Top Ten Ways to Provoke a Geek Argument
Wired’s blog Geekdad often strikes gold. This is my favorite post of theirs in a long time. The top ten ways you can provoke a geek into an argument. Having heard more than one of these in my time, and launching into the defensive, I can only say- excellent list. I once witnessed a guy in college utter #4 on a bus packed with geeks. He was almost killed.
I know he left some out- what provokes a geek more than these ten inflammatory statements?
10. “No real programmer would ever use PHP.” - This won’t work for every geek, of course, but for those it works on, it should work really well.
9. “Comic books are just for kids!” - I’m sure you’ve heard this one before—I know I certainly heard it often enough in high school, and even though it’s even less true now than it was then, I’m sure comic book afficionados still hear it today.
8. “Role-playing games are just for people who can’t deal with real life.”- There are, sadly, still a lot of people who think anyone who plays D&D must live in his parents’ basement and bathe once a month. Such people must be put straight, and immediately!
7. “The Pirates of the Caribbean movies are so realistic!” - I doubt many people actually believe this, but there are an awful lot of misconceptions about pirates out there, so you never know.
6. “Yeah, I got an Xbox 360 so my daughter could play Hello Kitty games. Is it really good for anything else?” - We’ve hit the ones that are hard for me even to type, now…
5. “Mac, Windows, or Linux? Does it really make a difference?” - An argument so old its original form was probably first written down in hieroglyphs, I know, but I don’t know a single geek it wouldn’t work on—myself included.
4. “The Ewoks were the best thing about the original Star Wars trilogy.” / “Greedo shot first!” - I couldn’t decide between the two. If one doesn’t work, I’ll bet the other one would.
3. “Tolkien? Ehhh, I prefer Terry Brooks!” - I almost feel like I should argue with myself just for writing that. I’m going to let the top two stand for themselves.
2. “Joss Whedon is a hack!”
1. “I don’t see what’s so bad about DRM!”
Check out the full (brilliant) post at Geek Dad- HERE.
I have to add my favorite comment from Geekdad’s blog- which I agree with 3000%:
I chuckled over these… until I got to #3. If anyone ever seriously claimed that in my presence I would be compelled to smack them in the face with the nearest object at hand. Reading Brooks makes one long for gifted authors like R.A. Salvatore, Danielle Steele or the guy who writes local radio ads for the furniture liquidation outlet. Nothing ever written, in any language, has sucked as badly as the Shannara series. They are the “Pete’s Dragon” of literature.
- ablackstormy
Hey now ablackstormy, back the fuck off. Sword of Shannara was my favorite in fifth grade. Terry Brooks may have lifted his plot from Lord of the Rings, but his books read like butter. It’s a pop music version of Tolkien’s classical symphony.
If you really want to smell a bookfart, check out the works of David Eddings.
The geek argument is on.
Bro, David Eddings just DIED this week! I was going to write him a fitting eulogy on here but found out too late.
Brainfart indeed… those books changed my life. Terry Brooks is the margarine to Edding’s true butter.
The best book you ever read in middle school…
(No comment on how they fared upon re-reading them years later…)