Thanks to everyone who participated in my surveys. This is a college paper w/ mainstream audience, so it may be a bit dumbed down for people in the know (i.e.: most of the hardcore forumites on board, i.e.: YOU!). This report originally contained images, but I removed them in order to post here. Some images are now replaced by links. GAF was a big part of my research. Enjoy! 
A geek (pronounciation /gi:k/) is a person who is fascinated, perhaps obsessively, by obscure or very specific areas of knowledge and imagination (Geek, 2006).
This Ethnography is focused on Internet Geeks:
According to Barbara Miller (2005), culture is best defined as all learned and shared behavior and ideas universal among human beings.
Its difficult to distinguish whether Internet Geeks belong in a sub-category of culture. On one hand, the World Wide Web allows this culture to transcend local barriers, thus dismissing it as being a microculture. On the other hand, its hard to distinguish it as a macroculture due to dynamic and multi-nationalistic nature of the group.
This report will cover the ethnography and the cultural definitions of Internet Geeks in an attempt to better understand this cultural group and its cultural classification.
Background Info:
As society becomes more complex, the people within its confines form elaborate cultural groups to cope with the inherent loneliness that comes along with advancements in technology. These are not people who simply go on to the Internet to Google their favorite movie or check their Hotmail. Internet Geeks live on the internet. Via web logs (Blogs), forums, and various web site communities, Internet Geeks have the distinction of being on the Internet 24/7.
Internet Geeks are the peanut gallery of the internet age; a group of individuals who sit perched behind their computers while monitoring world and social events from their screens. Their commentaries go beyond any conventional boundaries. No subject, offensive or otherwise, is taboo. Death, misfortune, politics, hobbies, sex, and anger management are discussed with relentless abandon. While most people in the physical society dont care what Internet Geeks have to say about the aforementioned topics, the people within the virtual community take these topics very seriously.
The Virtual Community:
Most virtual communities revolve around online Internet forums. According to the Wikipedia website (Internet Forum, 2006), An Internet forum is a facility on the World Wide Web for holding discussions, or the web application software used to provide the facility. Forums consist of Administration; those who created the forum, Users; those who post on the forum, and Moderators; those who enforce the rules.
Administration: Administrative personal create the theme for the website and forum and integrate the web address, the DNS, the design, and the server into a virtual community.
Users (also known as Members): The virtual community allow users to create a topic that fits within the category of the forum (I.e.: gaming, off-topic, movies, technology, politics, etc), while other users respond to the topic with their insight or opinions. Some topics may contain hundreds of replies in chronological order.
Moderators (or Mods): Mods enforce any forum rules and provide other duties such as the deletion of pornography or illegal discussions. Mods also ban users from the forum who violate rules by suspending the users account, or in serious cases, banning their physical IP address so that the user cannot access the website at all.
Cast System:
Note: Forums keep track of how many times a topic has been viewed and replied to. The amount of posts any given user makes is directly correlated to their reputation or title within the virtual community.
Interestingly enough, Internet Geeks subject themselves to a strict cast system. The cast system is usually based on tenure; The longer a user has been on the board, the better their reputation. For example, on YTMND.com forums, users have been posting derogatory topics to new members referred to as 06ers (referring to the fact that they joined the community in 2006). One topic proclaims: All 06ers shut the fuck up and get the fuck out (2006). Additionally, members who post more topics and replies earn a higher post count, thus increasing tenure as well. However, users need to be aware of the fine line between posting enough and posting too much, lest they be called a spammer.
The hierarchy of the virtual community is as follows:
1. Administrators
2. Moderators
3. Users (Ranking based on tenure)
4. New Users
5. Lurkers
6. Spammers and trolls
Lurkers refer to people who loiter on the board and never post. Spammers refer to people who post senseless posts or advertisements. Trolls refer to people who post insulting comments in order to ignite an argument, otherwise known as a flame war.
