If you want to picture what ROFLcon was like, just imagine Disneyland for memes. As a ROFLcon staffer said in the opening ceremony, one in every eight attendees was a guest of honor, AKA somebody who “has done something crazy on the Internet.”

So in between writing stories—I got some great stories and even a video out of ROFLcon—I had a chance to meet my favorite memes in real life. A surprising many were just as endearing as you’d expect. When I snapped this photo of taxidermist Chuck Testa with a squirmy puppy, he quipped, “I’m getting really good!” Believe me, he was at it with the one-liners all weekend.

One of my favorite parts was getting my picture taken with Antoine Dodson, the “Bed Intruder” ranter himself. I stopped him in the hallway and got another fan to take our photo together (afterward, I took a photo of him with her.) Dodson was loving it. He took photos and signed autographs all day in a schedule that would have exhausted a jaded mainstream celebrity.

I thought nothing of tweeting a photo of Dodson and I. But later, while reporting the next story of the day, I started to worry about whether I’d violated one of the rules of journalism by acting like a fan at an event I’d been assigned to cover.

Bad journalistic behavior is a topic that makes its way into the news from time to time. When a female reporter wrote up her GQ interview with Chris Evans as if it were a date, getting drunk with the star and even passing out at his house, reviews were mixed, to say the least.

Less ambiguous was an incident this week between a Montreal TV Host and David Beckham—the reporter asked Beckham to autograph a pair of underwear in a move other journalists near-universally denounced as unprofessional.

Is it ever professional for a reporter to act like a fan? Here’s what I think.

It’s NOT OK when:

• You are currently reporting on the star. You can wait until after the interview to let them know you’re a fan. Try to do it with as low key an attitude as you can muster!

• You’re at a group press conference, or anywhere that an expression of your fandom would be disruptive to the star or to other reporters.

• You find yourself using your position as a reporter to try to get closer to the star. If you’ve been given a press pass to interview the celebrity, be the professional the celebrity is expecting to see. You can go to the autograph signing with the other fans later.

It’s OK when:

• You’re not on active duty as a reporter and you run into the star in passing. If you don’t plan to report on it, you don’t need to act like a reporter. (You should still be decently polite though, of course.)

Of course, these are just guidelines based on my own experiences. In any case, it’s important to use your own judgement. For example, depending on the fame of the person People like Antoine Dodson and Chuck Testa are just Internet-famous, so their fame doesn’t affect their everyday lives. I’m sure they loved being popular at ROFLcon and didn’t mind the attention of fans.

That evening at ROFLcon, I consulted the Daily Dot’s community manager, Logan Youree, about my tweet. Luckily, Logan agreed that it wasn’t unprofessional. In fact, he thought our audience would find it logical for us to want to meet the people we cover all the time.  I was running on caffeine and sleep deprivation, so I just wrote to him to ask him to remind me what he meant:

“In some sense the Daily Dot is a true newspaper, but we are also enthusiast press,” he wrote. “We are supposed to write about the news in online communities but also about the things that interest us about them.”

From that perspective, my only concern is making sure I’m not too enthusiastic about my reporting topics. It’s a problem I’m happy to have.

Do you own the words you use to define yourself?

I define myself as an otaku. However, dozens of people have personally written to me to tell me I’m wrong. For various reasons, they’ve decided that I can’t use this word or that it describes something that isn’t me.

This doesn’t surprise me. I have to define “otaku” every time I bring it up. It’s a relatively new word that was coined in Japan in the 1980s that spread to Western countries a few years later.

As scholar Lawrence Eng writes, otaku literally translates to “your home,” so all slang definitions for the word are up to the cultural context we place around it. I’d argue that the term is still ambiguous, still applicable to its original use as a derogatory term, but also widely known as a catch-all for enthusiasts of all kinds.

With shifting parameters like these, nobody’s definition can be overtly wrong. Yet people still feel obliged to “correct” me, possibly because they feel an ownership over words or meaning that they do not think I deserve.

