Image Credit: Lester Cohen/WireImage.com Comedian, starring-voice-of-Ratatouille, and nerd demi-god Patton Oswalt has written a fascinating piece for Wired about the rise of geek culture from the schoolyard fringes — kids quoting Monty Python and playing Dungeons & Dragons — to its present status as an all-encompassing cultural force. You see geek culture everywhere now, Oswalt notes: The relentless parade of superhero movies, the post-Lost vogue for detail-obsessed TV fandom, “Boba Fett’s helmet emblazoned on sleeveless T-shirts worn by gym douches hefting dumbbells.” As you might guess from that quote, Oswalt’s less than joyful about geekery’s current mainstream dominance. “Everything we have today that’s cool comes from someone wanting more of something they loved in the past,” he notes. “Action figures, videogames, superhero movies, iPods: All are continuations of a love that wanted more.” Oswalt’s piece is hilarious and incredibly thoughtful, but his ultimate point is worth discussing: Has the internet-assisted rise of geek culture had a negative effect on pop culture? Certainly, Oswalt’s vision of the future sounds eerily possible: “One long, unbroken, recut spoof in which everything in Avatar farts while Keyboard Cat plays eerily in the background.”
Oswalt begins with an extended personal riff about his own youth as an otaku with an encyclopedic knowledge of Alan Moore comics, a more leisurely time before the Internet made The Lonely Geek extinct. So you could feasibly dismiss Oswalt’s piece as a typical elder rant: Things were better in the good ol’ days before modern technology has ruined everything, and also what’s the deal with these kids on their cell phones and the Twitter, am I right!?!?! READ FULL STORY »