Most forums are not a democracy. In fact, they are much closer to a Monarchy. Whatever the Administrator or Moderator says is typically the law of the forum. An example of this is Team Xbox Forums (TXB Forum Rules, 2006), where several interviews with prior members (Private Interviews, 2006) have revealed that any negative comments towards the staff, the forum, the parent company IGN, or even the Xbox console itself, resulted in a ban of membership.
It should also be noted that most people in the virtual community have developed a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. Its not uncommon for users to act as if they are moderators themselves and notify moderators of any rule breakings created by fellow users. Some of these users spend all day patrolling the community so that they will be able to tell the admins and moderators of any wrong doings. Anyone who speaks (I.e.: Posts) within the group is subject to the scrutiny of all others within the group. Members, especially new members, are advised to tread softly when voicing their opinions, otherwise, they may be subject to malicious feedback or bans at any given moment.
Language:
According to the Urban Dictionary website (L337, 2005), Leet Speak is A language in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters. While most outsiders relate L337 Sp33k to Internet Geeks, most insiders will simply state that this is no longer the case and that leet speak is almost extinct. According to Lord Requiem (2002), an internet user, Anyone using this type of speak in the present day in age is either a clueless net newbie who somehow thinks its still "cool" to speak this way, or a veteren net user who uses it to parody the type of people mentioned in example A.
While this is true in most cases, some remnants of Internet jargon remain and are still highly used. Below is a list of the most commonly used phrases as defined by various Internet Geeks:
N00b: A inexperienced and/or ignorant or unskilled person. Especially used in computer games. Haha that n00b got pwned (Lord Emporer, 2003).
Pwned: A common typo of owned that is used in the same way, or more sarcasticly to mock 1337 speak. you faggots just got pwned (Pwner, 2005).
Teh: For english speakers, this is a typo of 'the' turned into an overused deliberate typo of 'the' by leet speakers. They mostly use it for 'the', 'very', or both at the same time. Teh cow says, 'moooooo' (Raboof, 2005).
Geek Values:
Internet Geeks maintain a multitude of values. However, the two values that are detailed in this ethnography are cognitive humor and comradery.
Cognitive Humor:
One major attribute of an Internet geek is their ability to create inside jokes and reference them during subsequent communications.
According to Steven Johnsons Everything Bad is Good for You (2005), Gamers (and Internet Geeks) have a particular advantage due to the cognitive virtues of gameplaying.
This cognitive humor is evident throughout various forums and website communities. For example, on Gaming-Age Forums, whenever the word retail is used, another user will almost always mention the words magazine rack. While most people wouldnt have a clue what this means, people on Gaming-Age know exactly what it refers to:
The magazine rack was right around the time Gamestop (a video game store) changed their open box return policy. Kinesis (a user) wanted to return an open-box game a few days after he bought it for the full store credit, but they told him they didn't do that anymore and would only give him the used game return price. He flipped out at the store clerk and flipped over the rack in rage, then posted about it on GAF (Gaming-age Forum). Nerevar, a Gaming-Age Member (Magazine Racks and Such, 2006)
In some cases, users will simply post a picture of a magazine rack to maintain the inside joke.
Youre The Man Now, Dog:
In order to fully understand cognitive humor, you need to understand the website Youre The Man Now Dog.com.
Youre The Man Now Dog (YTMND) is a website created by Max Goldberg in 2001 (YTMND, 2006). YTMND covers Internet geek cognitive humor in one stroke.
Its roots were simple: The original website consisted of a juxtaposed photograph of actor Sean Connery with large 3-d text, "YOURE THE MAN NOW DOG.COM," and a soundbite of Connery repeatedly saying "You're the man now, dog" from the film Finding Forrester (YTMND, 2006).
However, it soon became an internet phenomenon. Goldberg allowed other users to create their own YTMNDs by utilizing the same format that he had used to create his own Sean Connery page.
As more and more users came aboard, fads began to develop.
