{"id":9072,"date":"2018-03-13T13:28:57","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T17:28:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sjc\/?p=9072"},"modified":"2023-11-27T12:00:47","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T17:00:47","slug":"benjamin-woo-getting-a-life-the-social-worlds-of-geek-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sjc\/2018\/benjamin-woo-getting-a-life-the-social-worlds-of-geek-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Benjamin Woo | Getting a Life: The Social Worlds of Geek Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Comic book superheroes, fantasy kingdoms, and futuristic starships have become inescapable features of today\u2019s pop-culture landscape, and the people we used to deride as \u201cnerds\u201d or \u201cgeeks\u201d have ridden their popularity and visibility to mainstream recognition. It seems it\u2019s finally hip to be square. Yet these conventionalized representations of geek culture typically ignore the real people who have invested time and resources to make it what it is.<\/p>\n

Getting a Life re-centres our understanding of geek culture on the everyday lives of its participants, drawing on fieldwork in comic book shops, game stores, and conventions, including in-depth interviews with ordinary members of the overlapping communities of fans and enthusiasts. Benjamin Woo shows how geek culture is a set of interconnected social practices that are associated with popular media. He argues that typical depictions of mass-mediated entertainment as something that isolates and pacifies its audiences are flawed because they do not account for the conversations, relationships, communities, and identities that are created by engaging with the products of mass culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comic book superheroes, fantasy kingdoms, and futuristic starships have become inescapable features of today\u2019s pop-culture landscape, and the people we used to deride as \u201cnerds\u201d or \u201cgeeks\u201d have ridden their popularity and visibility to mainstream recognition. It seems it\u2019s finally hip to be square. Yet these conventionalized representations of geek culture typically ignore the real […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[224],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nBenjamin Woo | Getting a Life: The Social Worlds of Geek Culture | School of Journalism and Communication<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Comic book superheroes, fantasy kingdoms, and futuristic starships have become inescapable features of today\u2019s pop-culture landscape, and the people we\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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