242 Caietele Echinox, vol. 32, 2017: Images of Community

Rare[ Moldovan The State of Play: Geektopia in

Abstract: The paper looks at the figure of Back to the Same Future the “geek” in popular culture, and especially in ’s novel Ready Player One, also his article looks forward to a film with a view towards the forthcoming adap- Tthat does not yet exist. We know its tation directed by . Tracing release date, the 30th of March, 2018, we the contours of the geek imaginary, the know its director, Steven Spielberg, and we have learned more about what seems to be paper looks at its inscription in popular cul- an inspired cast over the last few months. ture, political economy, it explores nostalgia The book that it adapts, by first time geek as an enabling force, modes of community, writer Ernest Cline, was undoubtedly a sociability and socialization, building toward hit, but I think we can safely assume that the unlikely concept of “geektopia.” when the film is released it will represent Keywords: Cultural Theory; Pop Culture; the pop culture apotheosis of the geek, in Geek; ; 80s; Virtual Communities; Gam- the medium that helped mould and foster ing; Utopia. this cultural icon. It will also signal, with a sort of half-baked irony, a late, reiterated Rareș Moldovan victory and “revenge of the .” Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania Forged in the bland basement dun- [email protected] geons of Smallville, U. S. A., as well as in DOI: 10.24193/cechinox.2017.32.20 the virtual dungeons ardently imagined by teenagers gathered round to the play the legendary RPG Dungeons and Dragons, the figure of the geek1 has over the past four decades, accrued considerable sta- tus. Initially distributed somewhat evenly across American suburbia, and redistrib- uted at key symbolic nodes in the cultural demographics, the geek and his sometime alter-ego, the nerd (these figures coalesce or develop separately, in variation2) have colonised a swath of American film and The State of Play: Geektopia in Ready Player One 243 television, tailored suitable narratives, and large it opposes dystopian corporate amassed a Pantheon of (super)heroes, cre- capitalism and ends on the big note of ated a cult of collectibles, made gaming geeks with money vowing to end world cool, invaded countless message boards poverty. Geeks with money and a hyper- across the Internet, migrated to new archi- bole of redistribution are much better than pelagos such as YouTube and Twitch, and corporations; perhaps this is also a dig at even provided a specific form of sociability the likes of Facebook or Google, or at how and a model for community. In the words they’ve turned out. of one famous geek: But geeks have always been about saving the world. Whereas, arguably, geek Today, geek is no longer a four-letter representations thrive naturally in a come- word. Fantasy subcultures have shift- dic environment – from Ferris Bueller to ed from the fringe to pockets of cool, the cult TV show Freaks and geeks to the and their associated terminology and more recent grown-up geeks sitcom The cultural references […] have been ab- Big Bang Theory – the quintessential geek sorbed into the mainstream.3 sits squarely at the centre of a salvation fantasy. An unlikely hero, like the hobbits From a peripheral spectre in youth that were its hallowed proto-forms, the culture, bullied and derided, to an indis- geek’s story arc is usually a quest (like most pensable agent (most films and TV series game and film narratives these days), and nowadays come with a complimentary his ultimate role is soteriological. Ready geek) is no mean feat, but beyond the rise Player One and Cline’s second novel, Ar- and rise of the geek, in “absorption,” a host mada (2015), are such quests, of course, but of phenomena are busily, systemically at one can think of much earlier examples. work. They circumscribe its traits with- One instance, which Cline re-utilises in in a larger, and largely for profit, cultural Ready Player One is the 1983 film Warga- economy. In this line of thought – which mes, in which David Lightman, played by sketches the reentry of an earlier irritant Matthew Broderick, must save the world into a dynamic of lucrative leisure and rec- from a computer bent on starting a nucle- ognition – Cline’s novel and Spielberg’s ar war between the United States and the film represent sanctioned re-appropria- Soviet Union. Similarly, in The last star- tions. Sanctioned by geeks everywhere, fighter (1984), a film that inspired Cline’s surely, since they have turned the novel Armada, Alex Rogan, a trailer park teen- into a howling success and will doubt- ager who masters