I started thinking about the ownership of words when I wrote an article on fangirl culture. My source, Flourish Klink told me that although the word “fangirl” is sometimes used to trivialize women’s involvement in fandom, she wanted to “reclaim” it.

Reclaim it from who? Based on our interview, the patriarchy. Klink said she’s especially interested in studying the ways women respond to media texts, an interaction that is responsible for millions of creative fanfics, pieces of fanart, and apparently, much of Rule 34.

Read the story and let me know what else you’d like to know. Because this is just a preview.

This weekend, the Daily Dot is sending me (and most of my coworkers) to report on ROFLcon, which we’re also sponsoring. It’s a really exciting time for me because it marks the first time ever that I’m literally being paid to report on a fan convention.

As I’ve written before, opportunities like this one are the reason I started Otaku Journalist in the first place. I’d dreamed of being a convention reporter, but I wasn’t sure how I could make it happen. My solution (as I’ve also written before), was to define myself as a journalist and start reporting, despite the fact that nobody was paying me to do it yet.

Maybe other people think a “journalist” is somebody who gets paid to report. Or somebody who has her articles published somewhere other than a personal blog.

My definition didn’t fit at first. But I grew into it.

When I wrote An open letter to Asian people from a weeaboo, I wanted to apologize for my unprompted and enthusiastic interest in everything Japanese.

However, I never considered they’d find my obsession entertaining.

That’s exactly what I discovered last night when I was contacted by a Japanese television producer—Kaoru Inagawa of the show Wafu-Souhonke. Aired online and in Japan, Inagawa’s show features people all over the world who love Japanese culture and products.

Here’s an episode shot in Los Angeles. I don’t know any Japanese, but it looks like the camera crew is walking around Hollywood, asking people about their interest in Japan and whether they own anything from Japan. If anyone can translate, help me out!

Inagawa said she contacted me because I live near Washington DC and own a kotatsu. How did I even get a kotatsu, she wanted to know. I bought it at Ginza, a Japanese furniture store in Dupont Circle. What brand? I never checked—it’s a Morita. She wanted to know about my yukata, my bento box collection, and my interest in Japanese cooking, too.

Inagawa wasn’t fazed by my anime or manga collections, but she definitely surprised by how I, a white American, was so invested in her culture.

“Surely you are half-Japanese?” she asked.

“Nope, just really, really otaku,” I replied.

She was especially curious about whether I have any friends like me. I talked about my friends volunteering at Sakura Matsuri later today, everyone at Anime USA, and bringing onigiri to Kevin Bolk’s holiday party—she was intrigued by onigiri as a party food.

After our chat, Inagawa followed up with an email, part of which she’s given me permission to post on my blog:

“If you find some people who really really love Japanese culture and collect something from Japan or are into unique Japanese traditional things at the festival, please let me know. For example, who does Japanese painting and uses brushes from Japan, or who are into Shodo (Japanese writing) or Japanese archery… something very traditional and unique is what we are looking for. Let me know if you know anyone, so I can convince the director to do a show in your area!”

Otaku in the DMV area: do you fit the bill? Please write to me about your love for Japan. You know we’d all look great on TV dubbed over by peppy Japanese voice actors. Let’s make it happen!

P.S. Also if you’re around DC, see you at Sakura Matsuri today!

When Richie Branson‘s email landed in my inbox, I had to read the subject line a couple times. And then, I had to tell my best friend, Andrew.

“I’ve got four words for you,” I told him in GChat. “Gundam Wing Hip Hop.”

In the entire time I’ve been blogging, I’ve never done an album review. And believe me, I’m no music expert. I’ve been listening to the same ten songs on repeat since 2010. But when I listened to Richie’s album, I knew I wanted to help promote The Wing Zero EP, which was released today.

