This was wonderful. I'm a guy but I can definitely relate to never fitting in with the typical CS-crowd. I don't game, I don't play D&D or any RPGs, and I don't watch/read Sci-Fi. All of this is completely orthogonal to my skills/knowledge. I like reading celebrity gossip and watch cheesy movies that geeks despise. Sure, I watched and liked Primer but I also liked Wanted. People need to stop stereotyping. That's also kinda why I like HN and reddit because there is such a huge amount of diversity on these sites that transcending past stereotypes is an everyday occurrence.
I totally agree with you. I'm on the listserv for ACM at my school, but I rarely participate in their events because they are overwhelmingly gaming-related. I went to get pizza with them recently and had the feeling I didn't fit in.
I study both CS and Vocal Performance (opera). I'm not a gamer in the slightest. I'm also a gay male.
Wanted is a terrible example because it's a terrible movie. All that proves is that you have bad taste in cinema.
At least go with an example like... Wedding Crashers or Old School, or Bad Boys if it has to be an action movie.
ANYWAY, games are not a geek exclusive thing anymore (at least not if all of the frat bros I used to know in college are any indication). Comic books still are somewhat, but there is an ever growing independent movement that's causing the interested parties to become more diverse. Science Fiction is clearly no longer niche since like, 9 out of 10 of the top earning films are Science Fiction or Fantasy.
This seems like a bit of divide between 20-somethings and 40-somethings.
I played the original D & D at a kid but there was no crowd for which this meant fitting-in.
The idea of conformist geek culture is something that I've gradually become aware of - just as, I think, geek culture seems to have become more conformist.
