I’m going to an SF convention in a few weeks and I was recalling a discussion I had at a previous one about The Geek LaughTM, and I thought I’d recount it to those of you who are unaware of this fascinating social phenomenon.
You see there are plenty of well adjusted friendly geeks out there but for every one of them there’s also the competitive ego-driven low-self-esteem-so-must-continually-prove-how-cool-I-am geek and its these geeks that are masters of The Geek LaughTM. The laugh itself is basically a way that a Geek signals his equality or preferably superiority to others. It works like this:
- The geek makes a witticism about some obscure reference within their field be it SF, computers, or whatever.
- The geek begins an exaggerated and laboured laugh, just loud enough and long enough that it will bring all attention their way.
- The geek will now slowly scan around from left to right as they laugh, the purpose of which is both to ensure everybody sees them and acknowledges their prowess and also to categorise everyone in the room into one of three groups:
- First are the people are not laughing and are therefore less geeky.
- Secondly are those who are confidently reciprocating the Geek laugh and are therefore on the same level.
- Thirdly are the people nervously laughing, these are the ones who dream of being just as as geeky but don’t understand the joke and are laughing so as not to lose face while they make a mental note to look it up on wikipedia later.
Posted by monkeylogical 