifetime.

In South Korea, StarCraft 2 is a national sport. They have celebreties. It's broadcast on TV with advert breaks almost longer than the match itself, warmups, discussions, magazines...

In South Africa specifically, MXit also helped. This little java-based chat application that runs on your cellphone propogated many geeky acronyms into popular culture. Things like WTF, lol and rofl are now considered commonplace. Many geeks are actually offended by this, because it was something that they could call their own. The 'secret handshake' of the masses.

This train of thought was inspired by this article from a few days ago. Read and enjoy.

Words:
"So they're demoing the game... and he's like lighting the brush on fire because there are like japanese soldiers hunkered down in camoflage, you're like burning them, they come running out and everything... Then he goes over to the hut, he like flames the hut and burns the guys out of the hut... And the flames don't catch the hut on fire even though it's a wood hut with thatch roof. I'm like 'WTF is this'."
-1UP Yours Podcast 27 June 2008