Fads in the internet community refer to an idea or a craze that starts off as one simple image, article, or idea and later evolves and merges into other fads for maximum comical effect.
One highly popular example was the All your Base Are Belong to Us (Wikipedia, 2006) craze in 2001. What started as a poor English translation of a Japanese video game named Zero Wing, later became a full-on media craze as more and more Internet Geeks altered real-life images to include the phrase.
According to Wikipedia (All Your Base Are Belong to Us, 2005), (All Your Base) is interesting because it demonstrated the Internet's power to quickly spread idiosyncratic messages that would never have been covered by the traditional mass media.
YTMND is an extension of the All Your Base fad. By allowing users to create their own pages, Goldberg unleashed a new animal on the Internet. YTMND allowed users to make obscure references to prior fads, merge them with existing fads and create whole new hybrid fads. In fact, some of the hybrid fads become more popular than the originals.
http://timetraveler.ytmnd.com/
This image, in conjunction with the eighties song, Push it to The Limit (Engleman, 1983) sparked a whole mythology surrounding the character referred to as Safety or Mullet Man. Variants include Hitlers Safety Not guaranteed, Ming Dynasty Safety Not Guaranteed, and so on. Recent variants include a Dick Cheney hunting variation:
http://cheneysafety.ytmnd.com/
This type of cognitive and recurring humor fuels the Internet geek.
Comradery:
Despite the harsh environment of virtual communities and Internet forums, Internet Geeks have been known to stand together when various issues arise.
Take MikeRoweSoft.com, for instance. In 2003, a Canadian student by the name of Mike Rowe created a website under his own name and thought it would be clever to add the word soft to the end of it. In 2004, he was slapped with a lawsuit by the real Microsoft claiming trademark infringement. When Mike Rowe went to the press, he was instantly contacted by a bevy of supporters across the internet who donated over $6,000.00 to his defense fund (Canadian teen who battled Microsoft, 2004). Mike eventually settled and gave the money to a local charity, but the support of the Internet community did not go unnoticed.
Another instance of comradery occurred when Miami lawyer, Jack Thompson, an opponent of video games, declared that he would pay $10,000 to a charity if someone created a game in which a disgruntled father of a killing victim takes his revenge upon the games industry and its executives. When a group of developers published the game, Jack Thompson retracted his promise (Jack Thompson, 2006).
The creators of Penny-Arcade, a popular web-based comic, decided to donate the $10,000 in Jack Thompsons name to the ESA Foundation. The note attached to the donation stated, For Jack Thompson Because Jack Thompson won't (A Modest Video Game Proposal, 2006). Thompson immmediately retaliated with legal threats. Users on the Penny-Arcade site joined together and sent hundreds of letters to The Florida Bar requesting to have Thompsons legal license removed. They suceeded in having him withdrawn from his case, Strickland vs. Sony, on November 8th 2005 (Steel, 2005).
Currently, Penny-Arcade runs Childs Play (2006), a charity that raised over half a million dollars for sick kids across North America during the 2005 holiday.
Additional Research:
According to my personal survey, Most Internet Geeks are video gamers, have significant others, are students with part-time jobs, and are split on religion (Massey, 2006)
Methodology:
www.gamedreamz.com was used as a base of operations while collecting data and private interviews. Surveys were posted at www.gaming-age.com and www.gamedreamz.com. The users on www.ytmnd.com and www.gaming-age.com were monitored to collect behavior patterns. Data and facts were collected as a result of personal experience, personal research, and sources listed in the Literature Sources. The resources on Wikipedia, an invaluable creation of Internet Geeks, were used for the bulk of this research.
Conclusions:
Internet Geeks define a unique culture with their willingness to self govern, their distinct language use, their willingness to help others in the community, and their use of cognitive humor. However, it is more important to realize that Internet Geeks are not confined by traditional borders. To define Internet Geeks as a microculture or a macroculture would be incorrect. Their customs transcend states and countries into other cultures throughout the world forming one huge mega-culture.
