Going geek

If you thought they were just technophiles, think again

by Michelle Chihara

GEEK CHIC: lots of pizza, Nerf weapons, and video games.

The word "geek" -- once nothing more than an adolescent social category -- has come to mean not only job security but also an attitude, a certain computer-centric je ne sais quoi. "With the rise of the new economy," says Tim McEachern, co-
organizer of last weekend's Geek Pride festival, "geeks rule the world."

Yes, but what, exactly, is geek?

For one, it's a collection of free T-shirts. Somewhere between 1200 and 1500 geeks, according to festival co-organizer Susan Kaup, crowded into the Castle at Park Plaza on April Fools' Day for yet another freebie. Able to relax among their own -- McEachern and Kaup kept all job recruiters at bay -- geeks carried in boxes of pizza, shot each other with automatic Nerf weapons, competed in a Quake tournament, and listened to Everyone, a video-game cover band, do a rendition of the Super Mario theme. Other attractions included a Stump the Geek trivia contest (Q: Which actress spoke Maggie's first words on The Simpsons? A: Elizabeth Taylor), clusters of Linux machines, and plastic lounge chairs in translucent primary colors. But it was speaker Rob Malda, king of the "news for nerds" site Slashdot.org, who drew the biggest crowds.

Malda had no speech prepared and was scared stiff of speaking in front of "a bunch of strangers who might mug me." But it seemed he could do no wrong. After all, this was a crowd ready and willing to jump up and act out scenes from The Matrix when Malda ran out of material. This was a crowd that caught his acronyms, from PERL to MySQL. At 23, Malda is making a living sorting out the "stuff that matters" for nerds from the stuff that doesn't. He lives in a cluster of duplexes known as the "geek compound" in Holland, Michigan. He knows his geek material cold, and he has mastered the geek tone -- a kind of wry knowingness for an audience that counts "getting it" among its highest compliments.

Malda is geek chic. And he has fans. Just as he took the mike, one kid sitting in front jumped up and snapped open a poster that read FIRST POST, a reference to the comment system on Slashdot.org. Malda liked the stunt. "Wait, I have something for you," he said, and he tossed the prankster a box of dry grits (yes, as in cornmeal). Enormously pleased, the kid hooted, and his friends leapt up cheering. One of them grabbed him and lifted him off the floor. Another grabbed the box of grits, tore it open, and poured it down his pants.

"Is he pouring that down his pants?" Malda said into the mike. "He is. Wow. I didn't think people would actually do that."

Hot grits down a guy's pants is another Slashdot reference. Something to do with hot grits and dreaming about "geek goddess" Natalie Portman. I didn't press for details, but I did hear that dry grits, which have the consistency of coarse-grained sand, are "really uncomfortable" down there.

For those unwilling to go the gritty distance, Geek Pride could be a little much. "This is too hard-core for me. It's not a way of life for me," said Josh Jacobs, a computer-science major at MIT who's nonetheless old enough to remember when being called a geek could ruin your dating prospects well into college. "I mean, this is kind of creepy. I got the computer jokes. But they're computer jokes. They're not that funny."

To each his virtual reality. For the kids with the grits, geekdom is a way of life. An 18-year-old local who would only give me his online handle, grits-winner Skeletor met his crew through geek networks, and they use their geekdom as a way of approaching the world. "It's about being generally interested in everything. Being inquisitive. Critical thinking," he says. It's not about money, and the people who think it is are apples to Skeletor's geeky oranges. "If the money disappears, they'll be gone and we'll still be here," says Skeletor.

Tall, thin, with brown hair spiked up in a kind of DiCaprio punk, Skeletor personifies the urban-skater version of geek fashion. His T-shirt says SYSADMINSPOTTING, and the paragraph on the back -- a foul-mouthed screed about late nights and caffeine and junk food -- makes system administration sound just as extreme as the life of a Scottish heroin addict. He says he spends 12 to 16 hours a day on his computer. School, he has decided, is optional. "They had an advanced-placement class at my school, and out of 1900 kids, only four people signed up," he says with disgust. And he's had enough. His 17-year-old buddy Slapayoda (say it out loud) is about to move to Los Angeles to take a job as webmaster for a major movie studio. Skeletor is thinking of going with him.

So for some, geek pride just means unashamed Quake addiction. To others, it's a motivating life philosophy.

And a damn uncomfortable pair of boxers.