Teens Go Geek at 2011 Choice Awards; Let’s Talk About the Future
The results for tonight’s Teen Choice Awards— established by Fox in ’99 —will make most full-grown geeks eyes’ roll: the befanged stars of The Vampire Diaries and Twilight took home awards, as did the wizards of Harry Potter and the awfully attractive and talented “outcasts” of Glee.
But maybe instead of rolling our eyes, we should consider opening them.
With geekdom becoming something akin to mainstream, it’s easy to disparage the big popular geek shows that kids like these days. Sure, Twilight is crap, Harry Potter squeaks by in part because it’s been going on long enough that the kids who started reading it are mostly now adults themselves, and let’s not even start on Glee‘s sparkly-shiny version of life as a high school exile. But think about your geek “gateway.” Try to wipe away the glimmering aura of nostalgia for a moment and think…was it really that awesome a show(/book/movie/game)?
For some of us that may be true, but in my particular case, I launched into geekdom headfirst with the Japanese animated series Sailor Moon. As it happens, Kodansha Comics is planning to re-release the manga that the show is based on, and yes, I’m picking it up (I never actually finished reading the comics myself)— but despite fans constantly flailing at Funimation to acquire the original anime series’ U.S. rights, I honestly can’t say I’m likely to want to sit through very much of the show myself. Even the parts that I never got to see.
But nowadays I’m a legitimate and well-rounded geek; sure, I’m missing a few stamps on my cred card (who isn’t?), but I game, I read, I watch, and I’ve partaken of some of the finest geek media in existance. Few of us started there, though.
So the next time you meet a young person who thinks that Twilight is the bee’s knees, instead of rolling your eyes, scoffing, or dismissing them, consider handing them a copy of the first Dresden Files book.
Gia Manry is a Texas-based geek who you can hire. Or you could just follow her on Twitter.