I’m geeking out over this thread, so I guess that makes me a geek. At least I’m not a spaz, like Justine.

Off-topic: Do you happen to know the difference between a geek and a nerd? I’m confused.

Have a lovely day!

But no matter how geeky I am, I’m not a dork or a nerd. Nerds are more fact, whereas geeks are more into fiction. Dork’s are just socially inept.

That is a very…very hard question. I guess it just depends. I am a fan in most cases, with books that is. I have many books and different shows that I recommended and can talk about. Yet, at the same time I know when to draw the time when I start to cross the border of having no life.

Though, I am a geek on a few series of books and some television shows where I cross the line and make plenty of references through out the day that affect how I live life and the decisions I make.

-sigh- Admitting it is the first step in getting help for some and for others it is a sense of pride.

Like my sister calls me a geek all the time because I choose to sit and read the Uglies trilogy books in the quiet over and over(which usually takes me like a day which makes it more geeky) rather than maybe getting on the computer and talking on facebook
but i on the other hand think I am a fan of the books and the author. and the only reason i read them over and over is so i can entertain myself whole im waiting for scott to write extas so i can have more!!

i think the difference between a fan and a geek is a geek and some who does it all the time with everything and a fan is someone who does it only with certain things like if i was to read everything all the time and that was all i did than i would be a geek///but if i just read maybe one trilogy and did other things beside read all the time than i would be a fan

i can’t do that. even the things i love the very most in the whole world (like jim henson and diana wynne jones and the west wing) have had crappy moments, and i don’t deny them.

i don’t feel techy enough to be a geek, but i definitely see myself as a nerd. i’ve always thought as the two of them as being computer-geek and book-nerd. (although i know some people see it as the other way around).

i’m a wannabe-geek-book-nerd.

are you some kind of geek or something?

I’m loath to give a precise definition for these, since they seem to me to be subcultures, and inclusive ones — praise be that “Who is a Geek?” does not generally end up a fraught question subject to convoluted legal reasoning, in the manner of “Who is a Jew?” (or “Who is a Punk?”)

But, with that caveat, geekiness seems to inhere in the quality of immoderate, joy-filled, obsessive enthusiasm for pursuits, ideas, and things that are some combination of esoteric, analytical, complex, unusual, witty, and/or amenable to optimization, coupled with a kind of irreverent, eclectic, practical, imaginative tinkerer’s (or bricoleur’s) attitude.

Fannishness is somewhat similar, but more communal, less strictly cerebral, more tradition-centric?

Fans have fandoms; geeks do not have geekdoms. Geeking out is an activity which resists organization, even on the level at which fandoms may be called organized. Fans seek out those of similar passions and associate with them ongoingly; geeks either need no one, or, if they are extrovert geeks like me, they talk to whoever will listen, or else they seek out the locally optimal person to talk to about whatever given thing they want to geek out about.

I’m a geek because I love hacks (the elegant, improbable solution kind) and hate kludges, because I have boundless enthusiasm for talking about things that make most people’s eyes cross, because I have worked out my Geek Code (GCS/GL d?(d+) sa C++$ U++ P+++$ L+ E- W+++$ N+ o? K? w++$ !O M@ !V PS++ PE@ Y+ t– 5++ !X R++@ !tv b+++$ DI++ e++ h—- r+++ y++++*), because I worked out for myself the actual undisclosed question to which 42 is the answer by careful analysis of the HHGTG texts and can explain why Star Trek makes so much more sense as slipstream transported British naval war fiction than as SF, and how if you read Morpheus as a lying terrorist the first Matrix movie can be read as hard SF, because I have a favorite 2-line Perl program, because I distrust centralized solutions and demand data.

And I am a fan, certainly — as the above points on Hitchhiker’s Guide, Star Trek, and the Matrix should make clear. But my fan credentials are not as strong as my geek credentials. Until I was turned thirty, while I embraced the *works* fans embrace — from Dune to Call of Cthulhu to Love and Rockets — I roaming the vague wildernesses of “people who like this stuff” as opposed to within the snug embrace of any fandom. I went to a con for the first time as a pro-already, at the age of 30; I’ve fought (once) with SCA-style arms, but haven’t been to a formal SCA event; and while I spent high school playing tabletop RPGs and reading comics voraciously, it never occurred to me to relate these activities to any larger social entity beyond the closed circle of my
immediate friends.

So of course in a broad sense I’m a fan, and now, latterly, I’m, you know, a Hugo voter and going to cons and all that; but the fact that my engagment with any kind of formal communal structure (online or off) in which to house my geek pursuits came so late in life — post-Clarion — and has always been intertwined with an unfannish pursuit of personal gain and artistic ambition, makes me admire SMOFs and true fans from a distance and reconcile myself to being a true geek, but at best a middling sort of fan.

That make sense?

tv: download bsg illegally in Oz, then buy it. plus: wrote essay for “seven seasons of buffy.”

transportation: recently switched frequent flyer plan to qantas due to imminent arrival of a380s, and I have already downloaded the deck plans. plus: typing the words “deck plans” gave me a little thrill.

verdict: geek!

I think we should start using otaku.

One would think that I am a fan, because of the whole sleeping on the street for tickets to star wars and all that, but that was just my geek-y enthusiasm.

I actually don’t have the patience to be a fan. To me a fan is someone who really knows like, a helluva lot about said subject. Like to the tiny teeny details. I am more broad in my love.

And therefore happily can geek out on a lot of things and have awesome conversations (which I am always impressed by) with real fans.

But not a fan, by and large, because to me a fan means not having any critical difference or not being able to laugh at one’s own geekery. Un-self-consciousness, if you will. I suppose I’m a Yankees fan, but for most other things, I’m a big geek.

also, as i sit in my living room with 49 naruto ninja figures, some of which i specially ordered from hong kong and others of which i took a long bus ride in san francisco to get, i feel that it is futile to deny my overwhelmning geekiness.