What Does "Geek" Mean to You? Part Deux!

A while ago, I threw out an idea to DC Geek writers asking about what being a geek meant to them. This week, Aine and Lauren chime in with their thoughts on the matter. Everyone has had a different definition of "geek", a different viewpoint on what did or did not qualify, or if that even mattered, and what ultimately meant. The only thing that has managed to keep cropping up in this series and across the internet when people ask the question "What is a geek?" is a sense of community. We don't all have to love the same things to be able to qualify ourselves as geek; we just have to qualify ourselves as such. Be unafraid to strike out beyond societal norms, to have a passion and embrace it. And yes, those passions are usually outside of the mainstream, but since there hasn't been a better time to be a geek than now, does the mainstreamness of your chosen geek even matter anymore?

"My Geek is Not Your Geek, and That's OK."

 by Aine 

 

We've won. Geek is cool. "Brainy is the new sexy." Outrageously successful marketing means that Grandmas are rocking out on Farmville. The top grossing movie of all time is about aliens. Number one on the NYT bestsellers list at the time of this writing is the finale of the Wheel of Time series. We beat SOPA, and slowly even the most luddite recesses of government are realizing that they must gain competence or suffer in obsolescence and defeat. 

So where does that line of "geek" and "not geek" begin? I've written this out dozens of times over the past few months and the only response I have is, "What if there is no line?" Would it be so horrible if we let people self-identify? At this point, I've started using geek interchangeably with "niche" because if you can geek out about it, I think it's geeky. I know that the idea of geek becoming mainstream and being "infiltrated by fakes" puts some people on edge. But new people are starting to love things we've loved for decades and that's exciting.

I mean come on, you can't say no to this. (Image:We Love DC)

If we want to create community, then we need to throw open the doors to the geeks who don't geek like we geek. And while we're on the subject, there are tons of niche and sub-subcultures of hidden and under-promoted events all OVER the area that I'm more than happy to let self-identify as geek. And most of them are starting to cater to the "Old School Geek" crowd, and would you really slam the door in the face of the hot girl who made a Doctor Who themed burlesque show just for your demographic?

  

This is a city full of hackerspaces and nerdy meetups with dark net programmers, art fighters, and yarn bombing ninjas. There are people to help you knit it, throw in biosensors and LEDs, then hook the whole thing up through Arduino. Throw together a supercomputer with Lego and Raspberry Pi. 3D print your own gears to steampunk out ALL the cosplays! Fight the onslaught of commercial imagery with outrageous and bizarre arts. Perform with traditional clowns, embrace sideshow shock, and revel in anachronistic vaudeville excess with the thriving burlesque scene hidden deep in the district.

Whether you're in it for the community and company, the love of creation, the joy your hobby brings you, or if you're still looking for something to inspire your passion and get you out of the house on a Saturday night, I believe there's something for you in DC's geek scene. There's no reason to feel alone or bored.

"Geeks over Glamazons: Tackle the Big-Picture"

by Lauren Jacobs

 

Geeks are people who are passionate about intellectual/creative pursuits, so much so that it saturates their personalities and lifestyles. They use these pursuits to engage big-picture ideas. These pursuits or ideas can be social, scientific, artistic, historic, philosophical, technological, or fantastical. (I’m probably leaving a category or two out). 

I tend to cling to the stereotype of geeks having at least an appreciation for science fiction and/or fantasy, but recognize that as probably my own bias instead of an absolute truth in geek culture. One of the main functions of science fiction and fantasy is that it lets us promote discussions that society would initially resist. Turning real examples of ideas into far-fetched metaphors (like discussing religious or cultural tensions by depicting each group as an alien race) makes otherwise inflammatory ideas more approachable and digestible. So really, I would lump science fiction and fantasy geeks under the category of people who engage big-picture ideas. 

Yes, even Tony Harris. (Image: Comics Bulletin)

Many geeks know what it’s like to be socially ostracized or picked on (geeks are thinkers, which comes with some obligatory rejection of social norms), but this is not a requirement. It does not disqualify someone as geek to be hot, or to enjoy drinking beers at a bar with friends while watching football, or even to be the kind of raging douchebag that runs around conventions projecting their insecurities by accusing female cosplayers of being “fake geeks”. I would like to disqualify douchebags as geeks, but feel like as in any other culture, we as geeks are responsible for all of our members.

So much of society wants to be more glamazon, more beautiful and more comfortable in their lives, but it’s the geeks who really inspire society. The geeks see the problems in the world and in themselves, and develop radical methods of dealing with them. Geekiness is the progenitor of real progress.

Fuck trying to be a glamazon. Aspire to be a geek.

