Some of you may have read the Gizmodo post that has become infamous in geek circles on the Internets. I won’t link to it here, because I don’t want to feed the nerd-baiting any more than I already have. Here’s the thing, though: something good has come of it. Namely, Speak Out with your Geek Out. The idea is simple: rather than turning to nerd rage and negativity, let’s light up the Internet for a week with positivity, and talk about all the things we love about our nerdy hobbies. I think this is a great idea. So, without further ado, and in no particular order, here are some things I love about my chosen flavors of geekitude.

Social Acceptance
This may not be a universal, but in my experience, geeks are really friendly, accepting people. All of my best friends are geeks (which shouldn’t really surprise you), and many of us are friends because of that common ground. When I finally found a game store in my area, they welcomed me with open arms, and now it’s a place where everybody knows my name (as the saying goes). GenCon, too, was a revelation; here was a place with 35,000 nerds all converging to revel in our shared passtimes. Everyone I met was friendly, helpful, and accepting of the people around them. It was a place where you could really be yourself, which was awesome.

Going along with this, I recently made a new friend via Twitter, through this shared culture of ours. He’s a really cool guy who is fun to hang out with and seems to like a lot of the same kinds of games that I do. What realy flabbergasted me (in a good way) was his willingness (and his wife’s) to come and help me and my wife out of a tight spot, after only knowing us for a few weeks. I’m not saying that something like that is specific to geeks, but I think it’s a great geek meets geek story that illustrates what I like about being a geek.

Shared Culture
Admit it: you love making obscure references to nerdy media and having other people laugh. It’s fun and energizing when that happens, and it’s unlikely to happen anwyere but around other geeks. I make these same jokes at work, and get blank stares back. I walk into my FLGS with a new nerd shirt on, and everyone applauds. It’s awesome.

Creativity
It seems like all of my friends are aspiring game designers (or game designers for real) these days. Everyone in the hobby wants to contribute back to the hobby, to make it better, richer, fuller for everyone else. That’s incredibly energizing and encouraging.

The Games
This list would be incomplete without mentioning the games, themselves. I love playing board games, role-playing games, video games; I’ll expand this to watching nerdy TV shows and movies, too, because it’s all part of the same culture. Withou these trappings of geekdom, I would likely feel out of place in this world; these things give me a subculture to belong to, they give me something to be passionate about. These things are why I do a lot of what I do.

So what about the rest of you? What do you love about gaming and beeing a geek? Sound off! Let’s see how much positivity we can get out there!

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