Geek Points
Jul. 3rd, 2011 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithSo today I was scrolling through my Facebook stuff, and my friend Craig R. Wyant -- who hooked up with me on the naturalist side of things rather than spirituality, said this about the new Greenhaven website:
"You have really put a lot of work into your new website. It is very elegant."
Of course that made me frisk around the room. I had to ask if he meant that in the geek sense of 'concise and usable' or the everyday sense of 'visually appealing and graceful' and he said both.
Someone actually gave me a geek-specific compliment on my webcrafting. I don't think I was ever expecting that, since my manipulation of cyberspace is far more analog than it is digital. It is what I was aiming for, in terms of creating a good website; I know the parameters that geeks admire in a well-crafted site. I just didn't expect to get close enough, with my level of computer skill, for anyone to hand out what's a rather high level of praise for technical as well as aesthetic merit. But I am utterly thrilled. I have scored geek points. I am happy now. *happydance*
Thinking about this, and about our recent discussion of "Nerds and Geeks," it occurs to me that there are some terms which are earned in one way or another. I think of "geek" not just as a descriptive but as a performative. For me it's in the category of things I won't claim personally, but will accept if someone else chooses to describe me that way, because I consider it to be a social-acclaim term and I consider myself to be on the fringes of it. It'd be kind of presumptuous of me to lay claim to that when I can't code, for instance. Now it's not as far into social-acclaim as, say, "computer wizard," but it does lean in that direction.
So then I'm inclined to look for things that are characteristic of such a term or role, and mentally award points when they occur, which pushes a given example closer to the core of the term, as the example moves through semantic space and crosses boundaries among different definitions. Building a website earns geek points. That's a straightforward task. But having someone else describe it as "elegant" is worth more -- it's an outside assessment, and it uses a term with register-specific connotations. ("Elegant" in geek register implies some combination of efficient, concise, logical, high-performance, user-friendly, bug-free, technically ept, and attractive.) I am most sensitive to these things in areas where I inhabit a border zone. If the identity is solidly demonstrated already, outside assessment is minor or irrelevant; if the identity is in flux, mixed, or tentative then multiple perspectives help map its current position and are much more valuable.
It is an example of the collective effect of language. You are what you define yourself to be; but you also are what others describe you to be. Another aspect is that you are what you do. Personal stance, social role, performance. All of us define ourselves as we move through the world, shaping ourselves to fit through it and bending it around us as we go along. Some of the shapes are obvious and solid. But others are smoke and fire, their shapes emerging only through our actions and interactions.
Cool.
"You have really put a lot of work into your new website. It is very elegant."
Of course that made me frisk around the room. I had to ask if he meant that in the geek sense of 'concise and usable' or the everyday sense of 'visually appealing and graceful' and he said both.
Someone actually gave me a geek-specific compliment on my webcrafting. I don't think I was ever expecting that, since my manipulation of cyberspace is far more analog than it is digital. It is what I was aiming for, in terms of creating a good website; I know the parameters that geeks admire in a well-crafted site. I just didn't expect to get close enough, with my level of computer skill, for anyone to hand out what's a rather high level of praise for technical as well as aesthetic merit. But I am utterly thrilled. I have scored geek points. I am happy now. *happydance*
Thinking about this, and about our recent discussion of "Nerds and Geeks," it occurs to me that there are some terms which are earned in one way or another. I think of "geek" not just as a descriptive but as a performative. For me it's in the category of things I won't claim personally, but will accept if someone else chooses to describe me that way, because I consider it to be a social-acclaim term and I consider myself to be on the fringes of it. It'd be kind of presumptuous of me to lay claim to that when I can't code, for instance. Now it's not as far into social-acclaim as, say, "computer wizard," but it does lean in that direction.
So then I'm inclined to look for things that are characteristic of such a term or role, and mentally award points when they occur, which pushes a given example closer to the core of the term, as the example moves through semantic space and crosses boundaries among different definitions. Building a website earns geek points. That's a straightforward task. But having someone else describe it as "elegant" is worth more -- it's an outside assessment, and it uses a term with register-specific connotations. ("Elegant" in geek register implies some combination of efficient, concise, logical, high-performance, user-friendly, bug-free, technically ept, and attractive.) I am most sensitive to these things in areas where I inhabit a border zone. If the identity is solidly demonstrated already, outside assessment is minor or irrelevant; if the identity is in flux, mixed, or tentative then multiple perspectives help map its current position and are much more valuable.
It is an example of the collective effect of language. You are what you define yourself to be; but you also are what others describe you to be. Another aspect is that you are what you do. Personal stance, social role, performance. All of us define ourselves as we move through the world, shaping ourselves to fit through it and bending it around us as we go along. Some of the shapes are obvious and solid. But others are smoke and fire, their shapes emerging only through our actions and interactions.
Cool.
