Why are YOU a Geek?

[VileTerror]

I go to thinking . . . what events in my life took place to cement my identity as a geek?

 

Well, as it happens, there are probably some pretty significant factors which lead to that.  

I'm odd.  Not one to fit in with normal folks so well, geek culture of the '80s and '90s provided me with characters and scenarios which were appealing to my not-terribly-well-socialized self.

My mother was a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, Frank Hubert, and the original Star Trek.   When The Next Generation became a thing, she made DAMNED sure that my sister and I would watch every episode with her.  Likewise when the Dune miniseries came out.  And while she enjoys going to see movies all the time, she made certain that we all had tickets for opening night of each of the Peter Jackson Lord of the Ring films.  

Some of my earliest memories are gaming memories.  I remember mucking around with my dad's home office 386 while he was away.  We didn't have any actual games at first, but we had Broderbund PrintMaster.  I would use the pixel art editor to map out what I imagined as sidescrolling levels for an imaginary Batman game (as the Tim Burton movies had a pretty profound affect on me back then).  It would be a few more years before I actually programmed my first QBasic program, though.  

And, of course, when Doom came out . . . hooboy!  That's when my passion was cemented.  An older kid from school let me have his 3.5 inch floppies of Doom 2 with the CAD, WAD, and DEF editors.  I didn't have the artistic skill or patience to finish my total conversion, but I did made dozens of maps; some of which I'm still pretty proud of . . . if only I could find my old Zip Drive and a SCSI adaptor to retrieve them all.

 

How about you?  All of you.

Why are you a geek?

[Haijinx]

Probably started with Star Wars which came out when I was 7. 

 

That led to all sorts of science fiction, mainly books, also comics, etc.  

 

Network TV in general seemed boring by comparison, except for things like Trek and Dr Who.  

 

How many cop/hospital/rich people shows can you take?  

[Fan Mail]

When I got into paper/pencil/dice games (Ninjas and Superspies, Heroes Unlimted, Rift, TMNT, all of the Palladium genre and then a little D&D eventually) around middle school age, it was Geekdom from there. 

 

It got even worse when in High School Trig, I began creating/coding my own little simple games on my TI calculator.

Edited February 3, 2020 by tafilr

[Heraclea]

I grew up in Canada.  As such I was exposed to French very early.  The idea that there were languages other than English grew into a strong fondness for secret writing, hieroglyphics, codes and ciphers, archeological decipherments, and languages.  I have made three reasonably successful conlangs (constructed languages), several more imperfect ones, and dozens of secret alphabets.  And this in turn led to Tolkien in high school, and the rest is history. 

[EmmySky]

I enjoy learning.  Everything.

 

Plumbing..check

Star Trek..check

Geometry..check

Personal lives of old movie stars..check

 

I have a lot of useless knowledge and I like to accumulate more.  That seems to make me a geek.  😁

[The_Warpact]

Books...books made it happen. I love mysteries and this defined my life. I've read alot of books, and found myself drawn to history, myths, and anything fringe.

Then I saw a Dungeon Masters Guide and all of the sudden I experienced "want" and I had to have it. Then it led to people who played, then Star Wars (gives you an idea on my age), Atari, and as time passed so did my horizons. 

Anime, comic books, movies, video games, and of course books.

I like to know things, the mystery of it all, my wife says I have an encyclopedia wealth of useless information, Hermaeus Mora, Thoth, I can relate to them.

AND all geek stuff is good in some way shape or form imo.

 

[Marine X]

Grew up in Rural North Central Ohio, 3 VHf TV channels and 2 UHF. Not much to watch there but Doctor Who on PBS and old Trek. I collected comics and read a lot of science fiction. My Dad was born in 1918 but thought computers were where everything was going so in the 1970s bought us (  6 kids ) 2 Atari Computers and a game console. We learned Machine Language and Basic. Wrote our own programs and had a photo lab in basement with black / white and color developing. You would regret walking barefoot into my brothers bedroom  because you would end up with resistors and capacitors stuck in your feet from the shag carpet. He also made us all learn a musical instrument. So in High School at 6'4" 248 lbs ( with abs ) I played Baseball and in Band, the football coach could not get why I wasn't on the team. I then joined a Rock band called Sage at 17 ( everyone else in the band was 30+ ), we did Kansas, Boston, Styx, Journey and the like for Proms, Homecomings and Weddings. no bar gigs, just the good jobs.  Ended up in several bands after graduation and in college, finally ending up in Tone-X, a progressive original power pop band, We did some pretty cool gigs, opened for later versions of the Romantics, Blue Oyster Cult, Billy Idol and Night Ranger. Retired from playing around 2000 ( torn rotator cuff and our Guitarist moved to North Carolina ) . Have always had a good day job, but was getting bored without music to occupy my time when I saw " City of Heroes " on the new game shelf at Walmart. The rest they say is history. Does all this make me a geek? yeah, probably.

Edited February 15, 2020 by Marine X

[Ozarlin]

It's just the way I was raised really. I was introduced to my first game ever - Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - at the age of 4, and I just never looked back. I was too young at the time to really understand what to do, so I walked around a lot, and if I did have any progress at that time it's because I was carried by my uncle. But eventually I moved onto other games, Ocarina of Time to name one - Which is actually my favorite of the Zelda series.  Eventually in 2005 I played my first MMO, Runescape. I'm ashamed to say that now, but if I didn't play that, I probably wouldn't of ever played an MMO to begin with. I did originally buy the original City of Heroes when it launched, but I didn't know it was online, because I saw a review for it and just bought it. Wasn't able to play it though because money problems then, but eventually I did find my way to this game, was really sad at the amount of short time I had with this game once it went free to play but thanks to Homecoming, I can actually play this game again. I was also introduced to the drug addiction known as Magic The Gathering, and comic collecting, but I'm sure I'll get on that topic later!

