What is Forces of Geek?

In his book, Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode The Internet Out of Idaho, author Jon Katz defined geek as, “A member of the new cultural elite, a pop-culture-loving, techno-centered Community of Social Discontents. Most geeks rose above a suffocatingly unimaginative educational system, where they were surrounded by obnoxious social values and hostile peers, to build the freest and most inventive culture on the planet: the Internet and World Wide Web. Now running the systems that run the world.

Tendency toward braininess and individuality, traits that often trigger resentment, isolation, or exclusion. Identifiable by a singular obsessiveness about the things they love, both work and play, and a well-honed sense of bitter, even savage, outsider humor. Universally suspicious of authority. In this era, the Geek Ascension, a positive, even envied term. Definitions involving chicken heads no longer apply.”

Forces of Geek brings together contributors and their own geek obsessions.

Says creator Stefan Blitz, “For many years, the term “geek” has had a negative connotation, but I think of it as a badge of honor, and this site celebrates that.”

Writer and Entertainment Weekly Senior-Editor Marc Bernardin agrees on the positive connotation, "Geek is the new unified theory of everything.” Being a geek is about being passionate about something, no matter what the vox populi may say. It’s about holding fast to that which you think has value, damn the consequences. And the people who can summon that kind of passion in the face of ridicule and derision and social ex-communication are the people who can shift the world on its axis. In fact, those are the only people who ever have."

Blitz added, "Forces of Geek is a community of writers who are passionate, intelligent and witty who are looking to share their voice with an audience of geeks across the world. I'm not looking to create another online venue for people to complain or spit their venom to readers. I value criticism, and within the blog postings, lists, interviews, columns and reviews, there will be critiques, but ix-nay on the pulpit of bashing."

Enjoy the party, and tell your friends.