Post #21888 by Suburban Hipster on Tue, Feb 4, 2003 9:32 AM

I'm a geek for Tiki. I'm also a geek for Film, and I'm even a hardcore Star Trek geek that's traveled cross-continent for a Star Trek Convention and has made over 4000 posts at http://Trekbbs.com. That said, I was also one of the fringe cool kids in school who girls wanted to be with, and boys wanted to emulate or beat up.

What Tikiphiles and Trekkies and other pop culture junkies share is a serious passion about some small, relatively insignificant aspect of the larger culture. What distinguishes Tikiphiles, Trekkies, and other pop culture junkies from society as a whole is that most people can appreciate having an exotic cocktail served in a Tiki mug when they stumble upon it in a Chinese restaurant, or may have an episode of Star Trek on in the background while balancing the checkbook. A geek, on the other hand, can't stop there. The Tikiphile is compelled to own more tiki mugs than the number of guests his home can accomodate, and a Trekkie is compelled to know the names of every actor and the title of every episode of the show. A pop culture junkie is a geek whether the object of fixation is Tiki, Trek, or Hummel. All rationalizations aside, it's really just plain geeky to obsess over something as inconsequential as ceramic mugs or a 60's television show.

My 2 cents.