the eponymous arcade lessly flock to see the film too, this aging game, becomes the hero in a space war. The geek included; but what this indicates is an symptom that most interests me in this re- unsolved contradiction between geek and peated, repetitive pattern is the operation system. Ready Player One embodies and of short-circuiting. In Wargames, the socie- thematises this problem at the same time: tal dimensions of age, class, expertise, state as on object within this cultural economy, and military security vanish as if by magic, it is subject to the money making machine in The last starfighter, interstellar distances, created by its existence; as a narrative, by in , time is malleable and 244 Rareș Moldovan rewritable. The geek’s skill in some aspect stronger bosses, greater distances and chal- of technology (the brave new world of lenges, ampler worlds. On the other hand, computers, gaming etc.), or even only his the quest is offered, not to say administered, proximity, as is the case with Marty McFly, as form prepared in advance, tuned to the make all solid barriers melt into air. boundary conditions that the economy of In this short-circuit, the suburban re- pop culture has established, and which it alism of these stories, to which they are but keeps enforcing. At the nexus of an econ- tenuously anchored anyway, is subverted; omy of desire and an economy of profit- which by itself is banal since fantasy always able cultural artefacts, the quest is not only short-circuits realism. What also becomes phantasmal and mythological retread; it is, transparent, however, is the structure and each time, economic recycling, the repli- the scale of geek desire: geeks yearn big. cation of the same structure of production This yearning recruits the nearly unfath- and consumption. Thus the future is for- omable potential of technology: in these mally set in advance, in a perverse refor- films, and in many others,technology is a mulation of Aristotle, the form is indeed portal, skill and knowledge are the key, an prior. In 2018, when Spielberg’s adaptation axiom of geekdom if there ever was one. It is released, like so many before it, but also is a simplified arrangement of aptitude and like countless others in the future will al- adversity, and the same pre-disposition of ways return us to the same form. As one (super)hero and (super)villain that comics famous producer and screenwriter mor- have hammered for decades in the geek dantly noted: imaginary, replicated at different orders of magnitude. Obstacles are often displaced “Once you spend more than $100 and reconfigured as extraneous to immedi- million on a movie, you have to save ate social reality, in a magnifying projection the world,” explains Lindelof. “And in which the constricting milieu becomes when you start there, and basically say, a trifling circumstance. Some “nerd” narra- I have to construct a MacGuffin based tives – especially in the teen, romance, and on if they shut off this, or they close college genres, and their various hybrids – this portal, or they deactivate this are undoubtedly about social acceptance4, bomb, or they come up with this cure, but geek tales that weld sci-fi and fantasy it will save the world – you are very aim outside the social arrangement, out- limited in terms of how you execute side the world, often through the world, that.5 rendering, at least temporarily, immaterial. Therein lies the insoluble ambiva- Within geek stories, galaxies far far lence of such narratives. On the one hand, away may be the limit, but the boundaries the quest is a historically sedimented re- of the narrative resonate to the mean tune sponse to juvenile geek desire that sees it- of average satisfaction. The culture industry self dramatically frustrated and shackled foresees (this we’ve known for a long time); by its circumstances, so that the way to go its ominous prophecy ensures that wherev- is understandably hyperbolic, as it is, for er we may roam we are within this other instance, in video games: bigger battles, “final frontier”: the same future awaits. The State of Play: Geektopia in Ready Player One 245