[EmmySky]

New reason I am a geek:  spending 2 hours logging in all my 70 alts to ascertain creation date to add to my spreadsheet....then I will reorder my character select screen. 

 

😝

[ArchVileTerror]

Going to post your character list to the forums like V.V, Ry, and I have?

[Doc_Scorpion]

On 1/28/2020 at 8:10 PM, VileTerror said:

I go to thinking . . . what events in my life took place to cement my identity as a geek?

It all starts with Star Trek (TOS, on a black & white TV) and being able to step out onto our front lawn and see the contrails of the Apollo launches...  But I don't think there's really any single event, I've simply always been a geek and the seed fell on fertile ground.

(Plus, I'm more kinds of geek than you can shake a stick at.)

[EmmySky]

1 hour ago, ArchVileTerror said:

Going to post your character list to the forums like V.V, Ry, and I have?

No way!  That's how I preserve the mystery that is me 😝

 

Gotta be global friends to see my variety, and gotta happen across me in game to read each and every backstory!  Every girl has a story, some are quite good if I do say so myself!  Some need a little more work 😁

[Hyperstrike]

I'm not a bloody geek!

I
AM
A
NERRRRRRD!
(Hear me roar!)

[Doc_Scorpion]

10 hours ago, Hyperstrike said:

I'm not a bloody geek!

I
AM
A
NERRRRRRD!
(Hear me roar!)

I believe this applies here...

[ArchVileTerror]

See, I always found it to be the other way around.  Not only that, but also "nerd" tending to be used as a pejorative insult, while "geek" was a proud personal identifier.

[Coin]

1 hour ago, ArchVileTerror said:

See, I always found it to be the other way around.  Not only that, but also "nerd" tending to be used as a pejorative insult, while "geek" was a proud personal identifier.

This. So much this.

 

A geek loves what he loves. A nerds takes things faaaar too seriously 🙂

 

[EmmySky]

Can I be all three?

[VileTerror]

The mythical Nerdorgeek of ancient legend?

[EmmySky]

1 hour ago, VileTerror said:

The mythical Nerdorgeek of ancient legend?

Now you've given away my super secret identity!

 

😝

Edited April 24, 2020 by EmmySky
Everlasting shard has been invaded by Nerdorgeek.

[Techwright]

I was born on the premier date of one of the more popular episodes of the original Star Trek.  That pretty much doomed me to geekiness from then on.  

[ImpousVileTerror]

Which episode was that?

[Xeres]

I'm an IT person.

[tripthicket]

Many of you have listed the hobbies that you discovered and fell into with a willing passion. You speak of the year, of the availability of this or that interest, of the limiting circumstances that might have kept you from taking another path. But I'm willing to bet you all skipped the first part: who you were before all of that consumed you, much like my fires consumed me.

 

It was because I was an outsider.

 

I was shorter in stature than my peers, and a lot less athletic as well. I labored along with nearsightedness that somehow wasn't recognized until high school. I was a 'gifted child,' with all the later problems that would bring, both in the social arena and in my performance in just about everything. I have memories of my life before then, but at some point in late elementary school, they became sharper and clearer, and it's from that point I often felt alone. My core personality became built around wanting desperately to be part of the group and furiously scorning all that, deliberately making myself one of the outcast.

 

Lifelong reader of comic books. Original series Star Trek syndication reruns. Isaac Asimov started me off in science fiction. No, I take that back. In 4th grade, a student teacher read aloud to us from a book called A Wrinkle In Time. After that, all the science fiction my school library had, and on and on. Horror, too, starting with King's Carrie and Salem's Lot. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, its first month in theaters. Star Wars (the original, before it was called A New Hope). The Lord of the Rings. Heavy Metal magazine (as well as Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine). Roleplaying games, including the first boxed set of Dungeons & Dragons and a copy of Superhero 2044. And more, but I think you're getting the point. All of this while still in my teens, but I don't want to spend all night typing out the next few decades.

 

I wasn't fitting in in the world I kept waking up in, so I dived into all kinds of other worlds. Fast-forward to now:  I just this evening walked into a local gaming shop and bought the D&D 5E Players Handbook, with the vague intent that I would try to join a local group that plays there. That's a big deal for me, 'cause since I retired (-ish) about 6 years ago, and with the internet/cable TV at hand, I don't do a whole lot of leaving the house.

 

But to reiterate my underlying point: how many of you chose all of your myriad pathways because you felt like an outsider?

Edited July 6, 2020 by tripthicket

[ImpousVileTerror]

I made no bones about hiding that I was an outsider too.  Heh, it was part of my opening.

"Well, as it happens, there are probably some pretty significant factors which lead to [being a geek]."

"I'm odd.  Not one to fit in with normal folks so well ..."

 

But, hey!  Yeah . . . poor eye-sight that wasn't recognized by others until I was in high school.   I could have used glasses for YEARS, but alas it took quite some time for the adults in my life to clue in.

[Fire Chief]

I was social distancing before social distancing was cool...just let me alone with my comic books 🙂