Is Geek Chic?

It seems hoards of X-Factor-watching, One-Direction-listening, giggling teenagers are wearing 'Geek' T-Shirts, apparently admitting that they are geeks, nerds or dorks. I think it's fairly obvious that this is just a fashion fad, as some articles suggest – geek has never been 'conventionally-cool'.

'Geek chic' has now entered the Oxford English Dictionary, an action indicative of the increased acceptance that there is such a thing as a 'geek' and that sometimes this geek can be cool. I despise anecdotal evidence, but I am also a hypocrite (a hungry, hungry hypocrite) so here we go... 

"A lot of my friends are far from what some would consider is 'geekishness' – they are not scientific, do not use maths to solve basic problems, some don't even know who Brian Cox is! (But they can tell me who scored a goal against Chelsea or who is a decent candidate in the X-Factor). However, of an evening, one of my mates blurted out that he was "a real geek" when it comes to music and films. 

This took me aback. How could he be a geek when he doesn't hold comic books, SciFi, science and computer games close to his heart? When I saw his record collection, I instantly understood. Taking up a whole room of his house, the CDs were alphabetically ordered and fitted neatly onto the shelves which wrapped the walls. He always knows the right song/album to play at a gathering (matching the style of music to the style of gathering). I think this made me redefine what 'geek' means."

Geek is about doing something which you enjoy. It is about not caring what wider culture thinks about your hobby. It is about working up a knowledge, collection or skill to the point where you know, have or can do more than the average person. People wearing 'Geek' shirts are different, instead they consume mass-culture to fit in – "everyone is wearing this top, so I will wear it too". People wearing 'Geek' shirts, on the whole, are not geeks. For instance, I think the true One Direction fans are 'geeks' in the sense that they would be fans regardless of the band's popularity. However, I suspect most fans are only there for the ride and would be fans of any other band in the place of One Direction.

There is an uncountable number of hobbies which someone could be interested in. This gives rise to an uncountable number of subcultures which hold these hobbies dear. Each subculture has it's own codes and way of talking and similarities between two subcultures might be hard to find. For an idea of how many subcultures there are, I point you in the direction of Reddit – a forum-type website which hosts many many many 'subreddits', or sub-forums (seriously, there is a subreddit for everything, just type www.reddit.com/r/[INSERT HOBBY OF YOUR CHOICE HERE] into your URL bar and see what pops up).

While I mostly get annoyed at mass culture, I think the introduction of 'geek chic' could have positive impacts. While it's true that lots of people wearing 'geek' shirts are not 'geeks' in the conventional sense (comic-book collecting, science loving, SciFi reading) perhaps they view themselves as geeks of something else (Big Brother, The Only Way is Essex, baking or courgette growing). Perhaps this love for a strange, unconventional hobby will allow them to see the similarity in someone else's strange, unconventional hobby. In this way, I think geek chic does break down barriers – allowing the true geeks to share ideas with other true geeks.