Patton Oswalt's "Wake up, Geek Culture. Time to die." - Page 2

A geek generation gap. That's totally what's happening. Scott Pilgrim doesn't hit young people's sweet spot because they don't know that enemies explode into coins or de-rez when you kill them.

I think it is worth chasing. They're just using the wrong bait. A revamped Star Trek pulled people in like gangbusters, because the original had a life beyond, "Hey, remember that TV show we used to watch?" Who's honestly thought much about TRON in the last 30 years? Or Clash of the Titans? Beyond the odd nostalgic re-watch, and beyond the hard-core fans who, most likely, will shun any attempt at a revival anyway?

You might be right, but it seemed to me that geekdom was pretty cold on "Michael Bay's" Star Trek until word came out that it was actually a lot of fun. I think a lot of the mainstream success was down to it getting a reputation as a fun escapist jaunt at a time when most other blockbusters that year were moping about sulking. The Star Trek name was still pretty poisoned - if it had been a stodgy bore like Nemesis or whatever I bet it could've easily have been that year's Tron 2.

I'm kind of torn on this issue, mostly because I find a lot of Patton's points very salient, particularly how easy it is these days to become fully immersed in something. It's not that it's a bad thing that people can get really into something in a weekend, in fact, in a lot of ways, I think it's pretty fantastic. Where I have issues with it is the idea that oftentimes, people who jump into something in so short an amount of time, have not had the proper time to really let it all sink in.

In the article, Patton mentions Lovecraft in particular. Personally, I'd rather talk to someone who has read the complete short stories and poems of Lovecraft, someone who has taken the time to think about the stories and draw connections between then, rather than someone who read the Chtulhu mythos wiki article. The time for synthesis and thought is hugely important in creating opinions and insightful observations. Otherwise, you're just regurgitating shit you saw somewhere.

I should also add that I just read Harry's article on this whole thing over at AICN, and, if this is the face of Geek Culture, it needs to DIE FUCKING DIE. It's seriously the worst written, least thought out thing that I have come across in my life.

Why in the world would someone want to emulate Kane's compulsion to make up for his lack of human interaction with mindless consumption? I mean, that's one of the creepiest parts of that movie - this huge, lonely, practically abandoned mansion filled to the brim with random stuff and only one lonely guy who has given up on life. Am I way off base here, or something?

I thought you were just spewing hyperbole until I checked it out for myself. I only got through part of it, but damn. It's basically four pages of him talking about how cool he is.

A really personally interesting side effect of reading these articles is that I'm leaning towards not considering myself a "geek" anymore. It sounds like elitism is a necessary condition for certified geek status, and I'm really trying to move away from that kind of thinking.

This isn't going to stop, though, it's just that the windows are shrinking. People with more time to consider what they consumed will always have more nuanced, complex opinions about it. But it is taking people progressively less time to develop those opinions.

Which seems to be what's bothering Patton, much as I love him. The driving force of the article seems to be irritation that the knowledge of superhero comics he amassed over the course of a decade doesn't have the same cache now that coozestercockbrun92 has access to any given issue at the click of a mouse. And to that, I again refer you to my shower drain.

The generation prior to Oswalt probably would've complained about how these damned kids don't play outside and use their imaginations anymore.

This thread reminds me of that piece Devin did a while back pining for the days when porn was harder to come by for a horny teenage boy.

Assuming that everything does eventually become equally accessible (a long shot-- how's that 1960s Batman box-set release coming along?) there's still the loss of random exposure. People will, by and large, only encounter things that they search for on purpose, only locate what they expect to find.

There's also the gap between what we in the internet loop(s) consider 'common knowledge' and what the global average actually knows. The specialization and personalization of entertainment (and news) sources insulates us from unwelcome opinions and topics. It's easy to feel like everyone has identical information when we only communicate within subsets (Oswalt's article went up in Wired, not Newsweek). But in the real world? Half the people I work with have never heard of a LOLcat.

As an aside, I just want to thank Schwartz for giving us 'coozstercockbrun92'. Damn near tempted to change my name to that.

This is a good point. You have to force-engineer this these days, intentionally take your hands off the steering wheel so to speak. And weather the result.

Or just a simple willingness to try new things and have an adventurous spirit. How easy is it to turn off the internet in your home? Or use it for work-related purposes only?

Like Hammerhead pointed out, half of the people he works with doesn't even speak basic cyberspace. I don't know about anyone else here, but I could very easily be that way in regards to film or pop culture, as I have no form of broadcast television in my house and CHUD is pretty much my only window into current movie events. If I stopped checking this site, I'd have no clue what movies were coming out when, starring who.

This kind of spoiler-free lifestyle lets me experience culture on my own apart from loud and obnoxious advertising, and I like that. Some people get more enjoyment out of plugging in and removing the "random element" in their socialization. I don't think there's a wrong way to do it, but those who prefer that randomness will find a natural, not forced, way of balancing out all of this mass information.

But taking less time to develop these opinions leads to a bunch of people who only know half of what they are talking about. Here's an example for you, pulled from my own personal life. I've been studying American Literature, on a serious, academic level for six or seven years now. In that time, I've come to love and appreciate southern literature more and more, particularly "Southern Gothic." I spent literally years reading everything that I could get my hands on, and it wasn't until a year or so ago that I started making connections between the way the body is portrayed in Southern Literature and the religious undertones associated with that.

Now, here's the thing. Anyone googling for something can come across my post and then repeat what I've said. But, unless they've immersed themselves in the actual writings, they have no idea what they're talking about. It would be all blind regurgitation in which they would probably think that I'm talking about Faulkner or McCullers when really I'm talking about O'Conner and McCarthy.

Like I said earlier, it's fantastic that we all have access to all kinds of information, but on some level, with so much information available to us, it becomes that much harder for people to reach past the surface level, which is what I think Patton is (rightly) bemoaning.

People who base their conversation around a post they read on the internet were always going to be boring. How is this different than someone trying to pass off a conversation they overheard as their own?

Yeah, I don't think Oswalt quite gets to this point. The ready availability of geek touchstones via the Internet is one end of the issue but the lack of interest from geeks in anything outside of geek culture is the other. And that's a better explanation for the cannibalization we see now. That applies to worn out geeks tired of the regurgitation as well the younger set: If something can't hold your interest because there aren't robots, zombies, or dudes in tights punching people in it, then you need to grow up a little.

I get that feeling whenever someone tries to argue vehemently that their pet geek distractions (video games, graphic novels, etc.) are serious art. Do those people have any actual interest whatsoever in anything traditionally considered art? Not an encyclopedic knowledge of it but any genuine love or appreciation for a particular artist or even a single work. If they don't, and too often that's apparently the case, they have no business attempting to define art for anyone.

Moreover, that narrow set of influences they draw their inspiration from becomes evident in their own output. So we end up with the Nth generation version of the same crap. And sometimes without even the little unique spin on the subject matter that's supposed to justify revisiting the material.

People have been dumb and shallow for millenia. That they can now add a shallow understanding of Micronauts alongside their dumbass views on religion, history, politics, medicine and race relations doesn't strike me as a particularly new or serious issue.

You're asking the wrong crowd...

This is what I was getting at. Boring people have always existed and they always will. People who bother learning and love diving into things are always going to be there too. Things tend to stay in an equilibrium, no matter what new fangled piece of tech might come up.