Gundam Wing wasn’t the first anime I ever watched, but it was the first one I became madly obsessed with. At thirteen years old, I think I was a little young to fully appreciate the plot, but I loved the cute boys. You should have seen my cringe-worthy fanart of Duo Maxwell! And needless to say, the show’s music was my background music for a long time.

Branson takes the signature riffs from “Just Communication,” “White Reflection,” and the unmistakable “There’s about to be a Gundam battle!” song, and remixes them into an original beat. The album is primarily instrumental, but my favorites are the songs in which Branson raps on the audio track.

In “I think I’m Heero Yuy,” Branson calls out haters who would deride him for rapping about anime and suggests that, actually, the ladies love him for it:

Yo, I’m rappin’ bout that anime

Yeah, they see me rappin’ bout that anime

I think I’m Heero Yuy

Call me Wufei

The ladies used to diss me now I’m who they wanna date

But… is he any good?

To answer that question, I sent the album to Bill Boulden, AKA Spruke. I last wrote about Bill when I covered his Magic: The Gathering themed album, Tha Gatherin.

Before he even listened to the album, Bill told me: “Hey, I obviously have HUGE respect for anybody brave enough to rap about their fandom. As long as it doesn’t suck, I am sure to be impressed.”

According to Bill, it didn’t suck. He said the music was strong and Richie’s “flow” was excellent. Not sure what a flow is, but I’m guessing that’s a good compliment for one nerdcore rapper to get from another.

The Wing Zero EP is a free download, so go check it out for yourself. Show him some love—Branson took a huge risk in composing this album, and he’s bound to get crap for it from mainstream artists. Supporting fellow fans in their endeavors is a wonderful thing.

When I was in Japantown, I spent a lot of time checking out the mall’s enormous selection of Gundam models. I didn’t have any room in my stuffed carry-on suitcase, but that didn’t keep me from window shopping. Lately I’ve been lusting after unusual models, like the Acguy and Z’gok.

At the store with the biggest selection, a group of four guys were standing in front of the wall of Gundams, blocking my view. They didn’t seem to notice me, so I said “excuse me,” in order to get through. That seemed to surprise the tallest of the guys.

“Wait,” he said. “You build Gundams?”

I nodded. As I’ve written before, I built my first Gundam a few years ago and have dabbled in tougher models since. I even wrote a Gundam modeling tutorial for beginners.

“Really. What’s the last model you built?” he asked. It may have just been in my head, but I felt like he didn’t believe me.

Perhaps it was the pressure, but I couldn’t remember the full name of the last model I’d built, an MS-06S Char’s Zaku Real Grade.

“A… Zaku,” I said.

That seemed to make him upset.

“There are a lot of Zaku models,” he pointed out.

“It was the new one, the real grade,” I said. (Real grade is one of the building difficulty levels defined in my tutorial.)

“Those aren’t even hard to build,” he replied.

I was feeling increasingly flustered, so I called over to Steven, who was in another part of the store, and we left together.

I had just been an unwitting recipient of the “geek test,” a pop quiz some fans give to verify the geek cred of people they don’t think belong in their fandom. I was frustrated with myself for playing along.

As I explained on ANNCast, this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. As a woman, I know I’m not alone. It’s the reason I wrote about why I can’t be a hot girl and a nerd at the same time. Even if I feel like I’m blending in at a Magic: The Gathering event, somebody will ask me where my boyfriend is and break the spell. Even though I was there with my fiance, nobody asked him where his girlfriend was.

I hate to admit it, but the whole experience left me wondering, perhaps I should be trying to build more difficult Gundam models. That guy is going to assume that women aren’t good at model building, just because the woman he did meet was an amateur. Like it or not, whenever I choose to indulge in male dominated hobbies, I am an ambassador for my gender.

Have you ever been given the “geek test” by a fellow fan? Did you pass?

Photo by Fiends Ain’t Family on Flickr.

photo by Tommy Bruce

(To skip the spiel and go directly to voting, click here!)

