(And lest I seem like a shamefully disinterested parent who does not instinctively jump at the chance to spend an extra hour with his progeny and spring the offspring from the clutches of institutional daycare at the earliest possible instant, I can only offer my belief that the progeny in question does much better with a normalized routine and seems to quite like his daycare, so I actually feel like I’m doing all right by him to leave him in their good hands until the usual pick up time, rather than circumvent his late-afternoon snacktime or whathaveyou. So.)
In any case, the comics shop was a bit of a disappointment. Comics shops are a lot like grocery stores, in that they all sell the basic staples, but different stores are going to have different specialty items, and every one is laid out differently with its own quirks presents a learning curve to the shopper who’s never been there before. The shop I visited on Friday was fairly small, physically and in terms of selection, but I dutifully gave it a chance and walked more than one slow circuit amongst its shelves, looking for hidden treasures and generally trying to get a sense of the establishment.
This gave me enough time to overhear many conversations going on throughout the store, and in the process to get caught up in an unpleasant feedback loop which I call The Big Wince (clearly this has happened before, since I’ve named the phenomenon.) In essence, all of the conversations were cringe-worthy in one way or another, though they tend to fall into two broad categories: attempts at humor and attempts at showing off.
Before I get any deeper into this, let me clarify a couple of terms. I’ve referred to myself countless times in this blog (and elsewhere) as a geek. I’m about to refer to the patrons and employees in the comics shop I visited as nerds. Some people consider those terms interchangeable synonyms, but I draw a distinction between them, which is that geeks possess rudimentary social skills and nerds do not. So it’s not that a comic book nerd is more passionately devoted to the medium than a comic book geek, or vice versa. It has nothing to do with the obsession or fandom itself, that which modifies the label. It has to do with everything else about the person besides their particular obsession. Sometimes it gets conflated because the nerd is kind of a personality-void, and there’s nothing that defines them beyond their obsession. There’s a popular stereotype of the nerd who can’t talk to girls because all he can think to talk about is comics or cartoons or sci-fi movies or whatever, unable to change gears even when it becomes apparent that the girl doesn’t know anything about those subjects and, understandably, doesn’t want to talk about them. But you’ll also find in the wild various sub-species of nerd who can think and speak about mainstream-friendly topics, yet who can’t do so very well and thus still have the same fundamental problem. And if you were conversant with their obsession, you’d find that even when they speak to their own wheelhouse, they’re still not very good at it, and are still just as painful to listen to. Geek conversations follow the social rules of normal conversations and happen to be about geeky things. Nerd conversations barely qualify as human interaction. And are about geeky things, usually.
So, the nerds at the comic shop. Half of their rudimentary attempts at self-expression came in the form of making jokes which were not very funny; the other half were put-downs of comics creators or storylines or related ideas in snarky, cynical terms. From my perspective, it bore a certain superficial resemblance to 80% of the discourse out there in society (or 98% of the discourse online), where jokes and ironic disdain are in far more abundant supply than anything else. But, it was filtered through individuals who understand the basic formulation of “humor and/or bitching = acceptable/expected communication” and yet lack the socialized wherewithal to communicate effectively. Much of what they said was recycled, and anything original ran a high risk of being incoherent. And again, not incoherent like someone saying “Next thing you know Geoff Johns is going to retcon Magenta to make her the daughter of Atrocitus and Star Sapphire and fit her into the power ring spectrum!” because what the hell does that gibberish even mean – I’m a comics geeks and I know what all of those capitalized names refer to. It’s just even if you speak the language, it’s still moronic. (Um, trust me?)
The only thing a convoluted mess like that has going for it is that it allows the speaker to show off, within his narrow nerd obsession, via copious name-dropping. Sometimes this leads to very strange power struggles, bizarre alpha-male displays where one nerd throws out an abomination of barely connected obscure comics terms, like the above, and the other nerds must respond by either (a) acknowledging that the speaker’s trivia hand is indeed strong; (b) pointing out the logical flaws in the original speaker’s statement, often with more ridiculous name-dropping to make a new bid for nerd dominance; or (c) inverting the entire structure by giving the original nerd blank stares and professing ignorance, somehow implying that one is now a little bit cooler compared to the speaker who has proven he is the nerdiest of the nerds, essentially ceding the contest and dismissing it as something not worth being proud of winning. I’m pretty comfortable making these sweeping statements about the typical nerd interactions because I’ve seen it over and over and OVER again. And yet it makes me wince every time.
The Big Wince, though, comes near the end. As I was bringing the few issues I wanted to buy up to the cash register, I became more and more convinced that the nerds were not only conversationally preening, but that they were doing it for my benefit. And you can call me solipsistic, which I rarely deny, but I say this with confidence because the truth is I used to be a socially clueless nerd. I outgrew it and got over it and learned to not live in my own head so much (though I still do a little) and to read the social cues of situations and I struck a much happier balance, for me and for everyone else around me. Before I made that change, though, I was an undeniably show-offy nerd, as most nerds are, probably because getting attention from strangers helps make up for the total dearth of real human relationships and connectedness. (Except it actually doesn’t. But nerds’ options are limited: live off of goggling attention from strangers, or die a little more inside every day.) So I recognized a version of myself in the comics shop nerds and their flailing struggles with self-expression. That, in essence, is The Big Wince.
Things took a slightly surreal turn as I was paying for my comics and yet another trying-to-be-funny-but-failing-spectacularly conversation happened over my bowed head. The kid at the register, with a glimmer of self-awareness, said to me, “And if you become a regular customer you can look forward to conversations like this all the time!” There was a bittersweet combination of perceiving that the conversation must seem strange to an outsider, and yet unquestioningly accepting that that’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it will always be. I managed a weak chuckle; I was certain I would be exposed to more of the same if I ever went back there, but I wouldn’t say I’d look forward to it. I kept that observation to myself, though.
Still, as I can attest, a geek is just a nerd who wised up enough to stop being such a total fucking melvin all the time. Maybe the kid at the cash register who just accepts the background noise of his shop as normal will branch out and try other things and become more well-rounded and develop socially. I do believe that everyone has that potential, no matter how many t-shirts featuring pencil art cheesecake pinups they own. As for me, I’m undecided if I want to go back to that shop and give it another chance. Time will tell, I suppose.
No comments:
Post a Comment