The New York Geekcast

Let’s be honest: there really aren’t any geek holidays. The numerous interests of geeks worldwide have become so varied and diverse (some might say “fractured”), it’s hard to pinpoint even a couple of things that make someone definitively geeky or not. There’s geek-themed observances like Pi Day or Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you), but there isn’t really a well-publicized overarching geek holiday out there. Which is fine.

Nevertheless, folks keep trying to foist these pseudo-geek-holidays on us. Today is such a day: “Embrace Your Geekness Day,” a made-up, pandering holiday copyrighted by the folks at Wellcat Holidays (whose website seems to be stuck in the late ’90s). From the site:

“Into dungeon games, comic books and doing vampire dress-up? Spend endless hours going strange places on the internet? You’re a geek, and this is the day to roar!”

Yeah.

Several websites, including CNN.com, are celebrating the holiday the way it seems meant to be — as an afterthought, with some minor coverage and mention of the holiday only on the day itself. Some geeky buzzwords are mentioned, and they talk about how a few Best Buy employees got to ring the opening bell at the NY Stock Exchange. Yippee.

Do geeks really need their own holiday? It would be cool, but not if it’s nothing more than an excuse to have an internet-wide thematic blog post topic once a year. The closest thing we have to a geek holiday is May 25th’s Geek Pride Day, which also happens to be Towel Day. While I understand this holiday began overseas in the late ’90s, in America it holds the same awareness factor as Arbor Day: something trivial that you might be made aware of on the day itself, but holding little or no value, and presenting little cause for celebration.

To me, it seems like the problem with these geek holidays is that they are not spurring forth from the geek community itself. They seem fabricated, observed only by media denizens eager to associate themselves with the current hip culture — geekdom. Perhaps someday there’ll be a true geek holiday, but until then, I’ll be more than happy to do what most geeks are doing today: ignoring this particular observance, and going along with our daily lives.