Something Different for Everyone Else, But Still Something for All

by Samantha Tynes

What is a geek? That's a question I roll around in my head every so often, and every time I do I get a different answer from myself. Ask anyone and they’ll have a different answer from another person. A geek is extraordinarily hard to pin down. I mean, sure, sometimes you can spot them in a crowd like some geeky version of Where's Waldo, but more and more the “definition” of geek is becoming more spread out. Don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I love it, I think it’s great. The varied nature of our community is amazing.
I thought I'd ask some of the other folks here at DC Geeks what they thought while I tried to pin the answer down myself.

A Tribe Called Geek by Scooter

"Since DC Geeks was started, I get this question all the time. The whole "what the hell is a geek anyway" has to come up once every other week now. You'd think I'd have a better answer by now. I don't. I wish I did.  If our entire subculture could be summed up into a tidy little package of terminology it would make it so much easier to describe to people what we're doing.  Who we're talking to or who we're trying to build a community of.
I see geeks as a type of tribe.  Sure we don't live in the same area, believe the same things, or many of the other things we think of when we hear the word tribe.  We have chieftains (like Wil Wheaton, Penny Arcade, Joss Whedon, etc), we have large tribal gatherings (ComicCon, PAX, Dragoncon, etc...), and we even ostracize people we believe have done wrong to the tribe (Ocean Marketing Craziness or George Lucas).

(Image: Wikimedia Commons) He can sense your hate.

The main thing is that we're a social group.  We can't be defined specifically by our interests, because what is geeky is partially defined by what WE are into.  We are not defined by our interests, our interests are defined by what we like. So if you're a geek, that is you identify with geeks, want to be a geek, and feel comfortable hanging out with the rest of our tribe. BAM!  You're a geek.  Simple."

The Far End of the Spectrum of Fans and Geeks by George Roland

So what, exactly is a geek? Well, I am. If you’re reading this article, I’m guessing you are. Most people can name at least a few high profile geeks. Joss Whedon, J.J. Abrams, George Lucas, George Romero, Gary Gygax, Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day… the list could go on. So what do these (seemingly very different) people have in common?

Ultimately it’s a love for the weird, the occult, the hidden, the offbeat. Geekery takes all manner of forms - from steampunk to zombies, from lightsabers to katanas, from dragons to Ewoks. A geek is someone who loves what they love, despite (or maybe because) it’s out of the mainstream.

Legos let your geekdom go deeper.
(Image: Flickr)

For example, what’s the difference between a Star Wars fan and a Star Wars geek? A fan can tell you that Admiral Akbar was a Mon Calamari. A geek can tell you that Mon Calamari come from the planet Dac and that Admiral Akbar personally designed the B-wing fighter, which is only seen in Episode VI at the Battle of Endor but is a playable spacecraft in the second expansion to the Star Wars: X-Wing computer game from 1993.

It is that level of love, of passion, of borderline fanaticism that really divides geeks and casual fans of geekery. Of course, this rule isn’t all-inclusive. You can be a geek in one subject and a casual fan of another. So are you still a geek? Of course you are.“But George,” I can hear you saying, “I’m a geek and my fandom isn’t part of the ‘normal’ geek community!”

“Not so,” I reply. There’s no such thing as the “normal geek community.” The DC Geeks scene has taught me that; no matter how odd the topic there are people out there who meet up, discuss it, love it, and want to bring it to the masses. If you feel like your fandom isn’t getting the attention it deserves, talk to us about it!
And that, of course, is really the point of this article. What makes a geek? The community. Being able to engage with other people and talk about what you love. After all, what’s the point of loving something if you don’t want to share it?

21st Century Geek

Source: Mid-90's mediocrity.
Babble.com

A common question we get at DC Geeks is: what does it mean to be Geek? How is it defined? There is an upcoming DC Geeks post on how the individual contributors at DC Geeks answer this topic; so instead I want to take a moment to focus on the broader, shifting societal idea of the geek. I am sure anyone reading this is already aware of the broad strokes. The geeks of our parents age, the geek of Revenge of the Nerds, the Urkels, dominated the cultural narrative.

This image of the geek was an archetype of the 1950s that just would not die. It was a product of an era of supreme conformity in which, responding to the narcissistic chaos of World War II, the existential threat of nuclear annihilation, and the invisible threat of communist spies dismantling our nation from within, anything different was promptly stomped into the ground. Pop-culture at the time was lumbering and stupid, an anti-intellectualism thug. But in the 80's, things started to change.

