Culture

Inbreeding, Horror, and The Other

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So I got my latest issue of Fortean Times (If you don’t know what it is, just trust me and get it), and among their media section was a blurb review of a film called “Inbred,” which sounds like your standard people get butchered by inbred clan of psychos.  It’s really been a standard trope in Western horror for awhile – the terror of some separate, inbred group of maniacs out to kill you.  The most prominent example of it is likely “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and it’s legions of illegitimate children, but you can easily find the roots in Lovecraft and the various swamp denizens, tribal cultists, and wizardly families who were both possessed of terrible knowledge and a lack of genetic diversity.

It’s not hard to determine why this is terrifying to people, and tells us a lot about humans:

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For Us, Easy Bake is Easy To Take

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Well, it’s happened.  Hasbro, after criticism, is going gender neutral on it’s Easy Bake Oven.  As a guy who likes to cook, let me say “bravo”, and may I suggest a line of gender-neutral kid’s cookbooks and cooking utensils.  No I’m serious, have you seen how kids are eating?

It appears there’s awareness of gender issues and toy sales, even if attempts are a bit offbeat.  Of course geeks like us know that there’s plenty of cases of gender-bent preferences.

  • Hasbro, of course, has My Little Pony, which makes the easy-bake over issue look like nothing.  If they released a Pinkie Pie Microwave, grown men would buy it.
  • There’s “The Transformers,” whose fandom taught me that if your last name is “Prime” there’s no small amount of women who, when younger, thought you were the sexiest thing on two legs or four wheels.  Peter Cullen, and that large cast of Rodimi, do you know what you did?
  • Huge amounts of anime targeted at men with casts of buff guys punching stuff and bonding attract huge female audiences because it’s buff guys punching stuff and bonding.  Yaoi is a kind of cultural alkaheist.

Nothing here really surprises us.  The issues of gender-target expectations being off doesn’t surprise us.

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Grow Up, Don’t Grow Old

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I’m a 40-something year old “Professional Geek.”  “Geek 2.0” I call myself, and rather shamelessly at that.  I’m a geek professionally, a geek for money.

I also to not intend to “get old.”  I’d also recommend you, my professional geeks, do not either.

Oh, I intend to mature.  Maturity is how I turned my interests into a career.  Maturity is how I realized this blog is needed.  Maturity is why I value each contributor here.  Maturity is like a good wine or cheese, it’s where things age into a delightful form.

So please, by all means you pro geeks, mature.  Mature and grow.

Just don’t get old.

When you get old you become worn out.  When you get old you become stagnant as opposed to mature.  When you get old you become out of date.  When you get old your age becomes the first and perhaps only thing to matter.

So by all means grow.  Mature.  Grow up.  Just stop before you get old.  Keep enough of the useful enthusiasm that got you here to stay energized.  Keep enough of the energy that drove you so you keep developing, and keep maturing.

As you tell people about your fannish, geeky, and otaku ambitions, they’ll tell you to grow up.  What they really mean is to give up and get old, stagnant, and boring.  What they mean is being like an ideal norm that isn’t normal because it’s all statistical averages and doesn’t exist.  It means pre-aging yourself into ossification.

So don’t grow up and get old.  Mature enough until you’re ideal for what you want, and go on being the person you are, the professional you are.

In fact, shout this to the heavens, because if you’re the best you, the mature you, then you’ll have one hell of a career edge over people who gave up, “grew up,” and grew old no matter what their age.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.