It’s been two weeks now since I started working at The Daily Dot. I’ve written about Bronies, Second Life, and Warren Buffett. And if you’re following really closely, you’ll notice that I’ve written a lot about communities but not a lot about particular fandoms.

This is where the shift to becoming a mainstream reporter (or at least closer to mainstream than I’ve ever been) has been the hardest. My fandom articles would need to resonate with people who have never even heard of the fandom I’m discussing. And, because of who I am, I’d want to make that same story something hardcore fans can relate to.

It’s an enormous task.

I think this is why we constantly see two narratives about fandom in mainstream reporting. First, “Look at this unusual phenomenon,” and second, “This phenomenon is on the fringe so it is probably bad in some way.” They’re the simplest ways to package up an entire fandom.

Obviously, my goal is to avoid these narratives. I’ve come up with a third way to talk about fandom communities: “This subculture is legitimate and this is why.” It’s a new way of writing for me since, on this blog, I assume readers already acknowledge the legitimacy of various fandoms.

It’s not that my editor isn’t a huge nerd (he is) or that several of my coworkers don’t play D&D weekly (they do), it’s that we can’t assume everyone on the Internet is already in the know. So I know that when I’m asked to provide more context, it’s not busywork. I just need to find the happy medium that 1) doesn’t treat people inside the culture like freaks and 2) doesn’t treat people outside the culture like morons.

Encouraged by my editor and my coworkers, I have decided to submit a SXSW panel on the topic — “Trekkies, Geeks and Furries Oh My! Covering Fandom.” Taken from the description:

Fandom is, in a many ways, an illogical devotion, but also one of the most important aspects of all our lives and interests. We’ll take a look inside fandom communities and examine the multitude of storylines available. How can journalists responsibly cover fan communities with integrity and seriousness? Are subcultures inherently resistant to outside scrutiny, and what happens as the communities grow and become more mainstream and accepted?

I’ve invited two excellent speakers to help me expand on this topic, Steven Savage and Charles Dunbar. I think Steven, as a geek community leader, and Charles, as an anthropological scholar, can fill in the blanks that my (lack of) experience leaves empty. I think it’ll be a pretty illuminating panel… if I can get enough votes.

Click here to vote for my panel. Votes count for 30% of SXSW’s panel consideration, and that could mean the difference between acceptance and rejection.

Finally, if my panel gets selected, I’ll start working on making a podcast or videocast of the presentation possible. So even if you can’t come to SXSW, your vote will help me share my presentation with the Internet. Thanks in advance!

On the Saturday of Otakon, an old man stopped John and I. He asked us for cash. He had just had dental surgery, you see, and needed cab fare. We would’ve been moved, but this same guy had stopped us with the same scam last Otakon.

I wasn’t about to forget him because I’m not too good at scams. Last year, we didn’t have any money so we vowed to wait with him and make sure he was okay. For some reason, he didn’t seem to want us to stay, and he wouldn’t let us call the police for help.

I’m sure that old man will be at Otakon year after year, because attendees are really compassionate people. At Otakon 2011, we collected $65,000 to donate to the Japan Relief Fund. Otakon was also recently named Customer of the Year by Visit Baltimore for being an all around great addition to the city. And if you want to really know about the kind things Otakon attendees have done, check out the comment thread on the Washington Post article I wrote about last week. The negative slant of the article has compelled commenters to recount random acts of Otakon kindness.

However, sometimes it’s tough for me to be nice because I worry it makes our fandom an easy target. There’s that perennial scammer, for one. But what really made me mad was watching this:

Do you feel transported back to high school? Just look at the popular girl picking on the nerd. Except these two are grown-ups, and the news station is framing it as if it is a relevant topic: nerds are having a grand old time and leaving everyone else in America to resolve the debt ceiling debate. We all know the two events aren’t at all dichotomous.

