Geek Myths: Technologies, Masculinities, Globalizations

TLDR: In this paper, a social event organized by the student society in the geography school where I work was described as a "Dress Like a Geek" party, where the theme of the party was to "dress like a geek".

Abstract: I’m pulling this chapter together around the time of two events-one global (at least in its coverage), the other distinctly local-that resonate with the paradox of the geek. The fi rst is the death (and strange afterlife) of Steve Jobs, the founder and former CEO of Apple Inc., usually fi gured as an archetypal geek. Jobs’s death has led to endless media discussion of his life and style, his views and his impact on many people’s lives. Like Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates, Jobs appears in most geek histories as personifying a key moment in the tale: the moment when geeks got rich (Feineman 2005; Varma 2007). The local event that also resonates with the key themes in my chapter was a social event organized by the student society in the geography school where I work. The theme of the party? “Dress Like a Geek”. I overheard some of my students discussing how they’d do this, what geek attire looks like-and they were all able to boil “geek” down to a handful of sartorial signifi ers. So Jobs’s obituaries celebrated what Jon Katz (2000) calls “the geek ascension”, yet a class of geography students can still comfortably and comically parody geekiness on a night out. There’s the geek paradox, the oxymoron captured in the tag “geek chic”.