Obsession.

A common requirement to be a geek seems to be obsession.

This has been true as far back as we can document geeks.

The most obvious examples one can think of is the Star Trek geeks. The quintessential godfathers of the modern geek age. Simply mentioning Star Trek geeks should summon images to mind of the almost unreal Star Trek conventions or cons. Hundreds…thousands of men, women and children united by the obsession with a seemingly failed, quite corny television show from the 1960's about the semi distant future where man kind set aside its individual racisms to explore the stars. As I mentioned, from the numbers, and the ratings, a TV executive would call this a failed show. It lasted a few seasons, then passed into the TV graveyard. Or so we thought.

Enter the Star Trek geek. The underground rumblings, and obsessions with this show eventually led to 6 motion pictures with the original cast, starting around a decade after the show went off the air. It has spawn numerous spin-offs about the future and past of the show, and led to several more movies involving the newer casts.

Now due to the power of what the geeks have done for this franchise. It has seemingly experienced a successful reboot of the franchise starting the whole story over, almost 40 years after the first episode. Such is the demand for this material the reboot actually managed to violate the cannon and lore of the original show, and the geeks of this world ate it up and are begging for another course.

Geek obsessions range far and wide. I have one friend in particular who is a wine geek. Her obsession has led to a quite impressive wine cellar, and considerations of a Digital UPC catalog of her collection to make inventory easier.

Another of my clan dove head first into the deep end of Joss Whedon's Firefly universe. Another 'failed' show, this show fell off the air after 10 short episodes. The show married a wild west culture with a steam-punk style space fairing society. A world where on pilots a starship, and brandishes a six shooter, while swearing in Chinese. But yet again the power of the geek obsession and demand spawned a major motion picture that attempted to button up as much as it could about the vast and complex story.

Now when I say another of my clan dove into firefly, I mean DOVE into the deep end, damning the torpedo's and the sharks. She joined a group of fellow obessee's in creating the PodCast the Signal.

http://signal.serenityfirefly.com . She owns the toys, 2-3 different copies of the show on various formats and will easily find hours of debatable topics out of the shows short cannon.

She is also a food geek and culinary adventurer, I doubt there is anything she would not try once, chocolate covered garlic anyone?

My wife, obsessed with anime, she can't wait for the books, so she spends her evening on websites that are translating the Manga just as fast the Japanese can drawn it.

Game obsession is another very common geek trait, 12 million subscribers to BlizActivisions MMO world of Warcraft is all the proof you need that game geeks are dedicated.

It almost seems a requirement to be a geek to have one or more obsessions……what kind of geek are you?

-L8r

Grendal.