Said proudly by an acquaintance on Facebook a few months ago, I suffered a momentary feeling of annoyance that quickly passed.
Today was non-uniform day at school, I went looking like this:
I know what you're probably thinking but it's how I dress when not at work, I do have a degree in Astrophysics and am clearly a massive stereotype.
The problem was that many students recognised what I was wearing, which sounds like an insane thing for me to say. Initially, as both a scientist and a bit of a nerd, I was quite pleased; I had an interesting conversation with two boys in my form about the upcoming Justice League film and the direness of Marvel's latest comic-book output and, with my year ten class, I brought up CERN and particle accelerators in the lesson on static electricity (cue lots of Van de Graaff fun). The double take I did was walking through the corridors at lunch past a group of students that I didn't know; all of twelve years old they were gambolling about in the way that those with fading but still recent memories of primary school tend to do.
"Hey look; Mr. Ince has got a Big Bang Theory shirt on!"
I paused, decided against saying anything and then carried on my way in search of hot-dogs from the Mathematics department.
Later on:
"Mr. Ince, Joe says that you look like Sheldon Cooper"
"Does he now? I can think of worse things I suppose."
"Do you watch it?"
"I do, although none of the new series; I wait for them to come out on DVD."
"So do you, like, get the jokes when they talk science?"
Now there's no way for me to answer that question aloud without sounding like an arrogant know-it-all or a pathetic excuse for a science teacher. The answer is, almost all of the time but I don't get all of the more obscure references or knowledge. In class I decided not to answer it because I was more distracted by a student who walked in wearing something similar to this:
There's the possibility that the girls who wear these clothes these believe themselves to be as much 'Geeks' as I believe wearing my t-shirt makes me 'The Flash' but in this case the statement of the t-shirt makes all of the difference:
"I am a geek and comfortable enough to label myself with the term"
'Geek chic' is something that seemed to take off while I was at University and was something that the different student science societies played up on nights out but this has filtered down through the fashion into the hands of those with no credentials to back up their sartorial claims.
The prevalence of Geek Chic makes it much easier for me to buy clothing but often it's worn as a statement of something and I question whether or not it's accurate. If anything it's that the people who now stalk about (and there were many in similar garb today) as self-proclaimed members of a culture they do not understand and rarely have the requisite qualifications, academic or fan-wise, to justify themselves. If, like the Physics society dressing in 'Geek Chic', it was a form of stereotypical fancy-dress then that would be different but these clothes are in many high-street stores as ordinary statements for young people to pick up and play make-believe. It's harmless fun but an insight into the mind of those who kid themselves that they are what they are not; in this case dressing like a 'geek' and watching 'The Big Bang Theory' is a sign to the rest of us of their above-average intelligence.
There's a lot to be said for the fact that most people are now aware of Schrödinger's famous analogy however many people I come across or talk to about it believe themselves to understand it when really they lack even a basic knowledge of the thought experiment and what it is actually trying to explain about quantum mechanics; most people just think that Erwin Schrödinger put cats in boxes and forgot whether or not he'd fed them.
For me 'The Big Bang Theory' is like the new 'Frasier'; it isn't afraid to make references to things that few people will get but can have the excellent purpose of making people go and find out; in my teens it was the line "Like a horde of rampaging Visigoths" that caused me to go and do some reading on First Century Germanic history. Where I get surprisingly irritated is when people laugh at something without knowing why. There is a reason for people laughing at jokes in 'The Big Bang Theory', 'Fraiser' or any number of reference based comedy but what is soul destroying is people's impulse to laugh because other people did and not be challenged by the fact that they didn't get it.
If 'The Big Bang Theory' were only watched by people who understand all of it then there's no way it would ever have lasted this long or likely been made at all, I'm grateful for that. However, no matter how laudable watching a television show with a science focus is, if you laugh as a natural reflex and don't find out why other people found it funny, then you will remain as big of an idiot as the kind of people whom the programme routinely mocks.
I think it's a wonderful thing that's happened and that intelligence or geekiness can now be seen as 'cool' but the odd thing is that it's not those nerdy students who wear the kind of clothing I saw today, just those who wish to be associated with this 'cool' fad/trend. It's an interesting temporary acceptance that I think may change once the show ends or fashion trends shift.
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