As time goes by, it will be interesting to monitor the effects of this mega-culture as more and more nationalities, ethnicities, and sub-cultures are consumed by the digital age.
Literature Sources:
A geek (pronounciation /gi:k/) is a person who is fascinated, perhaps obsessively, by obscure or very specific areas of knowledge and imagination (Geek, 2006).
This Ethnography is focused on Internet Geeks:
According to Barbara Miller (2005), culture is best defined as all learned and shared behavior and ideas universal among human beings.
Its difficult to distinguish whether Internet Geeks belong in a sub-category of culture. On one hand, the World Wide Web allows this culture to transcend local barriers, thus dismissing it as being a microculture. On the other hand, its hard to distinguish it as a macroculture due to dynamic and multi-nationalistic nature of the group.
This report will cover the ethnography and the cultural definitions of Internet Geeks in an attempt to better understand this cultural group and its cultural classification.
Background Info:
As society becomes more complex, the people within its confines form elaborate cultural groups to cope with the inherent loneliness that comes along with advancements in technology. These are not people who simply go on to the Internet to Google their favorite movie or check their Hotmail. Internet Geeks live on the internet. Via web logs (Blogs), forums, and various web site communities, Internet Geeks have the distinction of being on the Internet 24/7.
Internet Geeks are the peanut gallery of the internet age; a group of individuals who sit perched behind their computers while monitoring world and social events from their screens. Their commentaries go beyond any conventional boundaries. No subject, offensive or otherwise, is taboo. Death, misfortune, politics, hobbies, sex, and anger management are discussed with relentless abandon. While most people in the physical society dont care what Internet Geeks have to say about the aforementioned topics, the people within the virtual community take these topics very seriously.
The Virtual Community:
Most virtual communities revolve around online Internet forums. According to the Wikipedia website (Internet Forum, 2006), An Internet forum is a facility on the World Wide Web for holding discussions, or the web application software used to provide the facility. Forums consist of Administration; those who created the forum, Users; those who post on the forum, and Moderators; those who enforce the rules.
Administration: Administrative personal create the theme for the website and forum and integrate the web address, the DNS, the design, and the server into a virtual community.
Users (also known as Members): The virtual community allow users to create a topic that fits within the category of the forum (I.e.: gaming, off-topic, movies, technology, politics, etc), while other users respond to the topic with their insight or opinions. Some topics may contain hundreds of replies in chronological order.
Moderators (or Mods): Mods enforce any forum rules and provide other duties such as the deletion of pornography or illegal discussions. Mods also ban users from the forum who violate rules by suspending the users account, or in serious cases, banning their physical IP address so that the user cannot access the website at all.
Cast System:
Note: Forums keep track of how many times a topic has been viewed and replied to. The amount of posts any given user makes is directly correlated to their reputation or title within the virtual community.
Interestingly enough, Internet Geeks subject themselves to a strict cast system. The cast system is usually based on tenure; The longer a user has been on the board, the better their reputation. For example, on YTMND.com forums, users have been posting derogatory topics to new members referred to as 06ers (referring to the fact that they joined the community in 2006). One topic proclaims: All 06ers shut the fuck up and get the fuck out (2006). Additionally, members who post more topics and replies earn a higher post count, thus increasing tenure as well. However, users need to be aware of the fine line between posting enough and posting too much, lest they be called a spammer.
The hierarchy of the virtual community is as follows:
1. Administrators
2. Moderators
3. Users (Ranking based on tenure)
4. New Users
5. Lurkers
6. Spammers and trolls
Lurkers refer to people who loiter on the board and never post. Spammers refer to people who post senseless posts or advertisements. Trolls refer to people who post insulting comments in order to ignite an argument, otherwise known as a flame war.
Most forums are not a democracy. In fact, they are much closer to a Monarchy. Whatever the Administrator or Moderator says is typically the law of the forum. An example of this is Team Xbox Forums (TXB Forum Rules, 2006), where several interviews with prior members (Private Interviews, 2006) have revealed that any negative comments towards the staff, the forum, the parent company IGN, or even the Xbox console itself, resulted in a ban of membership.
