by Chris Jones – 3/14/2017
Greetings, my fellow geeks. As always, thank you for coming by our humble little internet nook built out of love, sarcasm, and leftover bits of The Matrix. The purpose for this post is to explore the question that most of us, save for The Talking Heads, don’t often think about. And that question is, ‘How did we get here?’. I’m not talking about evolution. What I mean is, how did we become this odd class of people collectively referred to as geeks or nerds?
The simple answer is, it was a title thrust upon us by our classic archenemies, The Jocks, The Preppies, The “Cool” Kids, etc. Of course, that is a gross oversimplification. Though we may have only learned it in hindsight, most of us probably could have been in any of those cliques had we applied the right effort or found a different path. At some level, we chose to be what we are, and what we are are people who have passion, imagination, and spirit. In fact, we have so much passion and spirit that it’s quite difficult for The Mundanes to keep up with us when we hit our groove. The wise among them will make the effort to learn why we do this. The rest will simply dismiss us as practitioners of escapism.
But something happened that the popular kids in school could never have predicted, even if it was printed on a sale flyer from [insert trendy clothing boutique here] right under their noses…we took over the popular culture.
As if overnight, the Trekkies, the Star Wars fans, the bookworms, the cartoon watchers, the dragon-slaying dice rollers, and comic book readers all started strutting about like they owned the place. Somehow, we found the critical weakness in our old oppressors, the fact that many of them were actually one of us the whole time. We have enjoyed this vindication, because those things that got us through the rough patches of our childhood, are now the things that give us a place and a peer group. But there is one thing that the holdovers among our old enemies are working to pass to the next generation, the disdain for escapism.
We must be careful. If not, the very things we love can pull us all the way into the poppy field and we’ll never want to have to deal with the essentials of life. While we cannot escape the realities around us for very long, we can still take the best part of what we love, and use it to shape those realities. Then we can have both, and if we do it right, maybe some of those people that didn’t get us will start to understand. Think of it as bringing balance to The Force without all that killing of Younglings.
The Escapism Train may have brought us here, but let’s also remember to step off at the right time. I like to think of The NerdBliss Podcast as the train station. We want to help The Mundanes get aboard and see what the ride is all about. We also want to help the geeks to experience the things they’ll miss if they don’t get off the train once in a while.
Whichever crowd you belong to, welcome to the train station.