All culture observes the same pattern. New culture begins with the edge crowd. These people are outside the mainstream, and never accepted. But, be it music, art, clothing, whatever, all changes in pop culture begin here. It is then adopted by the poorly named trendsetters. These adopters are seen as “cool” by the mainstream and facilitate the movement of new ideas from the edge to the mainstream by functioning as a intermediary. Back when "meme" was used to discuss an infectious idea, the edge was where the virus was born. The trendsetters are the Ebola monkeys that spread that thing to the rest of the world. In the 80s, edge culture was all up in the internet's soup about a decade before trendsetters knew what the internet was.

The idea of the cool geek, the nerd in control by virtue of those qualities that mark him as nerd and other (socially isolated but brilliant), began to grow in popularity in nerd subculture. Sci-Fi heroes began to look more like Matthew Broderick in War Games and less like like Sam Jones in Flash Gordon. By the new millennium, everyone wanted their own website, a computer capable of network access, etc., and suddenly nerds and geeks had cache. They were desirable acquaintances. Today, when everyone carries a supercomputer in their pocket, geek is so mainstream is practically is pop-culture. The biggest movies of the last four years have all been comic book movies. The Avengers and the last two Batman movies had a combined world gross of $3.6 billion dollars. The top 20 highest grossing movies in the world are, in order:

1	Avatar	Fox	$2,782.3	$760.5	27.3%	$2,021.8	72.7%	2009^
2	Titanic	Par.	$2,185.4	$658.7	30.1%	$1,526.7	69.9%	1997^
3	Marvel's The Avengers	BV	$1,511.8	$623.4	41.2%	$888.4	58.8%	2012
4	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2	WB	$1,328.1	$381.0	28.7%	$947.1	71.3%	2011
5	Transformers: Dark of the Moon	P/DW	$1,123.7	$352.4	31.4%	$771.4	68.6%	2011
6	The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	NL	$1,119.9	$377.8	33.7%	$742.1	66.3%	2003^
7	Skyfall	Sony	$1,108.1	$304.0	27.4%	$804.1	72.6%	2012
8	The Dark Knight Rises	WB	$1,081.0	$448.1	41.5%	$632.9	58.5%	2012
9	Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest	BV	$1,066.2	$423.3	39.7%	$642.9	60.3%	2006
10	Toy Story 3	BV	$1,063.2	$415.0	39.0%	$648.2	61.0%	2010
11	Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides	BV	$1,043.9	$241.1	23.1%	$802.8	76.9%	2011
12	Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace	Fox	$1,027.0	$474.5	46.2%	$552.5	53.8%	1999^
13	Alice in Wonderland (2010)	BV	$1,024.3	$334.2	32.6%	$690.1	67.4%	2010
14	The Dark Knight	WB	$1,004.6	$534.9	53.2%	$469.7	46.8%	2008^
15	Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone	WB	$974.8	$317.6	32.6%	$657.2	67.4%	2001
16	Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End	BV	$963.4	$309.4	32.1%	$654.0	67.9%	2007
17	The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey	WB	$959.9	$300.3	31.3%	$659.6	68.7%	2012
18	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1	WB	$956.4	$296.0	30.9%	$660.4	69.1%	2010
19	The Lion King	BV	$951.6	$422.8	44.4%	$528.8	55.6%	1994^
20	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	WB	$939.9	$292.0	31.1%	$647.9	68.9%	2007

Source: Box Office Mojo

Take a look at the dates on those movies. 17 of the those 20 are from the last decade. All but three of those movies are essentially hard-core nerd porn. There has never been a better time to be a geek. Nerd has vaulted out of the sub-culture to establish itself firmly as the culture. And so entertainment companies, who pride themselves on being trendsetters but are probably the last people on Earth to adapt well to seismic culture shifts, have been falling all over themselves to capitalize on geek culture. And yet, pernicious attitudes about geeks as socially awkward dweebs persist.

Take The Big Bang Theory (TBBT). What complete garbage. People have jokingly referred to this show's portrayal of geek culture as "geek face." Any serious comparison of prejudices towards geeks to the sort of systemic violence and abuse visited on gays or racial minorities in this country is of course offensive. Geeks don’t face lynchings; the worst a geek was likely to endure was a serious wedgie. But it remains true that TBBT wallows in offensive geek stereotypes like a pig in shit. The jokes break down into five broad categories (1) geeks are all effeminate virgins who fall apart when confronted by breasts; (2) geeks are book-smart but in all other ways stupid; (3) geeks are all man-boys; (4) people with Asperger’s syndrome are funny. Notice how virtually all the humor revolves around men? (5)* Hot girls are stupid; smart girls are socially train wrecks. It’s like the show was written by the 1980's stereotype of a football player. The show has introduced “geek females,” but they still conform to anti-geek stereotypes. They are the "Beautiful All Along" girls of the forgettable teen comedies of the early 2000s. Book smart, socially awkward, but they would never do a BOY activity like crack a comic book.

