The loneliness of the online geek Analysis/Commentary People alive today might be inclined to feel that the history of the previous century (1900-99) will be summed up in a single conflict: the clash of sameness and difference. Democracy always breaks up sameness, while the authoritarian "isms," including Christianism and nationalism, lead to monoliths and the illusion of changelessness. The masses seldom accommodate change, they usually seek to resuscitate eternal youth, even if it means infantilism. Hence, people in our times clash between anarchy and order. And the history of our times has been a chronicle of anarchy poking its head out of still waters. The newest herald of anarchy -- by no means an ugly development in social life -- seems to be the online geek. The word "geek," as Jon Katz writes in his book Geeks, refers to a characteristic indicating positive independence and individuality. It is a cry of defiance against sameness for the sake of sameness, against formulaic lives, and against the harness and yoke of conformity. Geekdom denies normalcy where normalcy is a degradation. Modern society creates "normals" the way ancient society created slaves -- to perform mediocre tasks and not complain. But geeks, like artists, rebel against monolithic values, dogmas of self-sacrifice, the monasticism of ego-invisibility, the mendacity of power and materialism -- in short, some of the best features of social stability. Like the anarchists of the thirties and sixties, geeks fire pistols into crowds and throw bombs at garlanded, ducal carriages. They stand alone at midnight in the rolling fog and deserted streets, and bay their merriment and despair at the unchanging phases of the moon. They drink deep the cup of madness and solitude. There's madness in understanding oneself as an individual detached from the group mind, from the rewards and hoots of the mob, and the projections of cloistered culturati. For even knowledge dissolves in the collective soup, the concentric pull of brotherhood, and the crazed consensus that leads people to give what they don't understand a lofty name, and to substitute it explanation. Geeks, true geeks, know the loneliness of doubt, the whips of self-criticism, and the chains of spiritual poverty. Having debunked their myths, they find themselves clothed in tatters, instead of robes. They enjoy their nakedness, but feel embarrassed by it. The geeks of our age find liberation in online culture because they have begun to understand the perfidy of the collective mind, its lies and misrepresentations, sacrificial goats, stop valves, false prophets, and insane eclecticism. Notice that even the inconsequential people -- the omnipresent normals -- all discover their banner and coat of arms in some random, peculiar detachment from the tribe -- in short, in a reason to revel in one's privacy and yet protect it grudgingly. Geeks rediscover the leitmotif of rebellion, the chasm between being and doing, and social consciousness and life. They rebel at materialism in a kinetic sprint to knowledge that starves their social flesh and bodies, and leaves them panting with weakness at the gates of culture (meeting place of the sacred and profane). Geeks who are true to themselves are fated to discover in culture the food of community and yet will want to disrupt the bonds that bring people together -- the ideals of identity, superiority, conquest, and dominion. Like plague rats, they are portents of death to a certain kind of social organization. June 7, 2000