Past is Prologue: Wielding Nostalgia territory, already addressing those who would recognize it. Several remembrances he geek imaginary is destinal with are conflated in the single first verb: from respect to its overarching redemptive beyond the end of the story to the begin- hope,T it is equally devoted to figments of ning of the story (which is set around the past and future as escapist portals from the year 2045), and from that future the re- frustrating present, but the otherworldly membrance to the time that provides the Kyber crystal that powers its lasers, inten- codes for the quest: the 1980s. Nostalgia sifies its emotional force and multiplies its inserts itself into the texture of memo- tonal midichlorians is nostalgia: ry at this point; 80s nostalgia is quintes- sential for most first generation geeks. In For me, it was more about exploring the novel it generates the criterion used the origins of geek culture. I was part to separate the worthy from the mass: the of the first generation to have video mysterious billionaire Halliday, an eccen- games, to have computers, to have a tric with “a lifelong obsession with the VCR. I wanted to pay tribute to that. 1980s, the decade during which he’d been Nostalgia, I think, is good. Nostalgia a teenager”9, has devised an elaborate and is like video games, or music, or mov- cryptic competition, an “ hunt” 6 ies. It’s a form of escapism. (a geek specialty, from games to films) whose winner stands to inherit his entire This has come to pass, naturally, as the fortune. The best weapon the hunter could first generations of geeks grew up and their equip is extensive knowledge of the age’s 7 Peter Pan syndrome surfaced . Still, from pop culture trivia; the force that wields the mere behavioural conjecture, nostalgia weapon is, for Halliday, obsessive nostalgia, with its array of references and constella- which he would force unto his legion of tions has been shaped culturally as envel- padawans as discovered passion. Even the oping force. It is not by accident, I believe, intro described in the novel’s prologue, the that Ready player one begins with: so-called “invitation” by Halliday’s avatar Anorak10, or the “call to adventure”11, if you Everyone my age remembers where will (to use Joseph Campbell celebrated they were and what they were do- phrase that later found George Lucas and ing when they first heard about the was then distributed lavishly all over geek- contest. I was sitting in my hideout dom), is a reconstructed 80s extravaganza watching cartoons, when the news of “obscure pop references,” up for grabs, bulletin broke in on my video feed, ripe for recognition. announcing that James Halliday had To be clear, geek nostalgia is no weak died during the night.8 force; neither does it bear much languish- ing. On the contrary, it is determined and “Everyone my age” seems neutral precisely targeted at the idea of “return”: enough, but it hints at the geek tribe more back to the… past, when that past is re- than at a biological generation. It is the constituted as the present of repeated he- first “wink” that signals the story as marked donistic replays and saves, the keen edge 246 Rareș Moldovan of playing not having been dulled by repe- and acclaimed TV show Stranger things tition (or so Cline would have us believe). are other notable instances of repackag- Also, this manic nostalgia twists past arte- ing these “fads and fashions” for a young- facts, as if by magic, into virtualities for a er audience. The fact that they have been future past that is ever accessible:12 successful cannot be attributed solely to nostalgia striking a chord; rather, I would [F]inding Halliday’s Easter egg be- argue, it is an effect of aura. The vintage -fil came a popular fantasy among adults ter bathes the past, revivifies it as prologue and children alike. It was a game to stories yet untold. anyone could play, and at first, there This drift reveals yet another facet of seemed to be no right or wrong way geek agency in relation to (pop) culture: to play it. The only thing ’s it is indelibly linked to the immediacy of Almanac seemed to indicate was that lived experience, but even more poignantly a familiarity with Halliday’s various to its communal investment as shared ex- obsessions would be essential to find- perience. Geeks are fiercely territorial with ing the egg. This led to a global fasci- their cultural selection, as even a casual vis- nation with 1980s pop culture. Fifty it to their conversational lobbies will prove, years after the decade had ended, the but the attachment, fuelled by nostalgia, movies, music, games, and fashions of only acquires its full relevance beyond the 1980s were all the rage once again. the critical mass of shared pleasures and By 2041, spiked hair and acid-washed endlessly debated minutiae. Geek herme- jeans were back in style, and covers of neutics is brewed slowly in interpretive hit ’80s pop songs by contemporary communities; in them the aura of lived ex- bands dominated the music charts. perience is transferred to artifacts, which it People who had actually been teenag- “enchants” and sanctifies as powerful relics. ers in the 1980s, all now approaching