Source: My nightmares. And comicbook.com

Honestly, it isn't enough for TBBT to reinforce a 60 year old stereotype about geek men, it has to pull double duty and reinforce the fake geek girl trope too. Check out this article for a better write up what passes for the number 1 show in America.


What about King of the Nerds? Full disclosure, I've never seen it. Some people say it is pretty good. But it sure was marketed as the kind of crap that cannot even conceive of geeks as competent adults capable of contributing meaningfully to their communities. I mean, check this crap out:

You know who the real King of the Nerds is? This guy:

What kind of silly name is POTUS? Source: Whitehouse.gov

Sorry Vader, there is a new blackest brother mastering the force.
Source: Charles Dharapak - Associated Press

President Barack Obama. He collects Spider-man and Conan comics. He has light-saber duels on the White House lawn. He poses with Superman. He kicks it in online with the Nerdfighters. He gets webbed by Spider-man. His White House issued a totally baller response to the petition to build a Death Star. And he is undeniably cool. Seriously, the man has swagger. And it doesn’t hurt that he sings Al Green's songs better than Al Green.

Mark Zuckerberg? He’s like Bill Gates but without the awkward baggage of being a geek Pre-2000. He is the nation’s second largest charitable donor, the worlds youngest billionaire, kicks it with TV and music celebrities and, oh yeah, supposedly has an autism spectrum disorder like Aspergers but manages to treat his employees with respect and positive regard instead of acting like a intolerably superior douche nozzle.

Source: Unknown

The geeks I know work as government contractors in positions requiring security clearances, teach art and English in high schools and universities, work for NGOs fighting for government transparency, are lawyers or med-students. But that is just what they do during the day. They are men and women. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some are heavy, some are fit. One geek I know reads She-Hulk comics, is a lawyer with a degree from an Ivy League law school, writes scholarly papers about economies of scale in Word of Warcraft, and is a competitive racer who routinely places among the top 5 female finalists in races nation-wide. My friends have beautiful or handsome spouses and children. They are aged 2 1/2 to 65.

This photo is basically J.J. Jameson's wet dream.
Source: Time LightBox

Manufacturing as a share of American GDP is shrinking and will never return. We are in an intellect economy. Wages, economic growth, these things are driven by productivity. It doesn't matter how hard you work. It matters how intelligent you are. How skilled you are with in-demand specialties such as software programing. It matters how creative you are; can you generate new ideas? In short, it is an economy built by and for geeks. It doesn't matter how strong or fast you are, if your mind is asleep, if you are not the sort of individual who routinely looks at world and asks “Why” or “what if,” you are a dinosaur and will fall behind.

In the 21st century, geek is the new mainstream. High school sucks, and I imagine is the last refuge for the stupid and dim-witted bullies who like to pick on the geeky kids. I expect many kids around this nation who like Star Wars or Dungeons & Dragons or My Little Pony* or Ender's Game are struggling and see mind-cancer like TBBT on TV and think they can expect to be forced to swallow more of the same crap once they get out of High School. But I promise you, the adult world? It belongs to us. We are the new media. We are the future of entertainment. We are the future of the world economy. Hell, we took the damn White House. Twice. And we did it in a manner that should make your inner-nerd proud.

It's the age of the geek, baby.

Source: http://www.etsy.com/shop/sharpwriter?ref=pr_shop_more

* Yeah, I showed the Bronies some love. DC-Geeks is a big tent, y'all.

Life on Mars

I am recently returned from planet Katsucon. A strange and alien world where nothing is real. Characters from video games, Japanese anime and manga, Disney cartoons, and even the odd Captain Jack Sparrow danced and cavorted through the halls of the Gaylord National. Styrofoam wigs in brilliant orange and vibrant lavender sat precariously atop the heads of giggling girls, some of whom were wearing little else, while boys in garishly bright trench coats with improbably sized swords dueled 14-foot tall robots against the backdrop of the atrium fountains’ carefully choreographed music, light, and water show. The Gaylord National is a perfect venue for hosting a weekend’s sojourn from reality, the hotel’s atrium itself being an impossibly idyllic recreation of a street in Olde Town Alexandria.

Katsucon is a cosplay convention. Conventions, by and large, are not my thing. Cosplay and anime conventions even less so. As should be no surprise, I spent much of the weekend feeling isolated and alone; as if in my visit to the strange and wonderful world I could see everything, grasp everything, but isolated by my protective suit never truly feel it. I spent much of the convention and the days since grappling with the how and why of this isolation.

