Why God Hates Geeks

Hey folks. I'm a geek. Seriously. But come on.

God hates us.

It's why sitting on one's ass makes us fat. It's why not going outside keeps us from getting attractive tans. It's why eating Doritos and drinking Mt. Dew are bad for us. In a geek-friendly world, these things would be required staples. The world is hostile to us.

So why does God hate geeks?

God hates geeks because we are petty and divisive and arugmentative. The average geek has some amount of higher brain function that is often used to create stories or goad computers into doing backflips, but we spend our time arguing about whether Connor and Cordy should have slept together or coming up with schematics for lightsabers. We spend more time on average wondering why so many people on Tatooine speak English than we do speaking English to other people in society. We sit at the TV or computer and play violent video games and then claim to have actually had the adventures we just played. We're dreamers, but few of us actually seek to make our dreams possible. Those who do are either gods (Roddenberry, Whedon) or are sacrificed at the altar of I Could Do Better.

But the worst thing--the WORST thing--about geeks is this: Geeks hate. We hate harder and faster and with more vitriol than most other creatures on the planet. And we hate dumb stuff that really affects life to the sum of zero.

Case in point: this thread on RPG.net about a new constructible card game White Wolf is developing. Think Pirates of the Spanish Main with a more Car Wars-like overtone.

If the game were published by any other studio, the response would likely be, "Sounds interesting," or, "Not my cup of tea." But since it's White Wolf, the response was, almost immediately, "Screw you, White Wolf, this game will suck." Based on nothing more than a paragraph of information, people jumped to the conclusion that the game will be crap. Personally, I think it sounds pretty cool, and any new game idea that gets put out is a new game we can try out. But people are so angry about this that even Ethan Skemp, White Wolf employee and developer of Werewolf: the Forsaken, couldn't sway them. They just came right back at him and explained that they were unconvinced that this new project will be any good. When told that the game might not actually be targetted at fans of White Wolf's World of Darkness games, they shined back a Penny Arcade comic about a game not being made for critics. Because that's obviously the same thing.

This isn't the first attack of geek hate. Whenever a movie that has some importance to geeks is announced, we leap on it and beat it to death. I imagine that there are more net words in forum threads complaining about Superman Returns than there were in the last edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. If comic book movies were protected under the Hate Crimes acts, then there would be few geeks left walking free in the US, and I'd be right there with you asking you to trade me some pudding for my cigarettes.

I could pass a rumor that a Green Lantern movie would come out, and within a couple of days it would be covered in sloppy green geek hate. I'd say, "Hey, I hear they're making Green Lantern: the Movie," and within seconds people would be like, "Oh man, Warner Bros. sucks. I bet they'll get Brett Ratner. He is a crap director. That movie's gonna suck." For some reason, many geeks enjoy the preceived pain of having a favorite show, game, or comic ruined because it means they can prattle out detailed forum posts about who they think should burn in hell. That's the other thing about us geeks: We're most articulate when we're hating something. If you don't believe me, screw you. What do you think this blog is about?

Technically, there's nothing in the Bible that outlaws outright, unreasoned hatred of an idea or TV show, but then, they didn't have very good TV back in the Bible days (pretty much just Veggie Tales and Cinemax). If there were a process for amending the Bible, I bet that would be a hot-button issue. "Thou shalt not hate on stupid shit like sci-fi TV shows and unreleased games you know nothing about" would make a great 11th Commandment, though I imagine there would be other amendments made first, like "Thou shalt not wear shorts with black socks" and "Thou shalt be allowed to fall asleep after sex without guilt."

Geeks, we must stop the hate. No one is served when we spend so much time and blood pressure hating stupid shit. I'm taking one for the team here by hating on the haters, so don't let my ironic vitriol be in vain.

Just stop the hate.