It should also be noted that most people in the virtual community have developed a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. Its not uncommon for users to act as if they are moderators themselves and notify moderators of any rule breakings created by fellow users. Some of these users spend all day patrolling the community so that they will be able to tell the admins and moderators of any wrong doings. Anyone who speaks (I.e.: Posts) within the group is subject to the scrutiny of all others within the group. Members, especially new members, are advised to tread softly when voicing their opinions, otherwise, they may be subject to malicious feedback or bans at any given moment.
Language:
According to the Urban Dictionary website (L337, 2005), Leet Speak is A language in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters. While most outsiders relate L337 Sp33k to Internet Geeks, most insiders will simply state that this is no longer the case and that leet speak is almost extinct. According to Lord Requiem (2002), an internet user, Anyone using this type of speak in the present day in age is either a clueless net newbie who somehow thinks its still "cool" to speak this way, or a veteren net user who uses it to parody the type of people mentioned in example A.
While this is true in most cases, some remnants of Internet jargon remain and are still highly used. Below is a list of the most commonly used phrases as defined by various Internet Geeks:
N00b: A inexperienced and/or ignorant or unskilled person. Especially used in computer games. Haha that n00b got pwned (Lord Emporer, 2003).
Pwned: A common typo of owned that is used in the same way, or more sarcasticly to mock 1337 speak. you faggots just got pwned (Pwner, 2005).
Teh: For english speakers, this is a typo of 'the' turned into an overused deliberate typo of 'the' by leet speakers. They mostly use it for 'the', 'very', or both at the same time. Teh cow says, 'moooooo' (Raboof, 2005).
Geek Values:
Internet Geeks maintain a multitude of values. However, the two values that are detailed in this ethnography are cognitive humor and comradery.
Cognitive Humor:
One major attribute of an Internet geek is their ability to create inside jokes and reference them during subsequent communications.
According to Steven Johnsons Everything Bad is Good for You (2005), Gamers (and Internet Geeks) have a particular advantage due to the cognitive virtues of gameplaying.
This cognitive humor is evident throughout various forums and website communities. For example, on Gaming-Age Forums, whenever the word retail is used, another user will almost always mention the words magazine rack. While most people wouldnt have a clue what this means, people on Gaming-Age know exactly what it refers to:
The magazine rack was right around the time Gamestop (a video game store) changed their open box return policy. Kinesis (a user) wanted to return an open-box game a few days after he bought it for the full store credit, but they told him they didn't do that anymore and would only give him the used game return price. He flipped out at the store clerk and flipped over the rack in rage, then posted about it on GAF (Gaming-age Forum). Nerevar, a Gaming-Age Member (Magazine Racks and Such, 2006)
In some cases, users will simply post a picture of a magazine rack to maintain the inside joke.
Youre The Man Now, Dog:
In order to fully understand cognitive humor, you need to understand the website Youre The Man Now Dog.com.
Youre The Man Now Dog (YTMND) is a website created by Max Goldberg in 2001 (YTMND, 2006). YTMND covers Internet geek cognitive humor in one stroke.
Its roots were simple: The original website consisted of a juxtaposed photograph of actor Sean Connery with large 3-d text, "YOURE THE MAN NOW DOG.COM," and a soundbite of Connery repeatedly saying "You're the man now, dog" from the film Finding Forrester (YTMND, 2006).
However, it soon became an internet phenomenon. Goldberg allowed other users to create their own YTMNDs by utilizing the same format that he had used to create his own Sean Connery page.
As more and more users came aboard, fads began to develop.
Fads in the internet community refer to an idea or a craze that starts off as one simple image, article, or idea and later evolves and merges into other fads for maximum comical effect.
