l3o2828 said:
My sister and i have been discussing the image of the usual gamer and basically how i believe that the usual image people have of gamers that is to say the normal geek of 'wearing glasses, chubby, etc' imagery,is absolutely wrong.
I placed myself as an example, but she says i don't count.
My sister disagrees, because while it's true she hasn't seen any true dedicated gamer looking any appealing (and neither did i, yet), i believe this is just a matter of perspective...sort of.
The thing is, she wants to see normal people , the everyday John and the everyday Mary gamers because, i showed her both Lisa Foiles and Ben Yahtzee (i was actually watching last weeks zero punctuation when this discussion happened), who i think are somewhat good looking people who are related to the gaming community, but she dissed them as example because in her opinion while Lisa Foiles is pretty, she thinks she is more close the model demographic and she said some things about her body that might get me banned for even quoting, and dissed Ben as good looking (wich is odd, because i think he looks so much better than me)and she said he looked like The guy with the glasses, but less appealing.
Things weren't looking pretty well for me, so thats why i think to prove her that normal people who are dedicated gamers do look different than the stereotype, i should just go into a gaming comunity and ask for help.
So, Escapists, do you want to help, as superficial as this is?
!!!!!EDIT!!!!! PEOPLE: SHE CHANGED HER MIND, WE WON!
The actual truth here is that by definition a gamer geek is not going to be good looking because it requires them to be obsessively into gaming to the point of neglecting other things like personal hygiene, exercise, and self maitnence. This applies to geeks and nerds associated with anything.
If you take decent care of yourself, and look good, you are no longer qualified as a nerd or a geek.
This is an important distinction, because right now with the mainstream coming onto The Internets and into things like gaming, a lot of them want to be seen as having the abillities or knowlege of nerds or geeks, without the negative connotations, and really it's kind of a package.
The typical nerd or geek winds up being what he is because he pursues his area of interest to the exclusion of other things, like personal maitnence. He's so involved mentally that his physical self suffers. Your typical nerd or geek being skinny or fat because they either neglect eating due to their interests (simply consuming a meal being a distraction) or consume low-grade food which has the benefit of being easy to prepare or is always right there... anything that takes even a few minutes away from their area of interest, like cooking a bowl of soup, being anathema to them.
Your typical person doesn't "get" this, and of course in many cases focus on something that isn't mainstream which can range from things like computers and math, to things like comic books or video games (or perhaps various comibations thereof) is confused with laziness, when really it's a matter of someone's energy being focused on something the mainstream has little respect or use for... or at least believes this to be the case.
Right now there is sort of a differance between nerds and geeks, where nerds are generally interested in something that the mainstream has learned to generally respect, where geeks are interested in things society considers useless as a whole. Your geek being the guy who is perhaps a genius but isn't smart in any practical way. The nerd can fix your computer, the geek can demonstrate an encyclopedia-like based of Star Trek knowlege or something like that which is totally useless.
Geeks and Nerds by and large are a stereotype that comes from relatively ordinary people being focused on things to the exclusion of basic life skills. Someone who gains those skills due to natural talent... which requires something like an Eidetic memory, represent something of an exception, with such bases of knowlege simply being something else that they have gained, however someone can't just be that way, it requires being born a freak of nature with talents a normal person does not possess... your typical person might want to claim to be that, but never will be, they have a choice of being a norm, or a geek/nerd. Your typical person has to choose the cereberal, or a more balanced way of living.
Lisa Foiles is definatly not a geek/nerd despite the role she plays for her show. She probably knows a good deal of stuff related to those subcultures, but doesn't have the same kind of personal investment as you can see just by looking at her.
Yahtzee might have counted at one time, but as things have progressed you'd notice he'd taken to doing things like running his own business. A real geek or nerd would be incapable of doing such a thing, because all of their time would be invested in whatever makes them that way. Yahtzee might match the apperance to some extent, but at the same time it's obvious he's not.
If anything Yahtzee is actually something of a bully, he basically makes his mark by busting on geek/nerd culture for a living. You'll notice that he pretty much tries to review games from something of an "ordinary guy" perspective, including just enough self-depreciation to be called on it. How many times has the guy pulled out his little nerd toon, and pointed to "people like that?", or made referances to "that guy" (even if he cracked a joke about becoming "that guy" but only in a very limited sense). Stop and think about this at some point.
Now Bob Chipman and Jim Sterling at least seem to fit the bill, far more than Lisa or Ben. Both seem to be geeks, who have managed to achieve the dream of parlaying a bunch of information that is useless to the mainstream into something of a career, and also at least superficially seem to be drowning in it, rather than maintaining the degree of detachment Lisa has from the same apperance that makes her show appealing, or Ben's abillity to point out that he's a legitimate business owner. Ben in paticular has cited real world concerns and "having a life" for not being more into the material he makes his living at, and not putting as much time into each paticular game that we as geeks would expect... and those
same claims disqualify him from the stereotype.
Right now, like it or not, the world and the internet is full of geek poseurs. It's kind of funny if you look at things as they were 20 or 30 years ago. Like it or not, our base of knowlege now has some slight envy and respect, but at the same time those very same poseurs do not want to make the nessicary leap into living a life dedicated to the purely cereberal and/or wierd.