EPT
Well it is 10:30 am where I'm at and I got up at 4:00 am and have had an extremely productive day; but I'm a bit sleepy so I'm going to take a nap for a couple of hours. But before I do, I want to share a quick post on something that I felt I should write today.
GROWING UP GEEK
So before I pass out I want to say is, to me being a 'geek' is a good thing in the long run. When I say geek, I mean socially akward and not because you are shy or not outgoing, but just different from the mainstream. When I was in high school, I didn't have the same priorities as the 'cool kids' who got all 'da bitches' (lol), well I didn't care to be 'cool' but I did want to get with the chicks lol.
Just other things were more important to me like keeping my friends who I knew since grade 6 throughout high school and playing Street Fighter II and using Chun Li like a boss (although she was only really a boss in Turbo and Alpha) and spending nearly 90% of my allowance at the arcade and comic books.
I couldn't dance save my life, had no idea about how to dress or what even constituted dressing well and I had no idea how evil girls were, I just thought they were all angels and didn't have the ability to fart. Of course, being Korean, I didn't think of myself as a real geek. Even though I was raised for most of my life in Canada and all through high school, I never thought that having different interests was bad or that I needed to associate with certain 'cool people', hell, I think what made me the most geeky was that I thought I was the most coolest motherfuker out there anyways with my uber long bangs and no consideration for how I dressed.
NOT THE MODEL MINORITY, GEEK 4 LIFE
Being raised as Korean in a very traditional household meant that my mom would hit me with a broomstick pretty much everyday for whatever random reason. I played the piano, and was a good listener, but I was a horrible student. You know when all the other 'Asian kids' are getting 100% or 'omg a 98%' and their mothers are getting upset and asking where the other 2% was; not me, I was getting at best 89%. Which is truly shocking back then.
Thing is, I was a geek at heart and I figured it was more important to show off how smart I was than to actually get good marks, so every exam I would try to study as little as possible, finish my exam well before everyone else, not double check a single thing, arrogantly and as loudly as possible get up and put my exam on the teacher's table and ask to be excused. Then I'd turn back to see some of the kids freaking out cause they thought they didn't have enough time to finish cause they were only half done while I was already out the door.
Well, having the metric of 'finishing the exam as fast as possible while trying to achieve the best mark with the least amount of studying' is great for the geek ego which, as a young person, is some pretty fucked up way of looking at the world (in retrospect I must have had some chemical imbalance in my body during that period), but for the sake of my geek ego, my mother was going close to insanity and my father was just so perplexed in how could his son; who was one of the top students of his school from pre-school to the start of high school, end up so fucked up. Beats the hell out of me (and my mom did try to beat the hell out of me with broomsticks, hockey sticks and once with a baseball bat, but I looked at her and said 'really, you're gonna hit me with a baseball bat?' and we looked at each other and started laughing and she said, 'oh ok...now where is that broomstick?'
But I digress, I just didn't care what the 'mainstream thought' and unlike most other 'white geeks' who had nothing but geekiness in their lives, as a Korean I was expected to be tough SOB anyway as well as study, so while I did hang out with geeks, I ended up being the protector of the geeks as well.
KOREAN/GEEK HYBRID
I wasn't physically imposing when I was younger, tough as fucking nails, yes, but physically imposing no. But some memorable lines from my childhood spring to mind as I take on the bullies at my school (usually in defense of my pussy geek friends):
"Dave the teachers are coming, stop fighting'
*Friends trying to pull me off this bully who had tripped my friend during a football/soccer game and was trying to start a fight with him until I jumped in. But I was unlucky and got a fist in nose first.*
'NO!! I"M NOT GOING TO STOP UNTIL THIS FUCKER STARTS BLEEDING TOO!!!!"
As I start to punch him in the face with blood from my nose dripping on the bully's face and turning his blond hair pink.
