for some people, it seemed, being a nerd, a geek, a gamer was something they could play at whenever the mood struck. When it didn’t, they got to be normal.
Elizabeth Simins’ Manic Pixel Dream Girl comic touched a nerve, especially the bit quoted above. Simins was talking about growing up as a girl gamer back in the nineties and early naughties and her efforts to fit in and be a “fake normal girl” and how that influenced how she thought about the recent fake geek girl controversy. Gaming in the nineties was very male orientated, with the industry happy to pretend only boys played videogames. Plenty of girls may have played Tombraider too, but you wouldn’t know it from the tits, tits, tits ads. And though there’s still a lot of obnoxious sexism in gaming, it’s much more acceptable and unremarkable these days to like games as a woman.
In general, nerdy things have long become mainstream and now you have the beautiful people, the cool kids arguing that, they too, are geeks. Which can cause unjustified resentment by those who always were outcasts, who grew up when being geeky was strange. It’s a stupid thing to think, to be jealous rather than glad that so many people can embrace their inner geek without being mocked for it, but it’s there and Simins captured it perfectly.
But go read Manic Pixel Dream Girl, as it’s much more than just that.