To enjoy a convention you need to slip inside its skin and understand how it breathes. If you go home at 10 pm, you miss the late night room parties, sneaking into the guest suites to hot tub with the celebs, and the late night elevator raves. But somehow, this convention was just too slippery for me to get my hands on…

Perhaps I had grown too old. The dozens of young girls scampering about in bras and hooker shorts, far from being titillating, made my skin crawl. They seemed so young. How many were only 14? 16? I even caught myself wondering where their parents were. And let me tell you, when you have that thought for the first time, you suddenly feel ready to cash out your 401k, take your Metamucil, and put yourself to bed at the reasonable hour of eight o’clock.

Perhaps I was responding to something else. Though I have consumed all manner of anime and Japanese video games, I will freely admit that there is something about, for lack of a better term, “Weeaboo” culture that just rubs me wrong. I lived in Japan for a time. Many of the people I met there were not particularly appreciative of having their entire culture reduced to cartoons and video games. In my world travels, I found that much of the world does the same to us. Americans are all irrational gun-toting nuts that solve their problems with car chases and gratuitous violence. Neither flattering nor fair.

I must also admit that this is not a fair criticism of Katsucon. Katsu is not a celebration of Japanese culture. It is a celebration of the anime/manga/video game/cosplay subcultures. Calling it racist would be like calling a tattoo convention racist for portraying all Americans as tattooed rednecks—for the record, fans of tattoos, don’t send angry letters.

I stopped at one point and spoke with members of the jazz band SwingLab, who regularly play weekends in the Belvedere lounge at the hotel. They loved the convention. Woody Hume, the SwingLab drummer, told me that many of Katsu people, apart from wearing “wildly entertaining costumes” were friendly and generous. The Katsu guests were much more likely to approach them, talk with them, request songs, and tip them. They loved the Katsu crowd. Which left me with one inescapable conclusion.

The problem was me. How was it I, as someone who would regularly author articles for a Geek blog, could be so dismissive of such a large segment of Geek culture? Regardless of whether or not it is “my thing,” the idea that I could treat it as so other, so alien, was repulsive to me.

In the end, I cannot say I found a way to connect. I remained apart. I spoke with many attendees, but despite a shared identity as “geeks,” that shared sense of experience, that chemistry, just was not there. But for one moment, I did know what it was like to be a citizen of planet Katsu, to fully enjoy being part of that world. It was when a 14-foot tall Red Robot with glowing eyes stomped past me in the hall, and for a moment, I could believe he was real.

Geek Chic at Magfest Pt. 3 - See My Vest

Welcome back. The hit list indicates people keep reading these articles, but not a single person comments. What gives? It's getting a little creepy.

Anyway, time for a personal passion of mine: Vests!

Justin Mishima and hat!

5. Justin Mishima

Justin here is another great example of the power of color coordination. Justin’s Panda hat is, well, cute. The rest of his outfit is not. The rest of his outfit is highly fashionable and somewhat dressy. 

So how does he make dressy and informal work together? For one, color coordination. The two-tone look carried throughout the entire outfit pulls it together visually. 

Every piece looks intentional and belongs. Second, he’s got a transition from formal to informal going. See how his sleeves are rolled up, his collar undone? The hat would seem more absurd, more out of place if his collar were buttoned up, if he were wearing a tie and his sleeves were unrolled. 

But by wearing his shirt in a more casual manner, the hat goes from absurd to a casual “I don’t care what anyone thinks” cool.

Chris' awesome Gentleman's
Emporium vest.

6. Chris Frederickson

Poor Chris here is the victim of my negligence. For several of the images in this story, I forgot that I had disabled the auto-focus on my camera. Chris is the first of several well dressed but sadly blurry people.

I was hesitant to approach Chris. I was worried he was in some costume I didn’t recognize. Turns out I was both right and wrong. The vest he is wearing he purchased for a Steampunk costume he wore on Friday of MAGFest. However he was such a fan of it he incorporated it into his everyday wear. 

What is truly fantastic about this vest, and is tragically obscured by my camera’s lack of focus, is that this vest has lapels. Most vests this days don’t have lapels. It’s a vintage look, though it is making its way back into fashion in high-end three-piece suits. 

The beauty of the lapel in the vest is that it replicates the effect of suit jacket even when you aren’t wearing one. It’s also a great look for men because the lapels broaden the v-shape of the vest and thereby broaden your chest and shoulders. The effect is to enhance the ideal male features, to make you look more masculine.

Chris got this vest at Gentleman's Emporium, a great site for men or women looking to put together a vintage Victorian era look. Visit the site, look around. If you don't bookmark it within five minutes, there is something wrong with you.