Ready Player One is forceful in the at- old age, had the strange experience of tempt to synthesise the aura of an entire seeing the fads and fashions of their decade and inject it back into circulation; youth embraced and studied by their just as Anorak is Halliday’s avatar, Hal- grandchildren.13 liday is Cline’s. A hyperbolic projection of the author, with added nods towards The foci of geek attention and fasci- founding fathers such as Gary Gygax and nation shift, undeniably. As new genera- geeks turned billionares such as Steve Jobs tions take on the mantle and the name, the or Bill Gates, the figure of the otiose mas- 80s partially give way to the 90s as auroral termind is used to drive not only the plot reference realm, and more recently even to but also a subjacent political irony about the early noughties (two such geek super- the geek wizard being corrupted by the novae exploding with the adaptations of corporate CEO. Halliday reacts to the call The lord of the rings and the of the dark side by retreating, much like series). Ready Player One recuperates the Yoda or Obi Wan Kenobi in , in 80s, although it is part of a broader revival: order to prepare “the return of the geek,” recent films such asGuardians of the galaxy which the novel chronicles. The analogy is The State of Play: Geektopia in Ready Player One 247

transparent: IOI, the corporation in ques- article proceeds by sketching a profile in tion, is the Empire; geeks – called “gunters” the world-oblivious light of their mindless in the novel, from “Egg hunters” – are the pleasures. Rebel Alliance. Isn’t it ironic, one might When I say “profile,” I do so with ask, that a novel in which true geeks would the full knowledge of the stereotype and rather die than let themselves be exploit- of the partiality that the term must incur ed by evil corporate drones will be used to here. Traditionally, the geek master-nar- make billions by movie studios?14 While rative has been a heavily gender-biased19 the irony remains, the sobering observa- and a racially biased20 affair. In brief(s), a tion should be made that, unlike in geek white boy’s story.21 The cultural stereotype fantasy stories, geek culture has from very of the asocial, awkward and apt white ad- early organised and administered itself as olescent, reinforced time and again by the creative entrepreneurship, often hand in very same 80s, has only recently begun to hand with corporate capital and the var- be challenged in the sense of inclusion and ious branches of the culture industry, the diversity of representation. Ready player latter effectively enabling the former and one takes big strides to address the issue, allowing it to develop in the global phe- by having a girl geek, Art3mis, as one of nomenon it is today.15 the protagonists, and with a twist which, The Kyber crystals of geek nostal- in good geek fashion, I shall not spoil. Al- gia pulsate impurely, streaked with darker though far from the subtlety with which, veins than the wielders would admit. in his 2003 novel, The fortress of solitude, Jonathan Lethem reworks a geek narrative Geeking Out: Sociability, Sharing, to include the multiracial Brooklyn of the 70s and 80s, Cline manages to make geek and Individualism diversity not look ham-fisted. ociologically, the issue of “geeks” has To return to the point, geek sociabil- been thoroughly explored in the edu- ity is contradictory: geeks are as dialogic Scational system and in the culture of con- as they are retractile. A common form of sumption, and illuminated in the terms of interaction or social practice is “geeking the theory of status relations by Murray out,” in which one form of immersion (of- Millner Jr.16 Other avenues of thought in ten solitary) is exchanged for reliving it in- recent works by Kentaro Toyama17 and tersubjectively with a fellow geek, or a few Gaspard Koenig18 devote remarkable crit- fellow geeks. The pleasures of geeking out ical attention (although formulated from are those of the connaisseurs sharing; it’s an very different theoretical and ideological exercise in marking pop culture territory as standpoints) to geek myths or presumably owned, for lack of a better term, and owned geek-inspired models in relation to real together in a ritual of mutual recognition. world issues. With both authors, a certain Part of it is about the commonality of lived geek profile (the tech geek) is magnified experiences (playing the same games, hav- as key agent in social models that are the ing seen the same movies and experienced ominous shape of things to come. My con- similar emotions etc.), but it wouldn’t be siderably more modest proposal in this authentic