It’s stuff like this that makes me wish fandom was understood.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I tried to feed the trolls on Sunday of the convention. I was wondering if Baltimoreans knew we could see any tweet with the Otakon hashtag. I only got one response from an outsider, but several of my followers chastised me for getting mad. That’s just not how we behave. We aren’t supposed to ask outsiders to understand us. We’re expected to turn the other cheek.

After my poorly judged tweets, an observant Baltimorean wrote me an email:

“Have you heard the saying, ‘Never try to teach a pig to sing…?’ If you have you might not have heard the rest, ‘It wastes your time and annoys the pig.’”

The fact that hardly anyone responded to my tweets, even after I instigated an argument, shows that those outsiders didn’t actually want to understand. Outsiders view Otakon as they would a passing car crash, morbidly interesting for a mere moment.

If I want people to understand what I do, then as a professional fandom reporter, I’m in the wrong line of work. There are always going to be people who misunderstand fandom and take it out on me. But if I start to bite back, I’ll just get a reputation for being weird AND mean. If they want to find out more, they’ll look it up. They don’t need me tweeting my opinions at them like a Jehovah’s Witness pounding at the door.

Our best defense is to keep having a fantastic time with our hobbies and ignoring the naysayers. If you must say something, talk about how great the fandom is, like many of the commenters on the Post article. Stories about kindness help us. Lashing out just tires us out and wastes our time.

There are a lot of points of views on fandom out there. Our chance of ours being understood lies in our acceptance of everyone else’s.

1. Costumes

I admired the women the most. Whether from discipline or dedication to their historical characters, they didn’t seem to mind the heat. Though it was 100 degrees with high humidity, they were calmly perched on folding stools, knitting or lightly fanning themselves while wearing full, ankle length dresses.

I knew the heavy cotton of their gowns was just the beginning of the uniform. Underneath were layers of white linen: hoop skirt and pantaloons and bloomers and corsets, not to mention knee length striped stockings and boots. One woman had stripped to her corset and full body chemise. Somehow, she looked more nude than all of us visitors wearing tank tops.

I knew this much about their clothing since I was a reenactor myself. In college, I got the opportunity to camp with the 3rd US Infantry, a union troop. I wore an ill-fitting borrowed camp dress (preserved in a photo so unflattering I won’t post it and you’ll have to visit this link instead) with what felt like two extra outfits underneath to the Battle of New Market reenactment. It was late spring and comfortable. I can only imagine what kind of discipline you’d need in this heat.

Though I sympathized with the women, the men weren’t much better off. Since the Battle of Manassas was the first battle of the war, it was accurate for everyone to be in full uniform, up to the thick, woolen army jackets.

2. Dedication to canon

Accuracy is the first tenet of Civil War reenacting. I remember sitting around the fire with the 3rd US while some of the reenactors poked fun at Renaissance Fair revelers.

“Look at me in my fairy wings, I look like I’m from the Middle Ages,” one soldier mocked. (It’s also interesting to note that the Renaissance Fair diehards I’ve spoken to don’t think much of Civil War reenactors either — they’re “no fun.”)

Reenactors are sticklers for detail. Even in the heat, very few altered their outfits.

“What a pretty dress ruined by those flip flops,” a colonel on his horse called to a woman walking beside him, bonnet on and basket in hand. “And are your nails that pink naturally?” he continued to the first woman’s companion, joking about her anachronistic nailpolish.

After the first day of the reenactment, during which several soldiers were treated for heat exhaustion, a few liberties were taken. Women in camp dresses carried ice cubes and water to the troops. Fallen soldiers came back to life and crawled off the battlefield to cool down in the shade. One corporal poured water into his hat for his horse to drink noisily out of. Actually, that may have been an accurate detail.

3. Acceptance

The battle endured for three hours, after which the Confederate troops prevailed, just like they had 150 years ago. There were cheers in the stands whenever Stonewall Jackson or Robert E. Lee, both present, rode by. White parents bought their children Confederate uniform caps as souvenirs.

