A geek is a person who is passionate about popular culture (comics, games, science fiction). However, very often it is thanks to geeks that a subculture becomes pop culture. What’s the matter? In the character traits of geeks.
To understand who geeks are, you need to study the culture they are passionate about. At first glance, it seems primitive for society as a whole. It seems that its target audience is children: computer games, comics, cartoons, all this is intended primarily for children and adolescents. However, it is thanks to geeks that the stereotypes that games are for children and comics for teenagers are easily refuted by real examples. Why is this happening?
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Newest study suggests that geeks display epic levels of narcissism1. In addition, in such people it often coexists with openness to everything new. The authors of the study believe that people become geeks in order to maintain narcissistic ideas about themselves, to satisfy their need to be part of some kind of community and to be able to express themselves creatively. “When narcissists don’t get the recognition and praise they think they deserve (whether because of mistakes or because their grandiose fantasies don’t apply to reality), they go into a fantasy world where they will be in demand. Of course, this does not apply to all geeks. But it describes the trend as a whole,” says Jessica McCain.
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Geeks have a burning desire to be part of some kind of society. They create it themselves, in particular using items that other people may consider toys or souvenirs. Geeks, on the other hand, turn them into real cultural artifacts, markers of their subculture: we are talking, for example, about superhero figurines, models of spaceships from Star Wars, a ring from The Lord of the Rings, and so on.
People who, because of their hobbies, find themselves in a kind of social exclusion or who are perceived as children, invest more in their individual interests, which are often incomprehensible to the general public. And of course, such people find each other and a connection appears between them based on these very “strange” interests.
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Who are the geeks?
Geeks are members of a subculture that is often associated with anime, science fiction, video games, comics, and so on. Although this culture is slowly becoming mainstream (look at the number of visits to the Comic-con festival in San Diego or Igromir in Moscow), it remains closed from outsiders, precisely because it consists of separate, very neat to strangers, people.
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1 J. McCain et al. «A Psychological Exploration of Engagement in Geek Culture». PLOS One, November, 2015.