To put it another way, think of Superman as illustrated by Alex Ross, with his enormous S-symbol, and Superman in the Superman Returns movie with the diminutive S on his chest. Brandon Routh was ripped for that movie, but his Superman looked small and weak, because the Small S shrunk his chest. Alex Ross’s Superman looks like he has been mainlining horse steroids because the broad S broadens the chest and makes him look more powerful. Also because largely because Alex Ross paints his veins as enormous, engorged vines. It's disturbing.

Darrin and his fantastic
pink shirt.

7. Darrin
By now it’s probably become painfully clear that I like vests. I like them a lot. But it wasn’t Darrin’s vest that stopped me. It was the whole ensemble. Darrin here is a rarity at a geek con. He looks like he stepped out of a men’s magazine ad. 

He’s rocking a hi-end hipster aesthetic. Sort of the GQ/Esquire corruption of the hipster movement. And really, what movement is more deserving of corporate corruption?

Pink is a great color on men, but while it has been a staple of men’s fashion magazines for a decade now, it still is having a hard time making the jump to mainstream culture. I suppose men are too afraid it makes them look effeminate, which really works out well for those of us who have the balls to wear pink. 


It looks great, the ladies love it, and it’s rarity makes it a symbol of confidence. So keep on being afraid of pink, gentlemen. Darrin and I will keep on wearing it and laughing all the way to the lady bank. (No, there is no such thing as a lady bank.)

If you can’t see them, Darrin’s shoes are a bright green which goes great with his pink shirt, but since we are nominally discussing vests, let’s talk about the vest. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but the vest is a glen check pattern. Glen check, or Glen Plaid as it is sometimes called, is one of my favorite patterns in wool. Essentially, it is small check boxes within larger check boxes. The larger check boxes are usually done in a more subtle color and it creates a very striking and sophisticated look.


Now take a look at his buttons.There is a lot of confusion about buttons on vests. What I’m about to say also applies to suit jackets as well, so even if you never wear a vest, listen up. King Edward VII of England was, to put it kindly, extremely rotund. Being so heavy, he was unable to button the bottom button of his vest. Being the King, he was by default always in fashion. 


Not surprisingly soon all of his subjects began leaving their bottom button unbuttoned. Suit and vest makers took their cue and began designing the bottom button on vests and jackets to be decorative, and not to be buttoned. This is why you never, ever, button the bottom button on your suit jacket. The same rule does not apply to vests, however.

King Edward VII
(public domain image via Wikimedia)

Vests historically had six buttons, and the sixth button, in deference to King Edward, was always left unbuttoned. If you have a six-button vest you will notice the sixth button and buttonhole are spaced more widely than the other buttons, so that it can more easily be seen that they are not buttoned. Many modern vests only have five buttons. The fifth button does not have the wide spacing of a sixth button, and so in five-button vests the intention is that all five buttons be buttoned.

These button rules do not necessarily apply to women’s fashion. When it comes to button’s and women’s fashion, it is a no man’s lands of pure anarchy and I cannot be your fashion sherpa. Sorry.

I asked Darrin about why he was dressed as nicely as he was. He said he’d actually dressed down since the morning when he was in a suit. He says that MAGFest is a big event for him and his company, and so it is important to him to put his best face forward and to make a good first impression. 


When comparing himself to the MAGFest attendees wandering the con shoeless and in pajama pants Darrin said that being fashion forward means “I can stand out against all that. People will be a little more willing to come up to me and I will be a little more memorable.” Well said, Darrin.

In case you were wondering, Darrin does marketing consulting for X-Strike Studios.

Next we will be focusing on personal style and getting away from the more mainstream looks we have featured so far. We'll be highlighting punk and goth looks. Be sure to come back and check it out!

Why Occupy DC Matters to You

The following is a guest article provided by Jeffrey Bartlett. A fantastic lawyer in the DC Metro area and a passionate geek. We're proud to have this piece by him. Being a lawyer, and by definition insufferable, he asks that we kindly point out that none of the following constitutes legal advice, and that the following views are entirely his and his alone, do not represent the views of any person, company, or government he has worked for or represented, and you hereby absolve him of any and all liability for any injury, real or imagined, you, your feelings, or your sense of proper grammatical structure may suffer upon reading this essay.

Not much is being said about the Occupy movement these days, and perhaps this long overdue essay has missed its moment. But perhaps now is a perfect time to reflect on the Occupy movement and what it means.

