Apparently, nobody makes fun of geeks more ruthlessly than geeks themselves:

Having trouble with the ladies? Your personality isn’t to blame, I’m sure, as the fairer sex loves it when you describe funny LOL CATS images and talk about how Ubuntu Linux would take over if people would just give it a chance. No, it’s got to be the lack of facial hair. Everyone knows that a thin goatee is the fastest route to a woman’s heart, and if you were cruelly dealt a babyface in the card game of genetics, then what chance have you got?

Japan to the rescue! Thin paste-on facial hair for the beardically-challenged, available from $15 to $28. You’ll be mayor of Ladytown in no time, I’m sure. With a winning personality like that, how can you lose? –Adam Frucci

How do I know that Adam is a geek? Well, aside from the fact that he’s writing for a major gadget blog, how many non-geeks do you know who know what the hell a LOL CAT is or can name a specific Linux distro?

Update: Link courtesy my friend Dan, who assures me that he has met Adam Frucci, who is indeed a geek, “but he’s very nice and an excellent writer.” And yeah, I expected as much—my comments on Adam’s “ruthlessness” were meant in good spirit (honest). Let this all be a lesson about how you can say whatever you want about geeks as long as you are one yourself, kind of like making fun of your own ethnic group. Also, Adam’s last name ends with a –cci, much like my own last name, so we’re practically related. (No word on whether this enables us to mock Mario or Luigi, who are technically Japanese by birth.)

Fellow Annenberger Paul sends along a link to some geek tattoos, noting: “This should not only be the title, but also the cover of your book.” As long as I’m posting this, might as well also mention that Kotaku has a whole category for video game tattoos. (Eat your heart out, Cornel.)

Thanks for visiting Geek Studies. I’m Jason Tocci, a grad student in Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. For my doctoral dissertation, I’m doing a study on “geek” culture—the media use, social identity, and market formations of those who self-identify or are typically considered by others as geeks, nerds, dorks, and so on.

Why study geeks? Well, I started grad school to study comic art and visual communication, then moved into studying video games. I started noticing a common thread in some of my projects on comics and games, and I decided to start thinking about it in terms of geek culture when a friend gave me a t-shirt that said “Han Shot First.” The shirt features a sci-fi movie reference, is produced by an online comic artist whose strip is about video games, and is being distributed through an online store owned by a company related to open source technology. Somehow, all of this is marketed and claimed by fans themselves under a word that some consider an insult and others consider a badge of pride. What it means to be a geek is changing slowly, and these changes reveal interesting dynamics in the way communities work and media are used.

Ever since I started researching this as a course paper over a year ago, most of my interviewees have expressed interest in being kept up to date with how the project is going. It can be hard to coordinate that sort of thing via email, as I learned, though a couple of my interviewees suggested that I start up a web page to help keep people updated on my progress and solicit feedback. Considering that my subject group is known for its tech savvy and user participation, I’m hoping this site will help to produce a more fully considered study of geek culture. Thanks go to my thoughtful (anonymous) interviewees for setting me in this direction.

If I were to update here only to post new revisions and to self-promote, I suspect it would get boring pretty fast for all parties involved. In addition to occasionally soliciting feedback on papers, then, my plan is to post the links here that I’d otherwise just be emailing myself for later reference. I’ll also write up observations and ideas that may be the seeds for chapters or papers related to games, comics, technology, and so on.

Please feel free to comment, lurk, or email directly to jtocci [at] asc.upenn.edu.