if it didn’t include disagreement, 248 Rareș Moldovan feigned or real. Here is a sample of geeking consists of multiple micro-closures, since out, courtesy of Cline’s avatars Parzival and at every step something is judged, evalu- Aech: ated, a case is closed. The world of geeking “out” is electively and selectively shrunk, a He grinned. “Why? So you can read small, safe mini-world marking its closures the article on Ladyhawke?” on the deceptively fluid surface of cultur- “Maybe.” al play23. Recursive, it will follow the same “Man, you just love that crapburger, grooves and deepen them, “discovering” don’t you?” again and again, with the quasi-infantile “Blow me, Aech.” delight of repetition. As it with gaming, “How many times have you seen that one might say, practice makes perfect. sapfest? I know you’ve made me sit The model of socialization that the through it at least twice.” He was bait- original geeks adopted – the circle of friends ing me now. He knew Ladyhawke was in a basement caught in a communal fantasy one of my guilty pleasures, and that I’d – furnished the pattern that would evolve as seen it over two dozen times. a cultural trope and a code of behaviour at “I was doing you a favor by making you the same time. Although the latter created watch it, noob,” I said. I shoved a new the former in real social history, it can also cartridge into the Intellivision console be argued that the former then enforced and and started up a single-player game of fostered the latter even among new adepts. Astrosmash. “You’ll thank me one day. With online migration, the model evolved Wait and see. Ladyhawke is canon.” into something else, more complex, some- “Canon” was the term we used to thing resembling a tribe or, with the word classify any movie, book, game, song, gamers and Cline prefer, a “clan.” Much has or TV show of which Halliday was been written24 about the tribalisation of on- known to have been a fan. line groups and communities, about their “Surely, you must be joking,” Aech said. structure and social effects, and a discussion “No, I am not joking. And don’t call is beyond the scope of this paper, but I will me Shirley.”22 touch on a few aspects. Besides the obvi- ous fact that tribes are, well, fitting closures If you’re a geek, you caught that last held together by code, norm and ethos, one one. Anyway, as it turns out, the particle should also mention dispersal as that dark in the phrasal verb is partly misleading: in energy continuously pushing for dissolution a sense, geeking out is actually geeking in, into a non-place and non-individuals. Or, to a sort of closure. The circle of sociability borrow the elegant French of Koenig: is closed (according to criteria of knowl- edge and affinity, even when there’s friction Mais surtout nomades vis-à-vis de about tastes), the interaction is closed in nous-mêmes, abandonnant toute iden- repetitive patterns, and the whole practice tité fixe pour entrer dans le tourbillon is en-closed in a well defined cultural hori- des appartenances multiples et des zon (see the recurrent idea of “canon” that arrangements multipolaires. Nous ne Cline nods to above). Even punctually, it sommes plus membres d’un groupe, The State of Play: Geektopia in Ready Player One 249

mais de mille; nous n’avons plus une tribe, within the immediate circle, or with personnalité, mais une collection de anyone who is “wrong on the internet.” pseudos et d’avatars.25 All these do not immediately rec- ommend geekdom (another medievally A collection of pseudos and avatars! inspired coinage) as an auspicious realm Why, yes please, say all geeks as one. What for solidarity and redistribution. Is there a for the French philosopher is an ultimately conceivable form for a call that would have distressing diagnosis about the shattered “geeks of the world unite”? vessel of the individual, for the geek any- where is a utopian (meaning non-place- The State of Play and the Limits able) guarantee, non-localised, virtually of Geektopia “nomadic” even if one is really immobile. In reality, things are perhaps less drastic While play happens, the world is im- than Koenig would have us believe, geeks material. Immersion is also refusal of the and non-geeks alike tending to stick to a world. Geek or non-geek, while at play you handful of communities at most, but dis- are at once within a world and worldless. seminating oneself in avatars and aliases The entire geek universe, and, one could is current practice. The principle behind argue, the entire pop culture industry re- any MMORPG, and behind Cline’s vast, volves around play and immersion, a titan- world-replacing, virtual reality simulation, ic