We can all picture a geek, no matter how inaccurate the caricature might be. The archetype has persisted, pimple faced and spectacled, through the public consciousness. But when you look outside…

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE GEEKS?

We put out a question asking people if they consider themselves geeks, which they probably are if they reply to Nexus stories, and 62% of responders said, “Yes! I am a geek! Please give me a wedgie!” 

I don’t think 62% of Nexus’ readers are geeks, most of you have gotta be getting at least a bit of action.  Some of these 62% are lying. A geek has to exist at the fringe; they have to obsess over things that would have them all but castrated from society – they are a monk of lesser nobility; their tonsures from headphones rather than an attempt to connect to God.  

Geeks reproduce asexually. I don’t know how grounded this definition is, so here is Wikipedia’s:

BORING!
I think my definition is a lot better. 

Regardless, there are obviously geeks… But where? Well, think about it this way: Once upon a time, the internet was like a bunch of islands, and these islands were their own isolated niches where geeks could interact, and some geeks held more than one geek island citizenship. The emergence of bigger social media like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter sort of turned the internet into Pangea, and it brought all these islands in with it. It took a little bit, but because of the constant interaction/exposure between ‘normies’ and these previously fringe/’weirdo’ mediums like anime, video games, etc., and the obvious money that was to be made by jumping on these things, they’ve kind of just been subsumed into the monolith of culture.  

But not all geeks are happy with this! Some geeks, mostly detached forty something year old men who own many rare Funko Pops, are enraged at the intrusion of normies into their safe spaces! How fucking dare they – one of them may say – put ‘WOKE’ in my Star Wars? These geeks have retreated, and they’ve re-established new social fringes. Galvanized by conservative ideology, these geeks feel as though ‘Cultural Marxists’ are pushing agendas into their favorite franchises – polluting them and causing their legacy and appeal to be tarnished by poor, shoehorned writing. It doesn’t help that most of these new products are, to put it lightly, dogshit, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s these geek’s understanding that these new different things like POC and queer characters are heralds of poor writing rather than anything going on behind the scenes.   

This isn’t just some phantasm I’ve conjured, as much as I love to do that; When we asked female and queer Star Wars fans if they’d experienced notable harassment from another member of the fanbase that they felt was on the grounds of identity, 64% of them said that they had. This means that more than half of these fans believe they’ve experienced some form of discriminatory behavior from other members of their fan base. But why? Why can’t the fanbase just be some place for people to talk non-politically about something they both like? 

Because people stood to profit from it! One of the easiest demographics to target is disaffected young men, and no matter how tired you are of hearing about how we need to talk about lonely, angry young men, and no matter how tired you get of hearing that ‘it’s video games’ fault’, in this case both are true. In the mid-2010s, while Trump was gearing up for his first election, the video game industry was undergoing a bit of turmoil when it was alleged that a game developer had bribed a games journalist with her body to give her game a positive review. Now disaffected young men who were being targeted by conservative rhetoric felt as though the enemy was at their front gates. And it kept building, and expanding, and then The Force Awakens released in December of 2015 and between the talk of if America should have a female president there was also dialogue about if Rey from Star Wars was a Mary Sue and if a female deserved to be the main character of this new trilogy, and it fed into each other and also gave more insidious elements of imageboards like 4Chan a mob of people to point around. All of this is why we now have a split in the fanbases of things like Fallout, Warhammer, and Star Wars, who believe that the purity and masculine aesthetic energy of the original works have been corrupted by DEI hires and shoehorned woke character traits and they believe that this is a targeted campaign made to make them susceptible to vote for liberal or left-wing parties. So, of course, charged with reactionary fervor, they vote conservative. Why do you think Elon Musk became such a big Trump guy?  

TL:DR: The geeks are wearing MAGA caps.

Freaks on wheels

In contrast to this, or perhaps as a potential path for Star Wars to return to the light side, Nexus dropped into the pool of old school skating and pumped through its corners to see what skateboarding has become today. You may ask ‘why skating?’ Despite MTV, Jackass, Tony Hawk selling his soul to Activision, DC’s, baggy pants, nowadays telling you skateboarding is rad, cool, and somewhere between a punk and a jock (c’mon skate industry, that’s an oxymoron), skateboarders were the freaks and geeks of the world long before capitalism rebranded our skate and destroy dogma. 

Skate nerds still make up most of our internet presence. Entire communities exalt the skateboarding industry – while just as harshly criticising it – from reddit, to instagram, to our most infamous Slap MessageBoards. Shitposting accounts are huge such as fuckthisindustry2008 or the prophet himself Gifted Hater. 

Being a skater is far more than kicking your flips or switching your 180s, we discuss pro skaters, brands, products, and video parts (our holy texts). Much like other fandoms, this doesn’t stay as verbal abuse on Slap but is also thrown around at the park, in the streets, or over a beer. The skate community doesn’t often admit it’s worship of marketing and sponsorship, or our nerdy obsession with trick names, who did the first boardslide, or video parts, but these are nothing compared to the freaks and geeks we were seen as before every city was lined with a smooth concrete skatepark. 

The images are of the late Jeff Grosso, RIP, famous for a quote he hated, “I don’t know but I’m at the forefront of it”. His Loveletters to Skateboarding series included a “Freaks and Geeks” loveletter that shocked my helmet wearing year ten self who didn’t have many friends outside of 22the miniramp, wait its ok I’m a weirdo and into skateboarding? Also note this was well before every tik tok diva shaved her eyebrows to try be the next it girl, to imitate nyc model trends, or land a spot in Charli XCX’s 360 music video. 360s are a pretty hard skate trick by the way. 

Here are some quotes from the Loveletter, but I can’t even attempt to do it justice so go check it out and if you’re a skate nerd who hasn’t – watch the whole series. 

“The thing that attracts the weirdos about it is that it takes so much time to like get good at it that you’ve gotta be kind of a psycho to invest all that time”  – Kevin ‘Spanky’ Long 

“Skateboarders aren’t cool man, they were never supposed to be the cool kids” – Grosso 

“Almost every skater I know is a freak” – Jerry Hsu 

Perhaps because, “The heart and soul of skateboarding is the freaks and geeks” (Grosso), we have come along way from the largely western, straight, and masculine community we once were. Queer skate brands are a vibrant part of the industry, female skating has grown exponentially including here in Aotearoa, and it’s hard to name a country without a skate scene. Many of the nascent crews pushing from South Sudan to Nepal and the growth of women’s competitive skateboarding are considered by some to be results of the ‘sports’ Olympic inclusion. I can’t see lightsaber battles entering the Olympics but maybe it’s time for some Star Wars old heads to push away from such a close-minded force. 

After all, how different is my deck collection from some funko pops? How different is riding a skateboard from painting an action figure?