I’m thinking that these posts need to be more cohesive. Instead of just five kinda random things that I’ve got going on or that I’m interested in, maybe I should be posting five things that are loosely related, or that have something in common as far as how I see them or in my life particularly. Five random things isn’t seeming so interesting to me.
So, if I’m going to try to be more cohesive, maybe I ought to start with a few things about video games. I am not a huge gamer, nor am I a collector. In fact, I’m pretty bad at most video games. I don’t have a current-gen console (MJG has an XBox 360, which I guess I could count, considering it’s in my room). I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than $20 on a video game. That said, I occasionally geek out.
Part of said geeking out is my recent purchase of a Sega Dreamcast. I have always liked the Dreamcast, but I never got one. For a while in middle school I borrowed a friends’ console (I think he had my PS2 as collateral) and I spent a lot of time playing a fantastic game called Power Stone. A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a friend about the system and as a result spent some time watching the prices on eBay. I finally found a suitable one, with all the right cables and controllers and two good games. I’ve never been so geeky and lame than I’ve been about this Dreamcast. I tell people about it all the time, like it’s something new and exciting. In reality, it’s an old game console with some good games and funny-shaped controllers. I love it nonetheless.
Tonight at dinner I found a kindred spirit, a guy named John who was so excited about yesterday’s find (a copy of Power Stone for less than twenty dollars) that he continuously grabbed his hair, rubbing it around until it became this big mess. Though others have been excited by my new game console, John finally gave me the reaction I wanted: a pure, unadulterated geek-out, with not even a hint of self-conscious irony. I own a Dreamcast. I am proud.
I guess most folks perceive geekiness as overt obsession with something that isn’t broadly understood or accepted, like computers or comic books or even the less mainstream of movies, music, and literature (and I suppose I could be considered a geek in some or all of these fields). But I think it goes beyond that; a geek, at least to my understanding, is someone who becomes absorbed in things because of the sheer joy they derive from them. It’s a purely self-motivated act, I think; there really isn’t much of a social component to geekiness.
I think that when it comes down to it, I just like knowing. I can spend hours on Wikipedia just learning about all this stuff. That’s what most of it is, too—stuff. I feel like a lot of the things I know aren’t particularly useful or practical, but I just like that I know them. I suppose this is similar to my book-owning affliction: I don’t really care so much if I make use of what I’ve got, just so long as I’ve got it. I’m not sure what this says about my personality. Am I an informational pack-rat? When I’m old, will I go crazy because of all the metaphorical heaps of newspaper in my brain? Could an addiction to information ever be fatal?
