*update* I’ve received my Kindle and it feels like a huge step down from my Kindle 3. I’m going to give it a couple of days, but I think I’ll probably end up sending it back.

*double update* You can totally support to Instapaper for a dollar a month if you wish.

My first experience with the newsletter went like this: I signed up and forgot about it. When the first issue arrived, I wondered why I had subscribed to yet another newsletter when I didn’t have time to read the ones I was already getting. I buried it. Then I read the second one the next day and immediately went back to find the previous issue. Now Dave’s is the only email I get from someone I don’t know that I’m actually excited to see in my inbox. It’s a small treat for cutting through all that email chaff. Like wheat, but more fun.

I honestly can’t recommend Next Draft enough. If you’re reading my site but not his, you are going against the natural order of the internet and should restore balance to this fragile ecosystem by checking out Tweetage Wasteland.

Filing Surfer Blood under things I don’t get.

— thomas dunlap (@spladow) March 27, 2012

It’s been a day. Totally get it now.

A big chunk of the fun I’ve had come from talking to people via text and Twitter. I think another sign of how much people want to talk about it is how often I’m seeing people posting screen shots from their games.

The game has been so massively popular as is, and they were just bought by Zynga, so who knows what will happen. I just think it would be a good addition. It’s a feature I can see leaving out to launch on a deadline, but it’s one of those features that would hurt on a personal level to have to omit if I was a team member.

I wanted to post a couple of my favorites here. I’m obviously cherry picking pretty hard, but you can read the whole conversation back on Reddit if you’re interested.

ThackeryBinx:

To be honest, I wouldn’t mind having all things “geeky” go mainstream/bandwagon even if the reasons aren’t legitimate. It is really hard for me to enjoy my geeky hobbies as a girl without judgement at every turn. And I’m not just talking about people accusing me of being a “fake geek girl” which happens as soon as you aren’t absolutely the best/expert at something, even if you’re having tons of fun not winning/excelling. I tried getting into playing Magic, and after one tournament where I beat several guys who gave me death glares, and just in general had some sexist conversations, I pretty much got scared away for good. If more girls faked being into these kinds of hobbies, at least the guys would GET USED TO GIRLS AROUND. And then girls who actually like the stuff can stick around.

alymai:

Thank you so much for posting this! Most of the time I pursue my interests alone at home or online. I’m often too intimidated to join community events for fear of being ‘not legitimately good enough’. When it comes to things like playing chess, I feel so much pressure to play exceptionally well so that I can disprove any preconceived notions. It’s so stressful that I never end up meeting any new people to play with.

Merlin posted these tweets

Here’s a word: sextodecimestrial.I totally made it up.I just want *something* to show up when people Google it tomorrow.Anyway.Hi.

— Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies) March 29, 2012

Seriously. You guys should use a LOT more whitespace.At least on a sextodecimestrial basis.

— Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies) March 29, 2012

Made perfect sense to me. But the word has been totally co-opted and overused to the point where it’s meaningless. I remember when things were pure, 50 minutes ago. Now look at the results for sextodecimestrial. “The ‘S’ in ‘SEO’ stands for ‘sextodecimestrial’”? It is clearly a new word that describes space and time. sextodecimestrial use of whitespace, for example, refers to the actual amount of whitespace used, as well as the pace at which you introduce it. GAWD.

I yearn for the simpler times of those first seventy minutes.

But I have some major problems with this post, which I’ve already talked to Tara about on Twitter. That should be enough, but I thought I could do a better job of explaining why I think the article does some things that I don’t think Tara set out to do, and which Tara would probably argue it doesn’t actually do at all.

First of all, let’s look at the title, Dear Fake Geek Girls: Please Go Away, which sets the tone as decidedly confrontational. But only at “fake” geek girls, mind you. Actual geek girls have nothing to worry about. Herein lies the problem though. Before we even go into the question of what a “real” or “fake” geek is, we have to acknowledge that we just created a world where such things exist. Even if the reader never gets past this title, the reader can safely assume that there are different classes of geeks occupying a real and fake space, and there is probably some way to tell the difference, possibly featuring some sort of arbiter of geekiness. And girl geeks (exclusively) are bound to wonder whether someone thinks they are fake or not, and whether someone will want them to go away too.