I made a point to stop and interview any black female reenactors I saw. I hadn’t seen any at the Battle of New Market. First I met Elizabeth Keckley, a White House slave. Actually, this was a professional reenactor named Lillian Garland who felt a strong dedication to her character. In fact, she’d found 32 similarities between them, from their mixed race status to even their husbands’ names. Lillian’s husband was fighting on the Union side as we talked. Here she is with her freedom papers.

Next I spoke with an Ohio school teacher (in actuality, an Ohio paralegal), whose trip to petition in Washington had been delayed by the battle. She’s the woman on the right in the second photo of this post. She said she’d been reenacting since 1980 when she had joined a sizeable community of black reenactors and history buffs.

“But now, I’m getting old and the kids just aren’t interested,” she said.

We talked about the fact that most reenactors prefer to fight for the South. I suggested that maybe they’re hoping to win this time.

“That’s a good one,” she said, gasping from either laughter or heat. “Maybe they’ll win this time.”

However, she didn’t know any black reenactors for the Confederacy.

I was not so strong as the school teacher, so I made my way to a cooling tent, shaded with a big air conditioning unit inside. On the way, I met Miss Confederacy.

Miss Confederacy is from Kentucky. She’s in college studying to be a nurse. She said she’d love to major in history, but she doesn’t know what she’d do for a living. Her mother sewed the dress she’s wearing.

I asked her if she had friends on the “wrong side” of the war, as Confederate reenactors sometimes call it. She looked nervous, like she knew what I really wanted to ask.

“Once at the beginning of the reenactment, I came over to visit them at their camp. They joked that they should keep me there and let the rebels know they were holding Miss Confederacy for ransom,” she said, smiling.

As with the school teacher, I was too hot to even take out my notepad and get down her name. A Google Search for “Miss Confederacy” brings up articles about Jefferson Davis and the KKK and not much about pageants.

4. Outsider appeal

By this point I knew something was wrong with me. My vision was blurred and so were the photos I was taking. I felt drunk and everything sounded funny. I’d soon realize I was just very dehydrated. Luckily, I was not one of the many people who got heat stroke. A steady stream of ambulances drove over the battlegrounds to aid the unlucky ones.

I stumbled into line at a concession stand to get a lemonade. Standing in front of me was a man with a wet towel around his neck, listening to a tape recorder. I knew he was a reporter.

“How is your story going?” I asked.

“Not sure where it’s going yet,” he replied.

He was with the New York Post. I told him I was with nobody, but I am a journalist too so I like to ask questions. I told him about how I wanted to talk to black female reenactors.

“For me, talking to people is the worst part,” he said. I imagined his stories to be full of scenery and observation. I told him I used to be a reenactor, and I found it much easier to ask questions when I was wearing the same clothes as the people I wanted to talk to.

“Have you noticed that the TV reporters here are only looking at the most beautiful and weirdest people they can find?” he said. “I saw the Channel 7 guy interview the most gorgeous southern belle followed by the most scraggly bearded soldier.”

I thought about how TV media covered Comic-Con, focusing on the most scantily clad cosplayers and the most greasy comic collectors.

“Yeah,” I said. “What are people going to think?”

If you work at an office, you already know what it’s like. Long hours, dry meetings you’re not sure of the point of, bosses you don’t always like but still have to suck up to, menial tasks you thought you were above.

Of course, there are two big differences. First, you don’t get paid. And second, you and all of your coworkers are more passionate about this job than anything else in the world.

There are some practical reasons, too, for getting on staff at a con. You’ll save money on lodging and food, make friends, and meet the movers and shakers of your fandom. Here’s how to get on staff at a con.

Show your dedication

Anime USA was the first convention to give me filming and interviewing privileges despite my student status, lack of press credentials, or more than basic knowledge of how to operate a video camera. But through a sense of duty brought on by gratefulness as well as some student ingenuity, I produced three mini-films about the convention.

