Because Ken asked....,

Ken S., who, despite all the crap he takes on his site seems to be a real sweetheart, did the geek test and tagged me.

So I did it.

Damn, that was long. I'm more used to those stupid Quizilla things (with their incorrect grammar and references to pop culture things that make me shrug in confusion) that are about eight questions long.

But I took the test, and I came up 20.9073% geek - between Geek and Total Geek (and I agree; Total should have been a higher class; the third step should have been Major Geek. Do I get more geek points for making that observation?)

That said - some of the questions on the test - like the one about knowing the chemical symbols for >10 elements - well, I'd just take that as a hallmark of having a decent education. And some of the questions, like the ones about "have you read history on your own" seem to suggest that "geek" is merely a synonym for "person who is NOT dumber than a sack of hammers."

But whatever.

I'd have liked to seen some classification into types of geekdom. I know I'm a geek, but I'm an academic/learning/science geek and definitely not a computer geek. (When my computer breaks, I don't open it up and go, "Let's see if I can fix this." I call someone whose job it is to fix it). I'm also not into Sci-fi (or, as a friend once very seriously insisted, SF, because "sci-fi" is what people say to deride it).

Let me take a stab at categories. I know some of these will overlap, for example, computer geeks are very often gaming geeks:

Computer geeks
Band geeks
SF geeks
Comic geeks
Fantasy geek
Gaming geeks
Trivia nut geeks
Learning for the sake of learning geeks (that's me, more than any of these other things)
Theater geeks
Band geeks
Math geeks
Goth geeks (the ones who want to be vampires, etc.)
Science geeks (I guess I'd be one of those too)
Food geeks
Natural/healthist geeks

I'm sure there are more.

I don't know that "geek" is such a pejorative...most of the people I know who are geeks flaunt it proudly. And thinking back to high school - the petri dish for all social interaction - there were the geeks and the populars. And you know? The populars by and large tended to be kind of ratty to other people, especially non-populars. Whereas geeks, probably by virtue of the fact that they didn't feel the need to impress anyone, tended to be really nice people. The kind of people who, for example, if the lock on your bike jammed, would sit down and figure out a way to fix it for you, rather than just shrugging and either saying, "Sucks to be you!" or suggesting you call someone.

I think also a lot of self-proclaimed (or otherwise) geeks are comfortable manipulating THINGS. I know I am. I'm happiest when I'm making stuff or when I'm playing with data. Human interactions, not so much. I'm not always so hot at interpreting the subcontexts in what people are saying; I tend to take people at face value which can lead to embarrassing situations, for example, responding in earnest when someone is making a joke. (I honestly wonder sometimes - I know there is a whole "autistic spectrum" ranging from normal to so severely impaired that you cannot function as a human - if I'm not a bit farther towards the autistic end than other people who are out in society: my discomfort with "unscripted" interaction, my rigidity of schedule, the fact that I'm more comfortable working with data or soil or embroidery floss or fabric or food than I am with people. And in the past I'd occasionally have that compulsion to sometimes parrot things I'd just heard [I can suppress it now, but as a child, not so much]...)

I don't know. I do know that being a geek, when you're among geeks, is a happy thing. But when you're among people who were more like the "populars" of high school, not so much. The "populars" make me feel weird and kind of gray and awkward...like there's some secret knowledge people are supposed to have that I lack.

Which is probably why I mostly hang out with other people who would self-describe as geeks.