But we quickly get into it. Tara gives her geek bonafides, Henry Rollins fandom, Transformers, Girl Guides, Sierra Online. I know Tara a little, and she’s got way more than that, but this is an interesting list. If you listen to Henry Rollins’ radio show, you know he is a huuuuuge music geek. The ratio of music to him telling all sorts of factoids about tracks is probably about 1:1. In addition to the spoken word work she refers to, Rollins is viewed as the definitive Black Flag singer. He shared the title with some of the greatest frontmen in punk rock, but ultimately became the face synonymous with the band. And back in the day you had to be a geek to even know that. You had to have the right friends, know the right places to go, and track down the right zines to keep up with punk bands. It wasn’t, and still isn’t really, very girl friendly, and people established in the scene questioned your credibility. They didn’t like posers. Or people from out of town.

The list is interesting because of how diverse it is. You’ve got punk rock, which is its own scene; Transformers, which is kind of classic geek pop culture; Girl Guides, which I’m not familiar with; and Sierra Online, representing gaming.

If being geeky has to do with having a deep interest in something or liking something to an obsessive degree, than a geek is probably somebody who likes a lot of things to an obsessive degree, or has a deep interest in a lot of topics. But who is to say what topics count and what topics are required? There’s a lot of stuff to like out there and people are bound to have some gaps.

I thought being called a geek meant you liked something so much that you were willing to forgo social outings and popularity. That still seems to be the case, but the once coveted term is now being used as a marketing gimmick, and those who truly deserve the label are lost in the noise.

I can’t even begin to understand this. Do I stay home at night because I’m excited to be learning about something or partaking in a hobby? Sure, sometimes. But those hobbies and interests are also the center of a lot of my socializing. And I bet they are for other people too. Bring over your computer for a LAN party. Let’s go to the comic book store together and talk shop with the staff. Want to go to a coffee conference and talk to coffee geeks about whatever coffee geeks talk about? The perfect pull, maybe? That is a rich life. And I guarantee that when you go to one of these places or do one of these things without a hardcore clique behind you, there are going to be some people who are less knowledgable, but who are enthusiastic and eager to learn.

Which is why this part of Tara’s piece bugs me

If you are otaku-obsessed about something, keep doing what you love and share with others that have the same passionate interest as you.And if you think something is interesting but aren’t willing to put the time and effort into understanding it deeply or becoming extremely skillful at it, do everyone a favor and call yourself what you are: a casual hobbyist

She’s talking about being humble here, which I generally agree with as the way to go. But I don’t agree that we should make people worried about being effusive. When you’re learning about something, sometimes you don’t even know what there is left to learn. As my geeky co-workers who love correcting me would say, “There are unknown unknowns.” I think you’re more likely to turn around and realize that you’re a noob than you are to realize you’re a grand master geek. And the person at the comic book convention for the first time or who just started using a stop watch to keep track of how long it takes to make a cup of coffee may not be a geek, but they sure are doing something geeky. The hobbyist is a geek in training, and I would say telling a geek in training that they aren’t doing it right is just damaging and discouraging and unnecessary. I also find the fact that this is somehow a favor to me to be particularly unsettling.

And I don’t think Tara is really trying to say this; from her responses, it looks like she is trying to tell people to do what they love for its own reward. Once I knew that’s what I was looking for, I could find the parts that show her goals, like right here:

Girls who genuinely like their hobby or interest and document what they are doing to help others, not garner attention, are true geeks.

or here:

Dig deep, dig to the roots, dig until you know things that others you admire in the subject matter don’t know or can’t do.

But both of those selections seem so bogged down by the baggage that comes with her accusations of people being “deceitful” about being a geek to get attention, or to benefit somehow from appearing to be a geek, and the idea that the label geek is some sort of merit badge you can earn and slap on your shoulder, that I still have trouble picking out where the article gets into “follow your dreams” territory because I’m so hung up on the idea in the last paragraph that we should find some new secret knock for us “real geeks” so all the posers can’t get in the clubhouse.

I’m like a thousand words in and I haven’t even touched on gender yet. That’s how crazy I think this is.

