Although not officially either a librarian or a library patron, the new Geekman action figure might represent another breed of information maniac.
This story from the LA Times (registration required…but here’s another w/o registration from the Seattle Times) portrays Geekman as “altogether hip.” When asked what his hero’s superpowers are, Kris Schantz, founder of Happy Worker toys and creator of GeekMan, listed “opposite-sex repulsion, analytical reasoning, the ability to create technical acronyms and less-than-ideal personal hygiene.”
Geekman is available at local toy stores and on the web. This reporter thinks he’d play well with the loveable Nancy Pearl shushing librarian doll.
Argggghhhhh! Stereotypes hurt my brain!
I won’t get into my feelings on the librarian doll other than to say it stereotyped an entire industry trying desperately to break its own stereotype.
But dammit, this is getting insane. I know geeks, I am a geek. I build my own machines, I programme my own stuff, I’m a digital artist, a blogger, I drool over well designed Poser images, tidy code makes me smile, and I think casemodding is sexy. I play role playing games, and by play I mean I play your share, and his share, and her share over there… I play a lot. I dig MMORPG, Neverwinter Nights was genius, and I worship at the temple of Gygax. I’m a well qualified geek, and because birds of a feather flock together, I have a lot of geek friends. And now my point.
They look nothing like that! They don’t dress geeky, they don’t use pocket protectors, they comb their hair (well one shaves his), and they all look fairly normal as normal goes. I work out. I’ve trained in over 17 styles of martial arts. I have decent muscular definition. My friend (the one with the shaved head) can lift well over four hundred pounds with no warm up. Another friend looks like a Scandanavian goddess incarnate and she builds more impressive computers than I do.
Geeks don’t look like that anymore. To use stereotypes to combat stereotypes, we look more like Hackers than Revenge of the Nerds. Hell even Kevin Mitnick is looking pretty svelte and suave these days.
I hate this doll, it’ll probably make millions.
Thank goodness it’s not…
“Guybrarian.”
Re:Argggghhhhh! Stereotypes hurt my brain!
And there I was thinking it was funny… Even sent it off to my computer geek guy to give him a laugh, but of course I thought “This Land” was quite funny, too…actually I thought it was hilarious, as opposed to just getting a chuckle or two out of this article.
Seriously, if anyone really, truly believes in these stereotypes then they’re just not the sort we want to associate with – are they now! 😉