Alex Day on stereotypes
"You're not a geek until you've owned a Red Dwarf box set..."
- Alex Day, quoted in the London Evening Standard
The video channel YouTube kicked off its much-anticipated Geek Week yesterday, featuring over a hundred regulars showcasing material. The momentous event has inevitably spawned a great deal of navel-gazing in the media about what the word "geek" actually means, and whether it's an insult or a compliment. Musician Day, known more commonly by his moniker "nerimon", thinks that geeks come in all shapes and sizes, and are not always obvious. To judge by other YouTube creators interviewed for the article, there is agreement that geeks can span the whole spectrum of occupations and preoccupations, from scientists to people who obsess over make-up. Also, perhaps not surprisingly, most self-described geeks now feel that it's cool to be seen as one, when before you would have been considered a social reject.
You can read the entire article here.