Besides geek, psycho was another used to describe me. It is kinda funny to remember these lines, but one time in the cafeteria, shit was going to go down and then I said, 'You want this fucking fork in your neck? ' as I looked at the bully through my long bangs. But unfortunately those moments became far and few in between because everyone knew that I was the protector of the geeks and in this high school, geeks were a protected endangered species that could roam free to do geeky things and plus I was on the rugby team and damn good, so people ended up getting confused because I was geek, but not really geek and jock, but still was also in the choir as well (it was to get da bitches! hehe didn't work though =( haha)
GEEK REVOLTS
So while my cousins (damn them all) when to Columbia or Cornell or some other crappy school like that (lol), I ended up finishing high school a year early as I was going to study music for year before university (so I thought). A very long story short, my parents, thinking that I would never make anything of myself, secretly applied me for a second tier university's late admission and of course I got in cause all you needed was a 70% gpa and mine was like 89% so they shipped me off, hoping that if I went to a second tier school that I'd have an easier time to get into med school or something productive like that.
Well, I think actually the opposite completely happened though; because I went to a second tier school, I had such a chip on my shoulder that I shouldn't be there that I really didn't a fuck if I even graduated at all. Had I gone to the same university as my own friends then likely I would studied harder, but nope, I just felt as though that my future was screwed forever because my parents, on threat of disowning me, forced me to go to this college and now my life was fucked anyway (keeping in mind that the key reason for my existence was to show people on a daily basis that I was so smart without trying to be smart, but now that was fucked cause no one would think I was smart ever again cause I was going to this shitty second tier school) so with my reason for living torn out of me, I decided give up on my geek ambitions and just embrace life.
In less than 3 months at college I had totally re-invented myself, I became the thing I thought was just wrong, I became 'cool'. I'd get a hair cut every 2 weeks to maintain my style, I'd buy new clothes every week so I could the one totally in style. I didn't just work out to be strong, but I started to get my arms and shoulder as sculpted as possible and yeah, I got all da bitches, and I mean ALL of them. Whoot!
I stopped playing video games, I stopped defending the weak and created a reverse racism movement where we'd refer to white people as white and get white people to start calling other white people, white! lol. It was revolutionary at the time as mainstream culture was just starting to define racism and for the first time 'white people' were being refereed to as also a type of 'people' i.e. blacks, chinks (there was no 'Asian' back then either, we were all chinks or orientals, the only people who refereed to themselves as 'Asia' where snotty East coast Korean/Chinese Ivy league girls who dated Jewish guys like my cousin lol) and because white people in North America weren't use to that, they'd get really upset and girls would cry and ask me why I was being racist, lol! But anyway, I got drunk pretty much every day for 2 years and really stopped studying at all and just picked classes where 80% was on your final exam and 20% was on mid-terms so I could really get away with doing almost nothing until exam time. And I almost just dropped out of college/university in my 3rd year cause I thought, what is the point here? And by that time I thought I just want to be a writer and go write a book on whatever.
THE GEEK IS WITH YOU
But my geekiness was ever there and once I had go through 2 years of drunkenness and senseless sex every day three times a day and felt no joy in anything. In my sober mood I ended up studying as hard as I could to get the marks because I didn't know if I was actually smart anymore because I think I killed 40% of brain from alcohol and chain smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day so I really was curious if I had it in me to get a good mark and ended up with barely a 3.0 GPA and was accepted to a great school for grad studies. So here I was 1998 and when I got into Toronto, so many things had changed, there was so many Koreans! And now that I was a loner cause I didn't feel anything towards my old high school friends and I was too cool for school I began to visit these Korean internet cafes and I while I had played warcraft 1 and 2, this new game, it was totally different, so meeeezzzzmmeeerrrriiiizzing.....Starcraft...oh wow....my life just went totally geek again. And the rest is not really history at that point, but I wanted to share this story to highlight 3 points for you awkward social geeks that may be reading right now (but likely not because my posts are so damn long and you kids now all have ADD or some crap like that now).
