Mainstreaming the Geek

In Getting a Life: The Social Worlds of Geek Culture, Benjamin Woo effectively broaches the practices and intricacies of the broad group of geeks and nerds from a cultural perspective through observation and in-depth interviews with members of the group. Despite increasing research on media fans, gamers and other individual groups who may fall under the geek and nerd umbrella terms, there has been little to no academic research done on the group as a subculture nor is there a consensus on a clear definition of the terms or culture themselves.

While geeks are often fans, the larger geek world is not always addressed by fan studies and Woo’s work is a significant attempt to fill in that gap. In fact, Woo begins the book by considering the ways in which media fans have been studied so far in order to both situate himself within the existing literature and to identify the need for a more inclusive and broad definition of geeks and nerds. Geeks and nerds, in Woo’s estimation, share many similarities with the fans discussed in foundational fan studies (see Bacon-Smith 1992; Fiske 1992; Jenkins [1992] 2013; Jenson 1992, for example), but they also differ in critical ways from the type of fan often described in media fan studies. Often the fields of fan studies, games studies, comic book studies, and reception studies for example, work independently to study their subjects despite the many individual members of those communities who consider themselves part of some or all of the communities under study. With Getting a Life, Woo works to counter the silo effect that can occur when geeks are considered in terms of individual fandoms or platforms by instead bringing all of geek culture under one umbrella to consider those practices that are shared across the community.

Woo has drawn heavily from the comics, RPG, and tabletop gaming communities for his research with interests in media and science fiction/fantasy fandom as supplementary hobbies for his participants. This sample also places his work on the outskirts of fan studies where audiences tend to be pulled almost exclusively from media fandom. By speaking to geeks outside of the typical pool of research subjects about their interests in many different areas of geek culture while also drawing on previous fan studies, Woo is better able to present broad conversations about geek culture as a whole, rather than making more narrow conclusions about specific types of fans within specific fandoms. This broadness will allow for some fascinating interdisciplinary conversations between game studies, fan studies, comic book studies, media industry studies, cultural studies, media studies and sociology more broadly.

Woo approaches geek culture as both an insider and outsider; that is, he gathers most of his research through speaking to informants and his own observation, but as a member of the community himself. As such, he has a vested interest in presenting the community in a positive light; however, he certainly does not shy away from addressing the negative issues that have, particularly recently, plagued the community in the form of toxic masculinity. When considering a fight for the future of geek culture he says, “I know who I want to win. An open, inclusive version of geek culture that makes space for and celebrates difference strikes me as infinitely preferable to a narrow, backward-looking, angry and resentful one” (190). Despite this inherent positivity toward the subject of his research, Woo consistently works to present his subject and informants realistically rather than romantically and the result is a balanced consideration of geeks and nerds as a whole.

Woo works hard to privilege the voices of his informants, while also situating their voices within his own understandings of the culture gleaned through observation and participation. Individual informants are given ample page space for their direct voices to be heard in addition to a large section at the end of the book describing participant profiles of both individuals and institutions consulted during the course of this study. Naturally there...