What's a geek?

Don't bother browsing the interwebs for an answer to this enigma.

Dictionary.com's response is too erudite, Urban Dictionary's too inane, and Wikipedia's too anecdotal.  A Google image search of "geek" returns mostly pictures of homely adolescents wearing thick rimmed glasses, plugging away on a keyboard while bearing a pronounced pair of buck teeth.  That's like using a picture of Colonel Sanders to define the word, "greasy."  While some ugly, nearsighted, big-toothed folks might make great geeks, not all ugly, nearsighted big-toothed folks are geeks.   What follows is a logic puzzle more appropriate for the LSAT than a definition of geekdom.

While an encompassing definition nests at the conclusion of this article, it's best to approach such a precarious topic in a roundabout manner, lest we fall prey to the same contemporary clichés that sentence geeks into their collective stereotypical basements.  Here we go...

Since the recent invasion of hipster culture, the geek umbrella has spread. Thanks to hipsters, geeks can now be cool.  Those still left out in the rain include authority figures, some octogenarians, most politicians and all prom royalties.  It's mostly a time management issue.  If you're popular enough to hold public office or win prom queen, then you probably haven't spent much time by yourself, being a geek.

Be careful, though, not to categorize all hipsters as geeks.  While some might appreciate such a branding, the truth is that most hipsters who appear as geeks are simply Apple fanboys and girls who finesse their knowledge of anything Steve Jobs puts in front of them as a extensive understanding of all things tech.

This presents one fundamental requirement of the geek: a blanketed understanding of something... just something. This doesn't necessarily demand of a geek a knowledge of technology, as there are automobile geeks, history geeks, video game geeks, astronomy geeks, as well as countless other variations.

The geek knows enough about something that they're capable of waxing on about it long enough and with sufficient enough technical detail for the non-geek to interrupt with, "you're such a geek."

Keep in mind, those that "geek out" are never, ever geeks.  For example, an English professor, who, at the beginning of class, proclaims, "today, we're gonna geek out on some Shakespeare," is not a geek.  True geeks don't need to "geek out."  They just "be themselves."

Which brings up another fundamental quality of the geek.  Geeks know what they know because they enjoy it.  A Shakespeare geek doesn't know what he or she knows because he or she "geeked out" with a professor for two and a half hours a week.  He or she knows what he or she knows because he or she drew enough pleasure from learning about his or her area of expertise, that he or she compulsively drank up knowledge to the point of expertise.

So, not only do geeks specialize, they do so because they enjoy it. 

Often, during a discussion of "geek," the words "dork" and "nerd" enter the conversation.  These two seemingly similar nouns only serve to confuse the true meaning of "geek."  It's quite simple, actually.  Dorks, play Dungeons and Dragons, while nerds excel academically.  Geeks can be dorks and nerds, dorks can be nerds and geeks and nerds can be geeks and dorks.  Thus, contrary to popular belief, they are not interchangeable, but share a similar sphere of culture. 

This is why geek stereotypes are often true.  The dorky geeks roll dice and chug Mountain Dew in their diabetic friend's basement on a Friday night.  The nerdy geeks do calculus and do it right.  The dorky, nerdy geeks bring spreadsheets to a D&D session that gauge the effectiveness of their party's weapons, cross-referenced with the game's Monster Manual, all the while criticizing their friends' consumption of high fructose corn syrup.

When it comes to true geeks, it's not hard to pick one out.  

Since we all know a geek when we see it, why bother defining it?  The truth is, the only people that care what a geek is, are geeks themselves, geeks looking for a sense of purpose.  

So, for the sake of geeks everywhere, in an effort to solve a collective identity crisis, here's your definition:

The "geek," in its purest, most societally appropriate form, is the person, man or woman, who in, when all things go dark, others can find the light.