Have Geeks Gone Mainstream?

An anonymous reader asks: "Recently, I've been seeing more and more news stories about how 'geek' has gone mainstream. There have been a slew of articles with titles like Geek Pride and Geek Chic, which discuss how movies like 'The 40-Year Old Virgin' and 'Napoleon Dynamite', as well as television shows like 'Beauty and the Geek' have made it cool to be a geek. Two pinup calendars of geeks have been released this year, taking advantage of the new mainstream interest in all things geeky. These include the Geek Gorgeous Calendar, which features women who work in the hi-tech industry, and the Girls of Geekdom Calendar, which includes geeks like 'Art Geek' and 'Movie Geek'. So if being a geek has really become cool, why has interest in CS as a major dropped among incoming freshmen and women are still a minority in computer and engineering fields? Is it cooler to pretend to be a geek (wear 'Save Pedro' shirts, etc.) than to really be one?"

Re:Definition of a geek

[Skyfire]

No, part of the definition is that you have to bite the heads off of chickens in a circus.

Re:perhaps...

[pyrosim]

My gosh... How rude... you need to provide LINKS!!!

Geek [wikipedia.org]
Nerd [wikipedia.org]

Re:Whether you're a geek or not...

[Daedalus-Ubergeek]

A shirt saying "Vote for Pedro" in retro font comes straight from the movie "Napoleon Dynamite". Napoleon (the geek) is seen wearing it at different parts throughout the last 2/3 of the movie, trying to help a new student win a high school student election against one of the school's superfriends/attention whores.

Re:The Girls of Geekdom's "Computer Geek"

[eclectic4]

antithesis [m-w.com]

For the non-geeks. *ahem*

Re:ugh

[pyite]

Is it that you can't do math or you won't? If you can't, that's one thing. If you won't, sounds like you're just not trying. CS Bachelor's programs really don't require a lot of math. Typically it's two semesters of [very manageable] calculus, a semester of basic linear algebra, and potentially some numerical analysis. If you otherwise like the curriculum, it might be worth getting through that to stay in it.

I suppose I should throw a caveat in here that I'm an engineering and mathematics double major so I'm a bit biased in my suggestions.

Re:Whether you're a geek or not...

[Blaaguuu]

19" = Nineteen inches
19' = Nineteen feet
...You've been mocked.

Vote Pedro

[TheToast]

For the record, it's "Vote Pedro", not "Save Pedro".

Screw Real Genius

[caveat]

Not that it's a bad geek movie, us chem majors (all 6 of us) used to have weekly watchings of it in college...but Pi is definitely the greatest geek movie I've ever seen. Period.

Re:Who switched nerd/geek defs?

[Mahou]

no a geek is someone who is smart but has an almost osbsessive interest in something, such as computer geeks, gaming geeks, etc. a nerd is someone who studies all the time because they want to get good grades to impress family/teachers/admitions office/potential employer.

nerd [m-w.com]
geek [m-w.com]