“If you were a geek, it was hard to miss. Laid out with all
the pomp and circumstance of a major cultural pronouncment, New
York Times critic Michiko Kakutani’s lambasting of geek society
sprawled across the front page of the Arts & Leisure
section. In the article, “When the Geeks Get Snide,” Kakutani
tried to paint the geek culture as a cold, unfeeling place
populated by geeks who, whatever their technical accomplishments,
remain failures as human beings. What’s even worse, she attempted
to prove her point by quoting liberally from my own work as an
editor and writer.”
“The article stumbles on its factual errors; “sheeple” is not
geek slang, for example, nor is “content provider” — the former
was coined 80 years ago by H. L. Mencken (whose intuitive grasp of
today’s language and pop culture would probably far surpass
Kakutani’s if he were still alive) and the latter is
marketroid-speak used mainly by suits. Not only have I never heard
any of my friends or New Hacker’s Dictionary correspondents refer
to sex as “client-server action,” I can’t even imagine them being
so crass.”
“To some extent these problems are down to bad sources; Gareth
Branwyn’s “Jargon Watch” Wired column is insubstantial
entertainment, not lexicography, and Paulina Borsook in
“Cyberselfish” was seriously blinkered by her political agenda. But
the real problem is that Kakutani (like Borsook before her) has
distorted the geek culture into a mirror of her own fears and
prejudices.”