1. UNDERSTANDING THE GEEK
I think being a geek isn't as bad as it use to be, think pre-80's, like Woz and Jobs, man, the people they hung out with were FREAKS and WeiRDos, seriously, if you met the 'homebrew' club (original group of geeks who loved the idea of the PC in Palo Alto) nowadays you'd think they were a cult of freaks. Even back in the late 90's when the QUAKE 3 guys were 100% sure gaming was going mainstream, they had they uber rage hearts eventually squashed as the scene died out because of Counterstrike and that no one likes a raging gamer who whines about the fact they couldn't rail gun properly because the frames per second was probably 31 frames instead of the 32 they needed to win like they had at their home set up lol. But nowadays with technology to do casting/streaming and youtube and the rise of sophisticated console games, understanding the geek is a lot easier cause you little freaks aren't as freaky anymore. But still, being a geek goes hand in hand in being awkward, why? Personally I think it is because a geek thinks too much and thinks that everyone thinks a lot, when in fact, a lot people really don't think much at all, most people are not calculating what to say next or what to wear and how to be cool, they are just as they are. And for most of them their priorities are fairly simplistic, they aren't thinking about the future, their actual real goal is to look as good as possible (this is overly simplistic and a bit judgmental of a statement but you get the point).
Ever see some guy who loves his hair style so much that if someone touches it, they freak out, the person that spends 30 mins on their hair to make it as cool as they like. Now a geek naturally can't get this cause a geek would compare all the other things that are going on in the world and the placement of a few hairs isn't worth an extra 20 mins, but for a non-geek it is. In reality, someone like Homer Simpson would have been the coolest guy in high school cause of the level of simplicity. See back in high school, guys lose all sense of their own identity when they fall in love, and then they get dumped because the girl feels suffocated cause you're not the same cute geek that she fell for, now you are just some sniveling Smeagol "No master, please let me carry your books, please Master, let me be sensitive to your needs!" Who the hell wants a Smeagol, let alone a geek Smeagol, so, you're cut loose by your hot mama, into the lava you go! And who do you see having success with da bitches? It's that 'asshole who doesn't care about anyone's feelings'; and you think, how the hell is able to be so cool and not care, how does he do it? And you think and think, but it's just beyond you and then you get to university and realize, 'ah, I get it, he wasn't thinking at all, it wasn't even a consideration for him to consider what makes a relationship work or a girl happy, he was just doing his thing and simply being 'cool' ah ha!, Now I'm going to just be myself and not care either...and yet in trying to do so makes it not so...shit...still a geek..."
So in understanding the geek, we need to realize that some people and personality types simply develop later. We, the geeks are the prime example of the ugly duckling, but if I can say also, very thin lanky girls in high school may look quite unattractive and sickly in fact, but most super models were like that when they were young. The somewhat pretty girls are actually not unique enough to be really pretty and once those geeky lanky girls understand how to carry themselves, be confident, then bang, sex kitten, meow! In the same way, we always have an expectation that we should know the right answer, we should always be cool or knowledgeable or right, but the reality is, no. There is a this period of development for the geek where by all the weird and different interests lead to very socially awkward occasions, but in the end, sets the foundation for some really magnificent thought, when you're older that is. So, it ok to be awkward and silly and look stupid or weird for some points of your life, its fine that you don't get all da bitches yet or have been embarrassed; it is just the way in which you are developing and eventually you'll come to the next point in your life. Reinvention.
2. RE-INVENTNG THE GEEK
Ok, unless you are an American SC2 pro-gamer, you won't need to re-invent yourself because for the first time in recorded history, every stupid, geeky and awkward thing you do, is...cool. Praise the Lord, but for the rest of you Platinum/Masters level wanna be pro gamers, but can only do well on ladder when you're alone and are likely to freeze up if you every played live in front of Korean school girls where you'd be distracted with wondering if Korean school girls are like of Japanese school girls, and start to blush for no reason... for the rest of you there will be a point in your lives where you realize that, yes, I really have been socially awkward all this time and now you feel wave after wave of embarrassment wash over you as you realize that, 'wow yes, that girl really did like me and I was totally clueless and yes I could have had sex with her in grade 10 instead of being the 19 year old virgin that I am now' and stuff like that.
But the good news is, while everything is fresh in your mind like yesterday, no one really cares about the past. The cool people don't care cause they are living for the here and now anyway and the geeks can understand and the ones that keep bring up the embarrassing points of the past are only doing so cause they are still socially awkward and have yet to realize that they really are geeks, 'No really, you are one, it isn't just some made up term, y o u a r e a g e e k, yes you are, stop nodding like you think you know what that means...'