endeavour of world effacement. Game the OASIS, is the leeway of the avatar, worlds are, of course, fictional worlds, open which in fact enables interactions (geeking worlds, story worlds, imaginary worlds, out included) that would otherwise never non-worlds, addictive simulacra, simula- exist. Geeks have always been discreet and tions, second-hand, surrogate, seductive, discrete entities, with a certain pulverised versatile multiverse versions: quality, but as avatars they can find each other across the vast blankness of physical Other virtual worlds soon followed space, and in the rabble of dabblers. suit, from the Metaverse to the Ma- A final trait merits a mention here: trix. The Firefly universe was anchored geeks, while gregarious, are also fiercely in- in a sector adjacent to the Star Wars dividualistic and competitive. Ready player galaxy, with a detailed re-creation of one, after all, is a quest based on a contest the Star Trek universe in the sector that is also a labyrinth, a quiz, and a puzzle. adjacent to that. Users could now tele- There can be, that is clear, only one winner. port back and forth between their fa- It comes from gaming really, this rule that vorite fictional worlds. Middle Earth. states that within the common space (even Vulcan. Pern. Arrakis. Magrathea. within the same community) a territory Discworld, Mid-World, Riverworld, will be set aside for “PvP,” Player vs. Play- . Worlds upon worlds.26 er. One player is always Player One. At its agonal core, the model, evidently, is the me- Cannibalising worlds upon worlds, dieval tourney, or the duel. Even when not Ready player one offers its own immer- in combat, players will compete, within the sive ecclectic metaworld. Worlds galore, 250 Rareș Moldovan conglomerated, agglutinated. Still, beyond The player must let himself be played this novel, and beyond films and games, the by the movie/ game, relinquishing him- banal game of endless world generation, self to the story he must respect with ev- which is not about escapism, although escap- ery move and every line. In a restricted ism is its most encountered real world avatar, sense, it is the ultimate geek test, uniting obscures an astonishing finesse: geektopia the gamer and the film buff in Wade. Nev- is the otherworldly totality of play. Which ertheless, the example hints at something makes it, I guess, a true utopia. One life is more general in a structure of desire that never enough for this, not nearly enough for exceeds mere hedonism. One could argue one player. One player always gets another that every game requires the player to let life. Not a second life, or a third, or an nth, themselves be played, and one could go on although sometimes they are numbered and toying with this idea towards the possi- they used to be quartered; always another bility that every game gets another life by life. Cline formulates it differently, a near playing the player. miss, I would say: “you have an extra life”27, This totality, beyond all gaming rela- the game tells Wade Watts, the protagonist. tions, is the state of play. Geektopia is no The totality of play includes the state state, unless it is the state of play. After of being played. One of the weirdest and indulging this totality for two thirds of its most interesting moments in Ready player course, flirting with its inhuman possibility, one is when, within the OASIS, after passing Ready player one readies itself for setting the through a gate in his quest, Wade finds him- limit that will betray it. It sets the predictable self playing Galaga, an old arcade game and: limit: the return to the world, or rather, the return of the world. The real fictional world Then, as I finished clearing the wave on is messed up in Ready player one, there’s cli- Galaga, I noticed my reflection in the mate change, wars, a Big Energy Crisis, im- game’s screen. It wasn’t my avatar’s face poverished people live in stacks, which are I saw there. It was Matthew Broderick’s vertical trailer parks, and the predominant face. A young pre-Ferris Bueller and economic relation is indentured servitude pre-Ladyhawke Matthew Broderick. to mega-corporations. Halliday’s OASIS is Then I knew where I was. And who at haptically gloved hand and visor, virtually I was. free, and everybody retreats from the world I was David Lightman, Matthew to its better surrogates. The dystopian plot Broderick’s character in the mov- displaces geektopia, and, as one blurb says ie WarGames. And this was his first “an epic struggle between good and evil” scene in the film. ensues. An unlikely hero finds himself on a I was in the movie.28 quest to… you know. Save it, he must.