When I was finished, I put the videos up on my blog and shared them with the staff. I showed them to two of the Vice-Chairs, Rob and Theo, when I ran into them at another convention. Afterward, they told me they were looking for a marketing director and asked if I’d like to fill the position. Gobsmacked, I said I’d love to.

At the time, I thought they were really impressed by my technical skills. But I have since learned that Theo is a talented filmmaker while Rob is a professional Web designer. My student film didn’t show them I would be a good addition to the staff. It was the fact that I had enough passion for their convention to make a film in the first place.

Don’t give up

I’ve never outright said this on my blog, but I knew it and I know the rest of the staff knew it — I was a terrible marketing director. Passion is great, but being a 23-year-old student with no job experience is another thing. I’d never even volunteered at a convention before, and here I was managing my own staff.

I liked to think of my team as scrappy. I recruited my boyfriend as my assistant director since unlike me; he had staff experience. Chris, the graphic designer, was a friend from college. My recently-promoted press liason was a soft-spoken college student. Siham, bless her, was a student about my age with lots of experience, but chose to run the maid cafe and host club so she didn’t have time to work as a director. I am certain that working with me must have been trying. Theo did promotion work and his brother, Greg, was the con’s longtime program book designer.

I was worried about screwing up to the point of paralysis. But I invited them all to a party at my boyfriend’s apartment, where I served homemade onigiri. My first mistake was that I spent more time making snacks than planning the meeting. Things went off the rails almost immediately. Siham took the shy press liaison under her wing and I could see his eyes bulging with the new pressures of his job. Nobody thought of me as the group leader since Mark, a staff member who was really high up in the ranks, showed up to the meeting, too.

After the meeting, my press liaison quit with an email. I wanted to quit, too. But I didn’t because I love Anime USA. Some things I did terribly, like mismanaging press and leaving poor Tom in the guests department to figure out the interview schedule. Other things, like the prospectus and official blog, were my own brand new additions. I was really proud and hoped that the things I improved outweighed my mistakes. But I wasn’t surprised when Mark demoted me and put a more experienced staff member in charge for 2011.

Now, I’m Anime USA’s press liaison, a job that I’m much more adept at handling. But if I had quit halfway, I would probably just have been given a kick out the door. Passion got me the job. But effort helped me stay on board.

Bring new ideas

After working on Anime Boston’s official blog, I wanted nothing more than to bring that idea to Anime USA. It was a great way to archive the most important events of the con all in one place, plus give people who couldn’t attend events accurate coverage. Everyone at Anime USA was on board with the idea but incredibly busy. If I really wanted this blog, it was up to me to make it happen.

Rob gave me a domain at blog.animeusa.org, and I set to work customizing a WordPress theme. I recruited bloggers by giving them writing tests. I tried to get Internet working consistently in our convention hotel. And most importantly, I promoted the blog so people would know it existed. And I did this in the most eye-catching way I could think of, by putting QR codes all around the convention center.

My convention-eve at FedEx printing strange symbols paid off. People paid attention to the codes and some even made their own spinoffs. I loved that part; fan innovation is my favorite part of fandom. The convention got thousands of attendees, so I was happy when the official blog received thousands of hits.

Fans and geeks are brilliant people. We’re on the cutting edge of new technologies and trends. And yet, when it comes to our conventions, we’re so caught up in getting the basic necessities fulfilled that we’re sometimes behind the curve. That explains why we’re only recently using Conventionist and blogging. New people know these things can be just as important to attendees as a well run dealer’s room. They keep new ideas flowing.

–
While I’m also on staff at the much larger Anime Boston (I was recently promoted to a producer role on their Creative Media Team), I will always be thankful for Anime USA to giving my start in convention reporting and staffing. Even though I didn’t have it on my resume at the time, Anime USA gave me the experience I rely on the most at my actual office job. In fact, my number one suggestion for unemployed geeks is to get on staff at a con.

By the way, I didn’t change any names in this article. If you’re at Anime USA this November and you see these staff members, be sure to say hi. And tell them I sent you.

