Hey, I see some of you loudmouths didn't get the memo, so let me set you straight. Geek is a complement now.
So if you're using it as an insult? You're a moron. You probably were anyway, but this is just confirmation.
Not a compliment you say? I'd take a look at Bill Gates, who has always looked like he escaped from an 80's comedy about Nerds, and who built a gigantic megacorporation looked at to this day with a mixture of envy and anger over software crashes. He's a geek.
Or Johnny Depp? Total geek. Oh he's handsome and famous and modest, which I relate to at a 33% level, but he's an absolute geek – just listen to the guy.
Or all the people making the world work so you can play your games, get your email, and surf for strange and disturbing images? Geeks.
Google? Geeks. People behind the iPad? Geeks. Hell, people that put men on the moon and television in your living room? Geeks.
It's not an insult, it's a compliment.
Oh, you THINK it's an insult. You're insulting people for being smart, oddball, creative, and high-tech. Of course if you pause to think about it we built your modern world, we run it, and you'd be unhappy, miserable, unhealthy, and bored without us.
Geek is a compliment.
We make it all now. We run it all now. Heck, some of the people in love with numbers and programs made some of the automated trading programs that have buggered up the economy too, so we're even good at wrecking things stupidly. But we're still smart, creative, and making stuff happen.
So, Geek isn't insult. It's a mark of pride.
Drop it – or just keep using it so you compliment us.