Notes 1. A detailed physiognomy cannot be pursued here, for obvious reasons. It can be gleaned from films, of course, some of which I mention here, from its own “Bible” or miscellany – Stephen H. Segal (ed.), Geek wisdom: the sacred teaching of nerd culture, Quirk Books, 2011 –, from one of the über-geeks – Will The State of Play: Geektopia in Ready Player One 251

Wheaton, Just a geek, O’Reilly, 2003. Or see Brad King, John Borland, Dungeons and dreamers: the rise of computer games from geek to chic, McGraw Hill/Osborne, 2003. 2. See, for instance, Lori Kendall, “Nerd nation: Images of nerds in US popular culture,” International Journal of Cultural Studies, volume 2 (2), SAGE Publications, 1999, pp. 260-83; Tracy L. Cross, “Nerds and geeks: Society’s evolving stereotypes of our students with gifts and talents,” The gifted child today, 28 (4), pp. 26-7. 3. Ethan Gilsdorf, Fantasy freaks and gaming geeks, The Lyons Press, 2008, p. 49. 4. Even the celebrated Revenge of the nerds, see Kendall, “Nerd Nation,” pp. 267-8. 5. “Star script writer Damon Lindelof explains the new rules of blockbuster screenwriting,” a 2013 interview available at http://www.vulture.com/2013/08/script-doctor-damon-lindelof-on-blockbus- ter-screenwriting.html [retrieved February 11th 2017]. 6. “Imagining the future is dangerous,” an interview with Ernest Cline, online at http://www.slate.com/ articles/technology/future_tense/2015/07/an_interview_with_ernest_cline_author_of_ready_player_ one_and_armada.html [retrieved February 11th 2017]. 7. See, for instance, Gilsdorf, Fantasy freaks, pp. 46-8. 8. Ernest Cline, Ready player one, Arrow books, 2012, p. 1. 9. Ibidem, p. 2. 10. Dictionaries, especially urban dictionary, but Wikipedia also, note that “anorak,” initially a deroga- tory British term for a socially inept person, is in fact another word for geek. 11. Originally published in 1949, Campbell’s monomyth story is one of the archi-texts that would build future geek narratives. See Joseph Campbell, The hero with a thousand faces, Princeton University Press, 2004, pp. 46-7. 12. Harry Knowles, another famous geek reviewer, also noticed this: “but this isn’t a nostalgia, it is a mystery, an incredibly viable science-fiction future,” http://www.aintitcool.com/node/45490 [retrieved February 11th 2017]. 13. Cline, Ready player one, p. 7. 14. An apt and funny geek reply to ideas of this sort can be found in the mantra “shut up and take my money” (also the name for an online retailer specialising in geek stuff), which acknowledges the system but simply, frankly, doesn’t care. 15. See King and Borland, Dungeons and dreamers, pp. 41-60, 87-116. 16. Murray Millner Jr, Freaks, geeks, and cool kids: American kids, schools, and the culture of consumption, Routledge, 2004, especially pp. 34-90. 17. Kentaro Toyama, Geek heresy: rescuing social change from the cult of technology, Public Affairs, 2015. 18. Gaspard Koenig, Le révolutionnaire, l’expert et le geek: combat pour l’autonomie, Plon, 2015, pp. 174-227. 19. Kendall discusses this in her article in relation to nerds, see “Nerd nation,” pp. 271-2, 276-9. 20. See Ron Eglash, “Race, sex, and nerds: from black geeks to Asian-American hipsters,” Social Text, 20:2, Summer 2002, pp. 49-64. Available online at http://homepages.rpi.edu/~eglash/eglash.dir/ethnic. dir/nerds.dir/nerd.htm [retrieved February 12th 2017]. 21. Aptly, and often ineptly, much of the slang and humour of geeks on the internet revolves around male sexuality (& genitalia) or is scatological. See, for instance, Neill Cumpston’s NSFW reviews on Aintitcool.com. Neill Cumpston was an online alias of comedian Patton Oswalt. 22. Cline, Ready player one, p. 40. 23. A synthetic and critical assessment of how this encloses the individual is found in Toyama, Geek heresy, pp. 61-3. 24. See Tyrone L. Adams, Stephen A. Smith (eds.), Electronic tribes: the virtual words of geeks, gamers, shamans and scammers, University of Texas Press, 2008. Also, King and Borland, Dungeons and dreamers, pp. 41-57, 229-50. 25. Koenig, Le révolutionnaire, pp. 222-3. 26. Cline, Ready player one, p. 49. 27. Ibidem, p. 344. 28. Ibidem, p. 108.