Dumb and Dumber

By Ada Mina

Geek Stupidity

Geeks were stereotyped as smart but awkward which was the case before. In recent years, there's the emergence of a geek mindset that heavily mired in pop culture and in certain obsessions but has little regard for not only the feelings of others but also lacking in real understanding of deep subject matters. There are geeks who use big words to describe things they're passionate about but their tone makes actual academians seem blunt in comparison. Academians are geeks themselves but they bother to use their obsessions for practical means and to teach people. Most geeks don't go so far to help humanity and make use of their obsessions, if they relate to actual things like wolves and robots.

As what somebody remarked about this strain of anti-intellectualism, some geeks get flustered whenever a qualified expert joins in the discussion over things the former are passionate about. Perhaps the shift in mindset has to do with a growing fannishness to otherwise important, practical topics. Bonglorio said that many geeks are obsessed with the veneer of science but have a bad understanding of the practise. An Irish sage said that nerds and skeptics alike see science as otherworldy when in reality it's worldly and not without its own problems and being suspectible to social and political changes. To give you an answer there was Aryan science at the height of German National Socialism, complete with viewing Jews as a lesser race and an old fashion science comparing subsaharan Africans to apes. It's seen as racist to anyone, even those with minimal understanding of science.

I said that academians are also geeks but geeks who elevated their obsessions into something practical and well-researched. If the average geek is a zealous churchgoer, then the academian is a theologian. It makes sense when it comes to the subject matters they approach. The garden variety geek enthuses over the subject s/he is into but have little interest in learning outside of his/her own confirmation bias. The academian is also obsessed but s/he bothers to learn something new along the way, is willing to open his/her mind and does actual research. This is similar to how a religious churchgoer has a burning enthusiasm for the Bible but only the theologian and scholar bother to go deeper with the same subject to uncover hidden truths and prior connections to other Middle Eastern beliefs.

Both the churchgoer and geek don't want to be challenged by anyone with a contrary opinion. The theologian and academian bother to inquire and research on that subject matter, sometimes with the intent of educating lesser minds. Both the theologian and academian are qualified individuals whose research and understanding of the subject matter is worth studying. Most churchgoers and geeks have a layperson's understanding of things combined wih Dunning Krueger syndrome in comparison to these two. This is what separates the men from the boys. The boys have half of the men's experiences in life as well as the willingness to take responsibility for everything and anything.

The word geek started out as a synonym for weirdo and freak before becoming adopted as a word used to describe a person with a strong obsession in something with undertones of social awkwardness and narrowmindedness to boot. It's safe to say that prior to the Internet, many geeks were genuinely intellectual because the information they crave was hard to come by. The Internet only amplified some of geek culture's flaws such as narrowmindedness, sexism, racism, pseudointellectualism especially whenever it comes to trivial matter and trolling. This leads us to present day anti-intellectualism where geeks address big topics with trivial matters and a condescendingly naive tone as well as geeks addressing trivial subject matter as if those were big intellectual exercises.

It's not so much as the geek is stupid as the geek has become not only socially awkward but intellectually awkward whenever his/her obsessions are brought up. Singlemindedly obsessed but possessing none of the hard work and effort done by actual scientists, scholars and academians. John L Random is ignorant because he doesn't know any better, the geek is ignorant because s/he doesn't want to learn anything else. This attitude can manifest in something trivial as talking about the gender of an obscure Pokemon. It says a lot about what became of geeks these days when the Internet encourages further narrowmindedness and stupidity that would have been unthinkable in the underground 70s and 80s.