The jist of Occupy Movement. via Occupy DC

About six weeks ago, DC Geeks founder Scooter and I went to visit the Occupy DC camp and to hand out blankets. The people we met there are exactly the sort of people you would expect. Dirty, stinky, young, with the sort of brain burstingly naïve political views that might lead a person to wear a Che Guerva t-shirt. More than a few were clearly crazy. But they were also passionate and hopeful. They believed in something enough to brave the cold, the cops, the camp violence, the crazies, all because they felt something had gone terribly, desperately wrong with this country, and they had the drive to do something about it. In short, I fell madly in love with them.

Right about now, you are probably wondering what the heck an essay on a political movement is doing squished between articles on Magfest and Anime USA. I’m sure you’d rather spend this time clicking through photo albums of cos-play, painting your miniatures, min-maxing your half- Elven blade-singer, or engaging in whatever other activity feeds your geek fetish. That’s what I do most nights. Hence the lateness of this essay. And I certainly want to keep politics and DC Geeks as separate as possible. Just because we can all agree that Firefly was amazing and Ripley could beat the tar out of Princess Leia does not mean will have the same views on Congressional regulation of the high-yield bond market. But if you will bear with me for just a little while, and resist the urge to scroll to the bottom to post something unique and inspired like “first!” or, more likely, “TLDR,” then you might agree this essay was worth your time. Or not. At minimum, it will give you something new to ruminate on as your paint your Skaven.

Collaborative stories written by the participants.

So, just what the heck IS an essay about Occupy DC/Wall-Street/Wherever doing on a site like DC Geeks? I was wondering much the same thing. DC Geek and messianic presence Scooter assures me that it belongs here. He correctly pointed out that this is a movement that depends on the internet and social media to survive. Perhaps that alone is enough to make it geek worthy, but I’m not sure I agree. When your grandmother has a Twitter account, I think it is safe to conclude that social media has jumped the geek shark and belongs squarely to the omni-culture. But hey, you guys are trendsetters. Suck it, high-school cheer squad that judged us!

No, the reason the Occupy movement matters to geek culture is because it is a grass- root response to a cultural shift we called way back in 1984 when William Gibson wrote Neuromancer. We may not be able to hit a LIMB clinic and have cybernetic arms installed just because it’s Tuesday (fascist doctors demand we first lose our limbs the old-fashioned way first), but in terms of domestic politics, we are on the edge of realizing all the dystopian ideals of the cyberpunk genre. It isn’t fiction anymore.

In 2010, JP Morgan Chase gave $4.6 million in “technology, time and resources” to the New York City Police Foundation.  The Department of Homeland Security is deploying military technology against the citizenry.  Predator Drones are being used for law enforcement.

Even late at night, people gathered to tell stories and get in some
freestyle rap (I'm not even kidding, and it was awesome.)

Which brings us to what I believe the Occupy movement is really struggling against—the disintegration of the social contract. You probably recall from your high school American history class something about Hobbes and Locke and how their ideas on the social contract influenced the founding fathers. But they weren't the only thinkers. 50-100 years later, a Frenchman by the name of Jean-Jacques Rousseau was writing on the subject as well.

Rousseau was particularly obsessed with the idea of moral government and what would or would not make a moral government. He wrote in his aptly named essay The Social Contract that “[s]ince no man has natural authority over his fellow men, and since might in no sense makes right,” then those who are governed against their will by the strong are slaves. If a man can be a slave before a master, then so can a people be slave to a king. Governing by the threat of force and the ability to execute that threat can therefore never be the basis of a moral government. A just government can only exist when it is the product of a social contract entered into knowingly and willingly by all participants. But this of course creates a problem. When you are born into a society you are subject to the laws of that society, and by a contract you never agreed to enter. For Rousseau, a government lost its moral authority the moment the second generation became old enough to be independent of their parents. How then to resolve this problem?

Without wandering too far afield, it is simple enough to say that Rousseau argued for such rigorous indoctrination that the second generation would so love the nation that by the time they were old enough to dissent, that they would be so enthralled with their nation that they would accept the social contract as it was without question. They would not be governed against their will, and so were not slaves. It was a somewhat cynical way of viewing the world, and rightly or wrongly he has been criticized for being the foundational ideology of both National Socialism and Soviet Communism.

Additional signs posted around the Occupy camp

The founding fathers resolved the Rousseau problem somewhat more artfully: participatory government. By giving the people the vote they gave people the right to shape government. Every person of voting age therefore plays a role in shaping the social contract, and therefore agree to it. A government of the people and by the people necessarily retains its moral authority.

