The Geekhood has always been about obsession. Some of us obsess over gadgets, some over Star Trek, some over comic books, and a few brave souls over memorising the entire Elvish dictionary. We geeks dive too deep into things normal people shrug at. That’s the fun. That’s the badge of honor.
Now AI has rolled up to the party like the new kid in school who already knows everyone’s Wi-Fi password. And the question is, what happens when machines start geeking out harder than we do?
Geeking Made Easy (Maybe Too Easy)
Traditionally, being a geek meant work. You had to stay up too late coding, cataloguing Doctor Who episodes, or arguing online about whether the Enterprise could do the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs. (Hint: as parsecs are a measurement of distance and the Enterprise is considerably larger than the Millennium Falcon, hence less manoeuvrable, I doubt it could do the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs. Don’t email me.)
But AI changes that. Suddenly you don’t need to spend hours researching encryption tools or building a fan theory about The Expanse. You can just ask a bot and, bam, it spits out a polished essay, a chart, even a picture of Picard drinking tea. Earl Grey. Hot. On Mars.
Convenient? Absolutely. But when geeking out becomes that easy, does it lose some of its geekiness? Half the thrill was always the hunt, the tinkering, the late-night rabbit holes. If AI is doing the digging for us, we might just end up consuming pre-chewed geek food like baby birds. And no one wants to be the baby bird in this analogy.
Sci-Fi Becomes Sci-Fact
Sci-fi geeks used to get a smug sense of joy whenever the real world started catching up with our favourite shows. Flip phones were basically Star Trek communicators. Smart speakers are just baby versions of the Enterprise computer.
AI, though, is skipping ahead. We were supposed to dream about the holodeck, not wake up to AI writing holodeck scripts and generating the sets. When science fiction becomes science fact too quickly, we lose that delicious middle stage where we get to speculate, argue, and generally feel clever about predicting the future. It’s like the universe has decided to binge-watch progress on 2x speed and forgot we wanted popcorn breaks.
The Rest of the Geekhood
This isn’t just a tech and sci-fi thing. The whole Geekhood feels the ripple. Gamers are staring down AI-built worlds and NPCs who actually remember your last conversation. Comic fans are already drowning in AI-generated superhero mash-ups (Spider-Bat-Man, coming soon to a fan forum near you). Cosplayers? Give it a year and AI will be spitting out armor designs faster than you can glue-gun your fingers together.
Every corner of geek culture could get smoothed out by AI. More efficient, sure. But also less messy, less human. And isn’t the mess the best part?
A Geekhood Redefined
Maybe the Geekhood doesn’t disappear, it just mutates. Being a geek in the AI era might not mean memorising every timeline in Doctor Who or knowing the chip architecture in your phone. It might mean learning how to challenge the AI, remix it, or make it do something absurd just to see if it can.
Being a geek has never really been about the subject matter, it’s about the passion. If AI takes over the grunt work, maybe we shift our geekiness toward poking the shiny machine until it admits it doesn’t actually understand The Matrix any better than we do.
Final thought: AI isn’t ending the Geekhood. It’s just forcing us to level up. The real question is, do we stay the ones piloting the starship, or are we just passengers while the AI quotes Hitchhiker’s Guide back at us?
I’ve calculated your chance of survival, but I don’t think you’ll like it – Marvin The Paranoid Robot
Take care,
Mike
Who Wrote This?
Note: This post was researched and written with the help of AI. Roughly 85% my geekery, 15% AI Overlord.