Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Being A Geek Ain't Easy

In 5 years of spouting my crap on here I'm pretty sure I've said before how annoying it is to be a geek at times. For starters there's the old cliched media view - fat, spotty virgins still living with the parents. (OK, so I'm overweight but hey...)

As if that's not bad enough we have the uber-geeks to contend with. The ones that totally live up to stereotype and give us normal fanboys a bad image. They're the ones that do dress as Vulcans or Borg.

Of course not only am I into Science Fiction but I'm also fascinated by ufology - another group derided by the media as 'nuts'. Once again though we're our own worst enemy as a high contingent of those fascinated by UFO's turn not to science but spiritualism. The answers to flying saucers lie not in the skies but in our minds... sigh. Being a man of science this pisses me off because each time one of these nuts who claim they can speak to General Korg of the Seventh Astral Empire through telepathy goes public then the general perception of ufology is set back by another 5 years or so. (Sort of like how Derek Acorah destroyed any of Most Haunted's credibility.)

Over the past few months the internet has been awash with 14/10/08 mania in ufology circles, thankfully this hasn't reached mainstream otherwise those interested in UFO's, but with a scientific mindset, would have been among the laughing stock... again.

Basically Blossom, an online spiritualist was convinced that a galactic lightship will reveal itself to the world on 14th October 2008 once and for all confirming the existence of UFOs/aliens. Of course it was never going to happen, just like the LHC wasn't going to kill us but it pisses me off that these spiritualists and crazy web-predictors are given any credibility.

I hate censorship but I'm with Tim Berners-Lee on his views when it comes to how the web spreads mis-information. These morons need protecting from themselves.

Want more online paranoia? Try Above Top Secret a forum where 50% of content is pure garbage - though, if you dig deep enough there's some genuinely fascinating & thought provoking content. (I hate slagging ATS of because I'm genuinely a fan, but bear in mind it's where I first discovered the predictions of Blossom then you'll realise some of it is guff of the highest order.)


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