I have worked in IT since I was 16 (now just about to turn 24) and you often get painted with the brush of being a geek. I personally think I was painted with this brush at school aswell. Instead going to play football every night or every Friday and Saturday getting drunk down the park I was more often than not sitting infront of my PC getting ready for Clan pratice or trying to arrange a Clan match on which ever FPS I was playing but now this seems to be a very normal thing for people to do! Anyone who is anyone plays the latest call of duty (Not got shit on Cod2) or some massively multiplayer Role playing Game….. for the less geeky world of warcraft. So it leaves me thinking what defines the modern geek!

Do you define a geek by how they look, what there hobbies are, what they do for a living, the people they solcialize or the inability to solcialize with, the ability to get music and movies for free, how good they are with technology or how intelligent they are.

I don’t believe you can define a person as a Geek becuase they are gamers. It is very hard to find any young person especially males that does not own a playstation or xbox and games online a few nights a week. A lot of this is due the ease of playing multiplayer Games now. No longer do you need a high spec’d PC with a expensive internet connection. Or somone who has not played wow for atleast a months subscription! Technology is a whole lot easier to use from PC’s and Laptops to Mobile phones and a lot less expensive. Fashion sense also changes every other month not that I know anything about fashion… more often than not a pair of jeans and plain T-Shirt does the trick for me! So what would be consider geeky is consider retro or indie. The ability to talk people I believe comes from your up bringing and exposure to strangers. I am not very good at talking to someone I do not know unless it is work related or blatantly obvious that we share a common interest (which does make me pretty rubish when approaching a girl I fancy). I do not believe this is makes me a geek but just not the most confident. I dont think the way you make a living defines what kind of person you are. I chose IT because I had a general interest and although the guys at work would disagree believe I have a little bit of a nack for it. I work with a developer that would swear blind the fact he could fix any database or website regardless of what language it is written but could not tell you how to log onto your hotmail account to check your emails confirms he is not a geek!

Do you now just define a geek by the level of intelligence if so this would rule me out of being a geek completely but how to you messure that and come to a  conculsion. Information is so easily got now a days and what is the first thing you think of if you don’t know the answer to a question or want to find out a little bit more…. google it! I believe it is very hard to determine the intelligence of someone you have not know for a long period of time.

I could go on and on about it and discuss the idea of a trendy geek, which is a term that was used on a pub lunch the other day which ammused me but trying to keep things short and sweet at the moment.