A lot of the subcultures that lend themselves to geekish obsessing are male dominated for some reason. And as a male who was into a bunch of geeky things, I can tell you that men have been dismissing females’ interests/perspectives/contributions for a long time. When one man agrees with a woman’s argument in some geek debate, it’s not uncommon to hear a losing man say something along the lines of, “You’re just agreeing with her because you like her/think she’s pretty/[lewd suggestion].” It’s not uncommon to hear men question a girl’s cred and say that she’s just making grabs for male attention. Even when guys don’t do this, I know that the fact that women are usually outnumbered in these communities can make them feel like their place is less than secure, especially when they are starting out. Which is why I’m afraid that even raising the notion of fake geek girls is damaging to women getting involved in hobbies and groups. If you are concerned about geek girl witch hunts, it stands to reason that you’re much more likely to shut yourself off. And for what? The scenario Tara seems most worried about is some .01% of the population that’s “marketing” themselves. Sure, some celebrities pretend to like things they don’t to promote a movie or keep them in the running for a role in a TV show, but how does that affect your day to day life? If you see someone you don’t think is genuine, avoid them. I just solved every geek’s problem. You don’t need to try to tear someone down just because they might lack the right foundation in geek history, or because, for whatever reason, you don’t think the joy they claim to derive from something is genuine enough.

What really pains me here is that girls are singled out, because boys apparently don’t pretend to be geeks. I’d counter that maybe we just don’t challenge boys as much. Let’s choose something pop culture-y, because it’s easy. I’m going to go with Spider-Man.

Say we see a guy walking around in a Spider-Man t-shirt. We probably think that he grew up on Spiderman and really likes the character. He’s just like us. We give him the nod. Good day, gentleman of distinguishing comic book taste. Now we see a girl wearing a Spider-Man shirt. She’s attractive. The shirt is kind of tight. But not any tighter than a plain shirt that plenty of girls wear. Not tighter than a normal shirt marketed to women. Does she really like Spider-Man, or is this supposed to be a super hero powered sexy ice breaker for the Spider-Man shirt guy we just saw? When did she start reading Spider-Man? Has she read all the back issues? Does she know the difference between Amazing and Spectacular Spider-Man? We have lots of questions. Maybe we’ll ask her. But we’re already suspicious and, unless she’s perfect, we will find her responses lacking because we already kind of made up our minds beforehand. She didn’t know anything about Spectacular Spider-Man. A-ha! Well, maybe that’s because she thinks Spectacular Spider-Man sucks. And guess what, that guy just liked the movies. But we didn’t ask him any questions. His rep is still intact in our minds.

But all of this is moot anyway, because the only questions we need to ask are, “So what?”, “Who fucking cares?”, and “How is this not a caustic environment for women?”

So Google wrote to my zeldman.com address, which they won’t allow me to associate with my Google+ address, to invite me to start a Google+ account (which I already have) on my zeldman.com account, which they won’t support. And if I do that (which I can’t), and some other complicated stuff, they promise that I will then be able to participate in Google IO, whatever that is.

Kind of dying. This is pretty sad.

The barbs aren’t always jokes, either. Sometimes, it’s attempts to push me into a traditionally ‘female’ role. As the woman, I’ve been the only person in the group asked to put together a pot luck (presumably, this work is beneath the males). I’ve been the only one asked to take notes in a meeting… even if I’m the one who’s presenting (because my title really should be ‘secretary who we let on the servers’).

One of the good things about the recent sexist PR debacles that Sqoot and Geeklist brought on is that I think a lot of people are forced to think about themselves. Those tearing them down and making absolutist claims feel a twinge of nervousness as the think of a time they’ve made an offensive joke or been dismissive of a woman in the workplace. I personally have had a couple of “Oh shit” moments in the last day, just by explaining the what happened to other people. I might not have done exactly what these other guys did, but I am guilty in my own ways.

Another great thing is that posts like the one above by Katie Cunningham end up getting linked more. It puts those mistakes you and I both thought were tiny and just, like, that one time, into their larger context as a part of an extended, career length, grating experience. I selected that passage because I think that’s a great example of something really subtle. It really wouldn’t take much to go from “It’s awesome that x team member brings in cookies sometimes!” to “We need someone to run this potluck. Remember that time X team members brought in cookies for fun? She’s a natural choice to put this together.”