Aww, c'mon, what's wrong with a little hentai now and then? Naughty tentacles are our friends.....uh, I mean, no, BAD tentacles! Leave that cat-girl alone! Shoo, shoo!

<natowarhead pulls out his hammer and makes a full-round attack against said monster and cat-girl. doen't stop until they are bloddy, pulpy stains on the carpet.>

Okay, new topic.

i recently attended a movie convention and noticed something unusual.
There was more animosity between the star wars fanatics and the Trekkies. i'm talking more contention than if you put eight M:TG players in an arena with eight yugi-FRIGGIN'-oh... and they all had swords... and pikes... long pikes.

any thoughts on this.

EDIT- i'm only talking about the die-hard, all-my-movies-or-nothing fans. anyone can reply though.

Funny, I don't find the viewing of Anime as being a Geek pastime. Nor playing Magic, nor watching Sci-Fi. These are all pastimes that millions upon millions enjoy and a large amount of them watch and play them in moderation.

Now I'm a geek and I'm not going to say I'm not. But just because I watch a ton of Anime, play a ton of games, make multiple Magic Decks and enjoy Star Trek doesn't mean everyone who likes one of these things is a Geek because I am. -_-

When the average geek calls himself a geek, he is absolutely not trying to insult those more casual fans of nerdy pastimes. It is more of a symbol of pride, like embracing one's ethnicity. It is my personal conviction that almost everybody has a "geeky" obsession about something, whether it's being able to identify the make and model of every pickup truck ever manufactured, knowing what some pop idol eats for breakfast on Thursdays, or having the fabulous ability to list every D&D sorceror/wizard spell, from 0th to 9th level, sorted by school of magic. This is why it is important to be tolerant to other social groups; it's all the same.

Damn. Even I can't do that. My thing is a kinda general knowledge about everything, a random encyclopedic knowledge in quantom physics that I don't know how I know, and a greater-than-average knowledge of Tolkien's writings.

Edit: Oh, and the ability to descern the era, and often the composer of any classical piece I hear.

My geek skills?
Pl-l34R MY L337 Dl\lD 5l<lLLZ!! 3y3 7l/\lNl< MY PC 2 d4 M4X!!
I also read lots of webcomics, and can read LeetSpeak

Well, it ain't for lack of tryin' on my part.

Anyway, judging from the posts here, I think I'm only about a level 3-4 geek, with plenty of points into my video game skills but only the basics in anime, sci-fi, comics (specialty in web-based) and pen & paper/collectible card games. I need to put together another magic deck and get those episodes of RahXephon that someone recommended so I can level up!

Although, those 2 years of computer programming classes did give me a few levels to my nerd class. Dual class 4eva!

all this talk brings back a nagging question in mind.

what is the actual definition of a geek or nerd? no, demon with a glass hand, not the dictionary's rodent eater, but the social definition. if you read back on nerd2nerd and here, we have mainly given discriptions and "sub-classes" of them. we have never really defined them.

as for my idea... i find it impossible to define what i and most of my friends are. it just "is". can anyone else take a crack at the definition?

Ask 1000 people, get 1000 answers.

so very true. how can you ask for us to put a definition to something that is so widely applied? it's like asking a person to write a book about life. where the "friggin heck" do you start?

EDIT-- aren't most definitions descriptions anyway?