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Episode 060720 - The Zeal
We made this episode for the sole purpose of stirring up lots of discussion. Show us that you are in the 10% of people that interacts with GeekNights and post something. Also put here your opinions on the format of the show.
Comments
As for the geekback segment..while I lament the loss of some news, the segment's been pretty entertaining thus far, so I vote "yeah" on it.
In short: News hilarious. Geekback great. Content great. I want more news, but don't make the podcast "un-fun" for you. Hope you get the libsyn thing taken care of. Also, "anime" should probably be added to your spellcheck dictionary.
Further also: Godwin should not be considered an inside joke. It's been around for 15 years now, never losing it's appropriateness. I'd say it should be considered what Godwin himself might have called common "net.knowledge"
The concern was mostly that we were going longer and longer every day, a trend that there's no way we could continue. We're in the midst of a typhoon of content now, but we have to put forth the discipline to hold off on some of it for when there's a drought. Long episodes will still be fairly common, but we're going to reserve them for topics that truly deserve them. A 2 hour show where we review three anime would be better off as three 45-50 minute shows instead.
If to keep your shows down to a reasonable length you have to cut back to one news bit I think that's okay, but one of the reason I like the part of the show that is the commentary on the news.
Also, I have to reverse some of my comments from several months ago, where I said I don't care how long your shows run. I still like the long shows, but some days that means you guys are the only podcast that I end up hearing.
Upon advice of the Webcomics thread I'm working my way through Boasas and found this appropriate comic. Now whenever I listen to AWO I'll have a mental image of three Slithers talking to oneanother.
I do slightly disagree with the defintion of "geek" that you're using, but only somewhat. That'll be a discussion for later.
"To me, a geek is someone who has deep, sometimes esoteric interests, yet shares a common bond with others who have similar depths: an anime geek will get along just fine with a videogame geek or a comic geek. A nerd has the depth, but not the common bond. A comic nerd isn't comfortable hanging out with non-comic nerds. "
Now, I used to do this all the time. Then I found Boardgamegeek.com and I actively put up pictures and participate in discussions about such things. But there are still a whole lot of people, even if they read the Geek daily, that create things but don't post them. I would say that this is still zeal on their part as it is not simple consumption of the product as sold. I would also say it's a step past the ten percent classification as it takes a hell of a lot of creativity, energy, time, etc. I think things like this could warrant their own percentile though I would not know what that would be since I have done no studies on the subject.
But then... Even if it's not out to the community at large, the people someone like that plays with still see it and use it so I guess it might be a bad example.
How about people that are into things like biking or some other thing that they are big into but is still, at heart, a solitary experience? They may do major mods well into zeal zone but not actively tell anyone about it.
It really stems from the whole zeal thing again. As you guys pointed out, it used to take a whole lot to be really into something, which is why the classical geek was really focused in one or perhaps two areas of geekdom. They were also perceived as non-social because the amount of effort required to be into something basically meant that their whole being was defined by that one area, so they could only talk to people of that same depth of interest.
In contrast, the geek of today can have many areas of deep interest, and so can communicate readily with other geeks. Most still have a primary geekdom, but I think the prevalence of secondary geekdoms is what allows the communication between geek types. It seems that the classical type of geek is really the nerd of today; they can only deal with people in the same domain, whereas the geek can deal with many domains.
That brings up the problem of using "geek" to refer to geeks at large; since we still have many people who were classical geeks, there can be a problem communicating what is exactly meant by the term geek. And of course, popular perception still has the geek as some antisocial mouthbreathing troglodyte, which is really what we call nerds.
Hence, I argue for more precise terminology.
But then again, I am a scientist; precise terminology is my lifeblood.
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