Now let us return to the Occupy movement and what it is that they are really protesting again, whether they acknowledge it or not. They are protesting against a government they see as having a steadily declining moral authority; one that belongs to the corporations and not to the people. And they certainly aren't alone in this feeling. Robert Reich, the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkley recently stated in an NPR podcast (Market Place 12/28/11) that “the defining political issue in 2012 is not the size of government but who government is for. Nearly 80% of respondents in a recent Pew charity foundation pole said too much power is in the hands of a few rich people and corporations.” Roll that around in your head for a moment. 80% of survey respondents feel that corporations have too much power. Now ask yourself what Congress is doing about it.

A recent article in Wired points out that a bill that would require the government to obtain a warrant before reading your e-mail or electronically stored data—you may we recall we fought a war over basic rights such as remaining secure  unreasonable and unwarranted search and seizure—cannot even get out of committee. While SOPA, a bill with almost unprecedented backlash from the voting public is expected to sail through Congress.

So what is a corporation, and why have they got the park hippies so persnickety? A corporation is a legal creation that functions as a liability shield. When a group or individual forms a corporation, they that ensure their personal assets cannot be touched by a law suit brought for the actions of the company. If a corporation destroys your house, you cannot sue the board members who approved the action that destroyed your home, only the corporation. And if they corporation has no money, it doesn’t matter how rich the board members are, you are out of luck.

You've also probably heard people bemoaning how crazy it is that corporations are people. Well, they aren't, and that is a misperception stemming from a Supreme Court  case called Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518 (1819). But a corporation does enjoy many of the rights of an individual person without risking many of the consequences--a corporation cannot be jailed. Recall that the social contract is an agreement between people to form a government that creates rules to govern all the individuals. Everyone surrenders a little freedom in exchange for security against their neighbor. A corporation reaps all the benefits of the social contract, but makes a much smaller sacrifice of freedoms. They are, in effect, super-citizens. Now add recent Supreme Court decisions that money is speech, and corporations, engines of profit generation, become truly terrifying.

If you really want to have a hard time sleeping at night, your independent reading assignment is this  Wikipedia article on regulatory capture.  It’s not just corporations though. Take the media. A media corporation not only has all the protections of a corporation, it has greater first amendment rights than you. For you to be guilty of slander or libel you merely need to say something false that causes another person economic damages. And for certain types of slander or libel, the damages are per se, meaning the slandered person doesn't even have to prove they were injured in court, only that you said it. It does not matter that you did not realize the statement was false.

For a newspaper, television newscast, etc., to be guilty, they must have had “actual malice” or a “reckless disregard for the truth.” It doesn't matter if they publish false information that destroys someone’s life unless they did it with the intent of injuring that person. It’s a similar situation with the police. For a civil suit for, say, assault and battery against you, your accuser must merely prove you assaulted them or battered them by a preponderance of the evidence. The “51% standard” if you will. But with the police, if they assault you, batter you, or violate your constitutional rights you must again prove actual malice. You have to prove that they knew at the time that they were violating your rights and that they did so intentionally. This is shockingly hard to prove.

Many of these sorts of rules exist for good reasons. They exist to prevent nuisance law suits that might otherwise chill desirable behavior. Think a major newspaper would ever call out a politician on their lies if that politician’s lawyers only had to prove that something the paper published wasn’t absolutely 100% true to only 51% of a juries satisfaction? Of course not—no business would engage in such a ridiculous risk. And what about money as speech and corporate first-amendment rights? Well, when you begin to consider all the different corporate structures including solo-corporations, non-profit organizations, etc., its start to become very difficult to separate a corporate speech from just a group of citizens speaking. These rules are the product of very smart people wrestling with very difficult issues, but these rules taken as a whole have created a situation in which it has become very hard to deny that the laws have to privilege and protect non-person entities over the citizenry. And that just isn’t fair.

Fairness is an odd concept. It is, in many ways, a fairly juvenile concept. And yet, if I may take a moment for sentimentality, a very core American value. And I think you disregard that notion at your own risk.

So getting back to why this discussion is here: The Occupy movement is a grass roots response to a gradual but ultimately seismic shift in American culture. It is a shift that was predicted almost 27 years ago. Historically, speculative fiction has played the role of the moral mother, tut-tutting at us or raising issues of bio-ethics but rarely have the horrors that we've spun ever come to pass. We've yet to create Frankenstein, machines don’t rule the world, etc. But the dystopia we predicted in which the police, law, and policy are all available to buy if you control enough market share is right around the corner. Whether you agree with the Occupy movement’s methods or not, you have to admit that something is wrong when a non-person has greater rights than a citizen; that a government cannot have the moral authority to govern future generations if the past generations have handed the government away to fictional entities. But if the rules that brought us to this point exist for good reasons, what is the solution? What changes do we, as a people, push for next?

Signs that were up at McPherson Square

Just something to consider, next time you are painting that Skaven.