You can’t appropriate nerd culture, there is no blackface for geek culture.
So I wanna talk about this ridiculous notion of “appropriating” nerd/geek culture. There is no such thing. Being a nerd or geek is a matter of self-selecting into a group because you share certain traits. There is no nerd ethnography*
There is no geek mythos that has sprung from one civilization that can be appropriated from. Stop that silly ass idea [praying hand emoji] I have an idea of how that notion started. From people who remember being bullied for liking geeky and nerdy things as kids.
I’m one of those people. Got teased like a motherfucker for liking comics, games, etc. Being a nerd then was different. But its changed, being geeky is mainstream. Loads of people game, read comics, enjoy needy pursuits with no shame. Hell some of us make our $$ off it.
So this whole idea of a geeky culture that can be appropriated is ridiculous. I’ve seen people actually claim something was equivalent to Black face but for geeks.
This is my what the fuck face.
That’s a spurious argument if I’ve ever seen one in my life. It also creates a gatekeeper mentality. The very idea of pushing someone away from a thing I love too is so fucking weird.
It’s so ridiculous to think that this Ghostbusters reboot and the original cannot somehow coexist in the same geeky world. Or that if I don’t have encyclopaedic knowledge of the comics the MCU comes from that I’m less of a fan. It’s silly really.
Let’s remember that being a nerd or geek or whatever label you use is a self selected one. There is no such thing as appropriating it The idea of appropriating nerd culture is another side of the fake geek girl/fake girl gamer trope. Sorry to ruin your fun but…[Actually] I’m not sorry and no woman is faking interest in your area of interest to fuck you or mock you. We’re not in high school. Grow up.
So I’m gonna need the nostalgia driven folks to accept that the new movie is here and it’s not making the original disappear. What needs to disappear is this ridiculous idea of nerd/geek culture being a thing you can appropriate.
So TL;DR learn what a culture is before you declare a group that you decided you belonged to is something that can be appropriated
This was inspired by this tweet:
*~ Some rando who doesn’t even follow me decided to ‘well, actually’ me on ethnography and that there probably are ethnographic studies done on people who identify as nerds/geeks. That’s all well and good but 1) this is in reply to one tweet out of many on a different subject, 2) the idea that someone welcomes an unasked for attempt to ‘correct’ them by throwing academic jargon is one that I find tedious at best, mansplainish as default and patronizing as fuck.
Same rando got in their feelings when I didn’t play along with them, then got even deeper in their feelings when Alexandra Erin corrected them on how unwelcome their academic well, actually was. To the point of deleting their tweets, otherwise I’d share them for lols.
