Geek Pride Day

So this morning, I woke up to Hitler and maniacal laughter. Luckily, the day has gotten better from there.

It's Geek Pride Day today. Yes, of course, I'm celebrating it.

On This Day In History:

• Star Wars: A New Hope was released.
• It's Towel Day, Douglas Adams fans. Bring your towel!
• It's also the Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May, Terry Pratchett fans. Grab your lilac!

So, anyway, I'm using a relaxed dress-code pass today, to celebrate at school. I'm wearing my Doctor Who t-shirt (A Tale of a Mad Man with a Box), I have my sonic screwdriver:

 

Yep. Tenth Doctor FTW

And finally, I have three different colors of Converse on, in commemoration of Tennant's sublime awesomeness. One shoe blue, one shoe black, and then red Converse rip-off socks.  

I'm also considering running out and grabbing a lilac, for the Glorious Twenty-Fifth, because there are no lilacs near my house. Except I don't think there are any lilacs on school grounds either. Bugger. 

Geeks are underappreciated, I think. Yes, everyone knows a geek, and most of the people reading this (Hi, spam bots!) will consider themselves geeks. However, no one really takes the time to consider just how cool geekiness is. No, that's not a contradiction in terms. People consider geeks to be either semi-aloof, Apple-using, hardcore coding, Windows-hating tech wizards, or anti-social, obsessed, nasally hackers and trolls living in a basement somewhere. Maybe some are. Actually, scratch that, some definitely are. However, that's not what geekiness is about. Being a geek is about loving something not part the mainstream, either something new and cool that hasn't quite reached the tipping point needed to send it into mass consumption, or something old and under-appreciated. The geek icons that everyone thinks of when declaring themselves to be a geek - Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Apple - were all underdogs at one point or another. A New Hope was supposed to be a one-off movie. The scrolling text at the beginning was added in after the premier. Star Trek was cancelled after only a couple of seasons, but fan outcry brought it back with NG and the many, many movies. The Lord of the Rings became an underground movement long before it became a set of epic-length, hugely popular movies. Apple started by facing off with Microsoft. Underdogs, every one, whose fans helped bring them to the popular eye. Geeks loved them first, and helped to popularize them to the point where they're the gateway drugs of the geek world.

There are other geeky fandoms, too. Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, Firefly and  Futurama, A Very Potter Musical and the Rocky Horror Picture Show are all examples. Geeks making stuff for geeks (example: The people writing Futurama episodes once created a new math theorem for the plot of a single episode. Yeah, that's as awesome as you think it is). We are our own culture, creating communities based around, not silly things like skin color nor how much money anyone makes, nor even where we live, but rather the complete awesomeness of that last episode of Doctor Who, or the creepy little easter eggs in that one game you play, or anything else you could think of. Geeks do cool things because they love other cool things. It's a coolness cycle.

So. Go read something geeky. Go rewatch Doctor Who. Go play with your Xbox or Wii or 3DS. Be a geek: contribute to the cycle of coolness.