One highly popular example was the All your Base Are Belong to Us (Wikipedia, 2006) craze in 2001. What started as a poor English translation of a Japanese video game named Zero Wing, later became a full-on media craze as more and more Internet Geeks altered real-life images to include the phrase.
According to Wikipedia (All Your Base Are Belong to Us, 2005), (All Your Base) is interesting because it demonstrated the Internet's power to quickly spread idiosyncratic messages that would never have been covered by the traditional mass media.
YTMND is an extension of the All Your Base fad. By allowing users to create their own pages, Goldberg unleashed a new animal on the Internet. YTMND allowed users to make obscure references to prior fads, merge them with existing fads and create whole new hybrid fads. In fact, some of the hybrid fads become more popular than the originals.
http://timetraveler.ytmnd.com/
This image, in conjunction with the eighties song, Push it to The Limit (Engleman, 1983) sparked a whole mythology surrounding the character referred to as Safety or Mullet Man. Variants include Hitlers Safety Not guaranteed, Ming Dynasty Safety Not Guaranteed, and so on. Recent variants include a Dick Cheney hunting variation:
http://cheneysafety.ytmnd.com/
This type of cognitive and recurring humor fuels the Internet geek.
Comradery:
Despite the harsh environment of virtual communities and Internet forums, Internet Geeks have been known to stand together when various issues arise.
Take MikeRoweSoft.com, for instance. In 2003, a Canadian student by the name of Mike Rowe created a website under his own name and thought it would be clever to add the word soft to the end of it. In 2004, he was slapped with a lawsuit by the real Microsoft claiming trademark infringement. When Mike Rowe went to the press, he was instantly contacted by a bevy of supporters across the internet who donated over $6,000.00 to his defense fund (Canadian teen who battled Microsoft, 2004). Mike eventually settled and gave the money to a local charity, but the support of the Internet community did not go unnoticed.
Another instance of comradery occurred when Miami lawyer, Jack Thompson, an opponent of video games, declared that he would pay $10,000 to a charity if someone created a game in which a disgruntled father of a killing victim takes his revenge upon the games industry and its executives. When a group of developers published the game, Jack Thompson retracted his promise (Jack Thompson, 2006).
The creators of Penny-Arcade, a popular web-based comic, decided to donate the $10,000 in Jack Thompsons name to the ESA Foundation. The note attached to the donation stated, For Jack Thompson Because Jack Thompson won't (A Modest Video Game Proposal, 2006). Thompson immmediately retaliated with legal threats. Users on the Penny-Arcade site joined together and sent hundreds of letters to The Florida Bar requesting to have Thompsons legal license removed. They suceeded in having him withdrawn from his case, Strickland vs. Sony, on November 8th 2005 (Steel, 2005).
Currently, Penny-Arcade runs Childs Play (2006), a charity that raised over half a million dollars for sick kids across North America during the 2005 holiday.
Additional Research:
According to my personal survey, Most Internet Geeks are video gamers, have significant others, are students with part-time jobs, and are split on religion (Massey, 2006)
Methodology:
www.gamedreamz.com was used as a base of operations while collecting data and private interviews. Surveys were posted at www.gaming-age.com and www.gamedreamz.com. The users on www.ytmnd.com and www.gaming-age.com were monitored to collect behavior patterns. Data and facts were collected as a result of personal experience, personal research, and sources listed in the Literature Sources. The resources on Wikipedia, an invaluable creation of Internet Geeks, were used for the bulk of this research.
Conclusions:
Internet Geeks define a unique culture with their willingness to self govern, their distinct language use, their willingness to help others in the community, and their use of cognitive humor. However, it is more important to realize that Internet Geeks are not confined by traditional borders. To define Internet Geeks as a microculture or a macroculture would be incorrect. Their customs transcend states and countries into other cultures throughout the world forming one huge mega-culture.
As time goes by, it will be interesting to monitor the effects of this mega-culture as more and more nationalities, ethnicities, and sub-cultures are consumed by the digital age.
Literature Sources:
