Geek Culture Isn't Mainstream

[incisivis]

When people describe geek culture as now being “mainstream” because certain evergreen science fiction and fantasy properties make gobs of cash at the box office and are marketed to every new generation...I disagree

Comments

[silverr]

You didn't say in what context the claim of geek being mainstream was made, but I can think of two phenomena that might have been used to support such a claim.

1. Certain aspects of "geek culture" have begun to appear more and more in mainstream media-and are presented more and more without exhaustive explanation. I'm thinking here mostly of things like on-line gaming and LARP.

2. Geeks are no longer relegated to the "quirky but useful sidekick" role ( or the "conveniently twisted serial killer, for that matter.) Whatever your opinion of the show, I think of The Big Bang Theory as a "mainstream" show that put geeks front and center.

[incisivis]

I've seen it in a bunch of places lately: the last part was on a podcast, which made the statement that geek culture was "mainstream" because superhero movies and Star Wars were popular with large parts of the culture. But those two points have, of course, been used to support the notion at different places.

But none of them touch on this phenomenon that I talked about, which is why I don't think it's necessarily true.