This week, a geek was crowned Miss USA.

A model and the former Miss California, 21-year-old Alyssa Campanella described herself as a “huge history geek” and “a huge science geek” during the pageant. She loves to read, loves Star Wars, and was one of the few participating beauty queens who believes in evolution. She loves to watch Game of Thrones and The Tudors (not surprising, since she is dating one of the lead actors on the show). But does that make her a geek?

Lots of people are questioning Miss USA’s  geek cred and female geek bloggers are coming to her defense. “Why does being a beauty pageant contestant mean you can’t also like Star Wars…?” asks Jill Pantozzi of Has Boobs, Reads Comics. Action Flick Chick managed an enormous discussion on the subject herself (and even linked to me!) Their point of view is clear: we shouldn’t question Miss USA’s geek cred just because she is gorgeous.

However, this time, it’s not about looks.

There’s a completely different reason I question actresses who describe themselves as “total geek[s]” and suspect them of pandering to their nerdy fans. It’s not because they’re stunning; it’s because they all say the same thing as if prompted — they like Star Wars — and then neglect to elaborate. Does that mean she has a 1:1 scale model of Han Solo frozen in carbonite in her living room? Maybe she’s addicted to playing Force Unleashed? Perhaps she just throws an annual Star Wars viewing party? Of course, it might not be any of these things; maybe she just watched Star Wars once and enjoyed it. But in that case, there’s a difference between being a fan of Star Wars and being a full on Star Wars geek.

Maybe Miss USA didn’t have enough time to explain. There wasn’t exactly time during the pageant to debate whether she believes Han or Greedo shot first. But the reasons she listed for defining herself as a “huge geek” weren’t very, well, geeky. While reading books and believing in evolution make her an egghead in the pageant world, it’s not how most people would describe a geek.

Some of you will still accuse me of being too tough on Miss USA because she’s so attractive. Some people say that when regular unattractive people claim to be geeks, we take them at their word, but we don’t give the same treatment to attractive people or celebrities. I disagree. For example, I just finished Wil Wheaton’s book, Just a Geek, which included transcripts of interviews he has done. Almost every interviewer asked him the same thing that the actresses in this video were asked.

“Are you really a geek?”

The difference is that Wheaton’s answer wasn’t “Sure, I love Star Wars.” (For the record, when Slashdot posed that question to him, he answered with a line of C++.)

Right now, geeks are big. With the rise of high-grossing superhero movies and video games, everyone wants to be (or at least appeal to) a geek. The incentive is there, so it isn’t a big step to suspect people in the public eye of trying to cater to geeks. Now, no matter how somebody looks, if they say they’re a geek and don’t give any examples, I get suspicious.

But let’s get to the heart of the matter: Why do I even care? Why does it upset me when celebrities suddenly and publicly come out as “huge geeks” to the applause of millions? Because for me, being a geek was hard. I got teased a lot. When I was eleven, two girls would follow me home from the bus stop trying to pull off the Gundam Wing keychains on my backpack. There was a point in high school where I actually stopped watching anime because I wanted so badly to fit in. Only recently, in college, did I decide to accept my identity as a geek. It was a hard road and it makes me mad that, now that there is no stigma attached, everyone else wants to come out and say, “Me too!”

It’s wrong for me to say Miss USA needs to “prove” her geekiness before I accept her. If I say that, I’m no better than the kids who picked on me in school. If she says she’s a geek, that should be enough. In fact, I should be happy that a beauty queen who represents the USA has chosen to identify as a geek.

But forgive me if I seem a little wary.

Read more:

I can’t be a hot girl and a nerd. Geek culture won’t let me.: My first take on the topic. I’ve really finessed my vision since then.
On Geekdom and Privilege: Sympathy For The ‘Pretty’?: This is one of the most insightful pieces I’ve read on this topic.
When Geeks Become Bullies: Very different from my take, and that alone makes it worth reading.