Full Nerdity In Politics
Well as you saw, being a gamer recently became a political issue thanks to the Maine Republican Party apparently being staffed by people living in an 80’s film. Yes, it’s dumb to call out someone for playing World of Warcraft when there are so many gamers, but one rarely accuses politicians of innovation, honesty, or decent morals.
So I’m sadly not surprised, except that it took this long for Warcraft to be used in this way (oh and for the humiliation to spread across the internet).
Nerds, geeks, and otaku are used to people making fun of our hobbies in North America. We’re kind of used to the mockery even as geek has gone chic. By now we kind of joke about it, then go back to actually enjoying ourselves as the voices of mockery fade with history and Joss Whedon and Steve Jobs become media gods.
Of course, there is still enough of a belief that geeks and nerds are somehow just plain wrong and thus various politicians, pundits, and their ilk will be glad to use that as a tool. Well unethical politicians will, but I’m not counting on a lack of those.
We also may want to get used to it.
As I’ve noted, nerds like us are getting to be more accepted, more mainstream, more considered a subculture (and one with admirable traits). We’re more visible and more prominent.
Of course when we and our culture are more prominent – we also easily targeted.
So in short, this little piece of political stupid is probably not the last one we’re going to see. We may be hip, happening, and designing the future. We’re also more public, and that means your usual hack politicians, pundits, and the like can target us easier.
A lot of us watch anime . . . but of course there are enough people that think anime is all porn and violence* that an opportunist may play that up if an opponent watched anime, was in a club, etc. How many would love to say “my opponent watched violent animated foreign porn with a mysterious group in college?”
A lot of us play RPGs. Despite endless debunking, there’s still the idea fantasy RPGs are somehow Satanic.*
A lot of us play video games. We’ve already seen how that’s gone. I wonder how people would react to my love of Borderlands 2, which includes a robot threatening to teabag someone’s corpse.**
A lot of us go to conventions. How many politicians would love to show a picture of someone dressed as a Dranei to humiliate their opponent***?
I’m sure that we’ll see more “anti-nerd” bits of political manipulation. This one isn’t the only one – just a prominent one. We might as well accept that it’s a possibility.
Of course I’d note that if someone did use past nerdery against a political candidate, the target might be able to rally people like, well, us. We tend to stick together, and that could be a powerful tool . . .
– Steven Savage Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
* I mean seriously, people can we get over this? Do you honestly want a deep analysis of this, because I’ll drop the history on you.
** To be fair, the threatened guy deserved it.
*** If you can make those hooves work, screw it, you’re probably more qualified than your opponent.