But just like kids from the country change their names and make it big in Hollywood, it's the same thing with you, because, everything that was awkward about you when you were young, it was just a development period, it wasn't really you, you're a complex human being and thus you had a complex fucked up weirdo time growing up, but it was meant to be like that! So just know, now you are who are are and you can be what you really want to be, it is time to grow up now Mr. Potter! It is ok, you can be Neo, the ultimate geek demi-god, of sick good looks, the hottest babe in the Matrix and the one who can stop bullets with just his mind. Ok, well lets not go overboard here, but my point is, you have the amazing capacity now to really change the course in what your image will be based on what you really want to stand for. Much like Neo, all that socially awkward period was really a reflection on your intellectual development and once maturity and your intelligence converge, presto, you're Neo now!
Of course you'll all figure this out on your own, because you've the developed the capability to, but this is just a primer to help you sort it out a bit quicker. ^^
And lastly,
3. BEING NEO
I think beyond the coolness of Neo and the just geeky sexiness of Trinity, Neo has a mission, he has a mission, not to be loved, or adored, but to get shit done for da people. Much in the same way, here you are spending all your time on TL and not on 4chan lol (now those guys are fucked), and you will grow and learn here, you will realize that some of the moderators really are the best thing to happen to you because at least when they ban you, it is actually the only honest thing you have to be forced to deal with. With everyone else at school or at home, you can bullshit your way out of if, you can deny that you did wrong, or just kinda admit you're wrong, but not here.
You get banned, you get banned and you have to deal with it, full stop. And the more bullshit and smart ass stuff you try to do to deflect the the utter stupidity of your post, the more you get shut down. Hey geek, you're not just taking to your kinda geek friends back in your hick town, you're interacting on this forum with the best of the best international geeks surrounded by the fucking most amazing game of all time, SCBW (LOL, don't flame me you SC2/HON/LOL fanboys, I'll napalm your asses! keke, but I'm a big DOTA/DIABLO fan actually keke).
But to be serious for a moment, and I haven't been serious for a bit of time because I've been typing way too much and I'm delirious from a lack of sleep and water. When your maturity and intellect intersect, you will be capable of doing great things like screwing the stock market for billions or making the most awesome start-up for billions or go off and travel the world and you'll be able to do that because you see the world a lot more deeply and widely that others do. And you will have humility because of all the awkwardness you remember going through to get this point and you will be great. I think that Steven Jobs was the ultimate geek and Bill Gates is the ultimate nerd. And the difference between a geek and a nerd is that the geek actually does care about what goes on around him, but just doesn't know how to cope with it. The nerd doesn't actually care at all and doesn't want to.
I mean Bill does his foundation, why? Because his company is really just a soulless company taking advantage of the time, there is no love or real innovation here. Windows is everywhere but I don't love it, I don't care about MS, and who would, if Bill really did, he would never leave the company he made; no fucking way could a founder do it, not without getting knocked out and dragged out. Just like Steven, the guys is freaking dying of cancer and he still can't stop caring about the company he made. Sure Bill looks like the good guy here, but it is all too calculating, the real passion and the heart is missing, and I'm not just saying this as some punk kid, but I'm saying this as one of the last old school geek vanguards; Bill, bad nerd still, while, Steve, emotional nut job, but that guy is our hero. A guy we love and hate and what we hate is what makes us love him.
So I'm saying this, geeks, you are special because you will have an ability to re-invent yourself and that is not a bad thing, it is an amazing ability. And if you are powerful, sincere and real, then your contribution will be also great. And not everyone will be in a position to be great enough to actually do some good in the world. So this long ass blog was just a happy post from me actually that I actually woke up at the right time in the day and did a lot of work and ended my day with a super sincere geeky post that reminds me of a lot of awkward moments in my life, but nothing I'm embarrassed by. ^^
Peace out and stop procrastinating you little smurf geeks, I've done all my work today and that is why I get to post!
^^
