Tee Freaks Out
Podcaster/Author/Raconteur Tee Morris jumps back into his blog with a timely and spot-on rant about geeks freaking out about Steampunk going mainstream, the latest chapter in the long sad saga of geeks freaking out about other people engaging with the stuff geeks think they own.
Fanbois and elitists are screaming about the “mainstreaming” of steampunk, and with IBM leading the charge it seems that science is predicting that THIS TIME it’s really going to happen. (Science!) Now here’s a little slap from the Halibut of Truth: weren’t people just bickering mere months ago (particularly around the infamous Prada campaign) about the definition of “true” steampunk. It’s the running joke of the genre — what is steampunk, exactly? The lack of a concrete definition could very well hinder the sub-genre’s journey to mainstream, but much like those pinheads ranting against “fake geek girls”some are bemoaning the fall of steampunk. Again. Why are so many worried about a genre that, if it isn’t redefining itself minute by minute, no one can agree exactly what it is?
– Tee Morris, STEAMPUNK GOES MAINSTREAM…and other things for geeks to panic about. Again.
I dunno. Steampunk has been mainstream for a long time now, in my view, and it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Like you imply, just because geeks love something, it doesn’t mean we own it. In fact, if the love was genuine, the exact opposite would be true.
There’s just something in human beings that makes us want to posses what we love, never realizing that we kill it when we do that.