I know I've written quite a bit about "geek culture" on here in the past, but it is a phenomenon I find myself thinking about a lot, as I feel I had a front-row seat to the entire odyssey that was the rise and fall of geek culture. Before the 2000s, every part of geek culture was considered deeply uncool, both the aesthetic and cultural aspects as well as the . However, in the late 2000s and into the early-to-mid 2010s, it seems geek culture enjoyed a brief window of being THE cool thing (see: Felicia Day's song "Now I'm the One That's Cool).
At some point in the mid 2010s, however, only the most surface-level pop-culture aspects of geek culture (such as gaming, movies, superheroes etc) became simply a part of culture-at-large, while the parts of geek culture that made it truly "geek culture," that is to say the countercultural streak, the refusal to walk in lock-step with the rest of society, the determination to actually *learn* and *understand* things, that has become even more taboo than it was before the 2000s.
As an example, my commitment to FOSS has been described as a "dangerous dog whistle" before by people who would describe themselves as vaguely pertaining to geek culture, but who no longer believe in challenging the official narrative on any subject, such as corporate spyware. Indeed, we are seeing the official narrative start to paint any opposition to corporate spyware as somehow suspicious and something to be combatted.
Anyway, just some Saturday morning thoughts.
Thanks to my private goddess of bitly nirvana I have never been "cool", or "geek" --- don't even know how to recognize geekness. Checking wikipedia did not help. I can say, that a fellow traveller called me "hardcore nerd" a few years back. Although I'm old enough, I never participated in some culture netnews/irc/bulletin board/forum/facebook/twitter/whatever thing. I'm boring, and that keeps me out of trouble.
In other words: I have no clue, what you are trying to say.
"geek culture" refers to the culture of those whose interests would be described as niche or strange by the general population. Interests such as: computers, the internet, history, video gaming, obscure film, literature, science fiction, etc.
"cool" refers to the types of people and things considered of value or interesting to the general population. Anyone can see what these might be in their time/place.
Also, the things you listed are all wildly different types of things, some of which are quite "geeky" (like IRC) and some of which are exceptionally not so, at least at present (Facebook, Twitter).
I am assuming you included this hoping I would explain. If not, I would wonder why you chose to comment that you didn't understand
I don't know whether to consider myself lucky or deprived to have never gotten with the "culture" despite possibly qualifying for it in the "interests leaning tech-ward" sense.
I say "lucky" in that I swear "culture" invariably attracts fundamentalists who degrade what was simply a culture into a religion of sorts.
As for me and my house, we shall serve The Tech! :-)
I mean, I'm sure you can understand the impulse for outcasts to congregate (like even here at the Pub) and prior to the 2010s that sense of community among geekier-minded folk was strong.
Ironically, describing anything as a "dog whistle" is a huge red flag.
What you describe is typical of the incorporate and destroy mentality. Dumb something down enough to be digestible by the norms, then other anyone outside of the harmless version.
RE people defending invasion of privacy: even if an opinion has a pulse, it can still be a bot opinion.
I agree. While I have no patience for people who are truly bigoted, the people who describe everything they dislike as a "dogwhistle" tend to be very narrow-minded themselves.
I always felt those averse to spy/malware awareness and general, common sense personal security/privacy/safety practices to be ignorant of life in the 21st Century. That is, those who always say "I have nothing to hide" or "I could print my texts and emails, I don't give a shit" are blatantly ignorant, reckless with their own privacy/dignity online, and should just subtract themself from the online privacy/safety narrative, because "I don't give a shit" is not an argument against, nor defense for, anything at all (because them giving a shit does not register with what I do or don't do online).
So being "into" FOSS and small projects and sustainable software/hardware, expansion of programming knowledge, broadening one's skillsets, protecting privacy (in general) and also being off/away from a multinational corporation's members/customer/user books, is nothing one should shy away from or be hesitant in discussing openly, proudly.
Just my take
I didn't say I don't discuss FOSS or these things openly. I was making an observation that the parts of that which is traditionally considered "geek culture" that are actually counter-cultural in any way (like FOSS) have become "uncool" again, whereas the pop-culture aspects of it have been absorbed into the mainstream.
Yep. I didn't say you do or don't discuss anything. I am saying *I*, and others, SHOULD discuss them openly and proudly. And FOSS was never cool or uncool. It's an individual who decides that.
I'm using the word "cool" here in a broader societal sense, as in, what society at large decides is interesting and popular. I use it the same way through my entire post here.