Geek Therapy: What Kind Of Message Does It Send?

Something crossed my mentions feed on Twitter that caused me to pause and really think about the messages being sent about geek women and what it means to be a geek.

This thing is a new series of comedy shorts called Geek Therapy. It is made by Comediva (@comediva) and stars America Young (@America_Young) as the therapist. It currently has two episodes and I invite you take the less than five minutes required to watch them.

Now that you’ve watched them, let me first explain my issue with this series and let me know what you think.

I don’t like the elitist nature of this series. It is one of my biggest pet peeves and something that I rant about at least once a week. In fact, it is something that I will be discussing at GottaCon in February, and that is this idea that, in order to be able to call yourself a geek, you must fit specific criteria.

I’m sure you’ve all seen it. Yes, a part of me gets really ranty when people use thebecause they think it’s cool to do so. For many people my age, being a geek was not considered cool when we were in school. Some of us feel that we are losing our unique identity by the co-opting of the label and by its exploitation in marketting. However, a bigger part of me is extremely overjoyed that more and more people are identifying as a geek because it means that my children can be proud of that label and it means more of the things that I love and geek-out over are being made available. If it means more things for me to consume, then please exploit me and I’ll happily embrace anyone who wants to label themselves a geek and share in the things that I love.

I fear that this type of elitist nature will turn people off from trying out things that are geeky and embracing us a group of people. It may only further enforce the stereotype of the asshat geek.

However, there is a great positive thing to this series. The person doing the educating on what it means to be a geek is female. For me personally, I don’t need female geeks in the media, especially as my gender identity is not feminine. However, for many, it is very important that there are strong, intelligent, feminine role models in the media, especially in geek content, and this series provides that and I’m in complete support of it. For that reason alone, I look forward to more Geek Therapy videos.

What do you think?

You can find more of Comediva’s YouTube videos here.