PAX East: Swag Hag with a Bag

I absolutely love swag. I don't know what exactly I love about swag, but I adore it. Make it video game swag, and I can hardly control myself. Last night, during a reunion with several old friends and my husband, I made my shameful confession: I'd actually contemplated committing assault and battery to get the swag I wanted off of other PAX East attendees.

As an exhibitor, I had to weigh what I wanted more- swag or a chance to reach out and literally touch some new customers. (But not in a dirty way.) Of course, I had to choose customers over swag, so I spent most of my time confined in a 10 x 20 space. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely cherished our chance to be an exhibitor at PAX East especially since we were in the Indie Mega Booth.

Still, I could hear the swag calling to me. It sang a siren's song, and I had no wax for my ears. Thankfully, I met some of the most amazing people ever. First, through Twitter, I met Brock. Yes, THE Brock. The one from Pokemon. This Brock tracked me down at my booth, traded me a HAND MADE gym badge for my daughter for a box of Girl Scout cookies and some our swag. One of the best trades I'd ever made. Ever! I still can't believe I'm bringing home a gym badge for my daughters.

Now, remember LoL Couple? They brought me the Lulu cupcake that I mistakenly identified as the Caitlyn cupcake in a previous blog. Well, they actually go by Colleen and Ben. How did I find out? Because Colleen and Ben came back, and they had gotten me a Ziggs bomb, a Gangplank orange, a Soraka banana, and an honor pin. I'd talked to them on Friday about how I was incredibly thankful to be able to attend PAX East but that I possessed fears that I wouldn't be able to go get the swag I really wanted to get. They went and got it for me. I can't even express how incredibly touched I was by their gesture. People I didn't know more than two days previous went out and got swag for me.

The swag came from the Riot Games booth, easily the largest the booth at PAX East. The crowds that gather there are quite intimidating, and these fine people braved it to get swag for me. Let me tell you, though, that the people working at the Riot booth are also some of the most awesome people I got to meet. Colleen and Ben told them exactly what they were doing (getting swag for another exhibitor who is a total LoL fangirl), and the Riot people gave them swag to give to me. As swamped as we were, I can guarantee you that they were far more destroyed by their crowd and all the people who wanted their swag as badly (if not more so) than I did. I can't wait to be able to give my girls their LoL swag. They'll be crazy excited. The Ziggs bomb is mine, though!

I also took a "bathroom break" and visited the PopCap booth. We took a bunch of our swag over to them, and we had a wee bit of a swag trade. I think I came out on top. They got collapsible water bottles to fill with the "water" of their choice, and I got sunshrooms, walnuts, and zombies. Yay!

So, I'll take a picture of my swag and send it out soon. They're all tucked away in my bag, ready for their fourteen hour trip home. I'm going to take them out and cuddle with all of it on my way home.

Nerd cred, yo!

Recently, I've been reading about women game developers and women geeks in general having to defend their "nerd cred", and my first thought was, "What the hell is nerd cred?" Immediately, I start imagining gangs of people in their pocket protectors and horn-rimmed glasses doing a dance off in front of white boards and armed with colored dry erase markers.

As I did more research, I discovered that I was guilty of laughing my butt off at a meme that is now considered extremely sexist. I was first introduced to this meme when one of my friends, a fellow geek girl, had this posted to her page:

This was months and months ago, and I remember calling my husband over to laugh over it with me. First of all, it's funny because my friend absolutely won't have anything to do with DC comics. She's a total Marvel Girl. (Pun intended! And a girl after my own heart.) Secondly, I've dealt with so many people (not just women) that this meme makes fun of over the years. Heck, I may have BEEN this meme at some point in my life.

First of all, this meme makes fun of posers, and we all have met posers or been one at some point in our life. People try on a lot of hats for all sorts of reasons, and popularity and "being cool" are definitely two big factors in being a poser. We're all offended by posers because we often feel like they're mocking something we truly love or feel we've invested a lot of time and energy doing.

I'm not sure why this meme got turned into the "sexist" meme. I mean, most memes are downright insensitive in one way or another. I find Super Photogenic Guy to be far more sexist than Idiot Nerd Girl for the simple fact that Super Photogenic Guy is literally about that guy's maleness, even if it's in a positive light. Idiot Nerd Girl has very little to do with that girl actually being a girl and more about people pretending to be something they are not in order to make an impression on another group of people. Would we have the same reaction if it was Idiot Nerd Guy?

Now, don't get me wrong. There are jerks out there who question a girl's "nerd cred" and accuse us of using our womanhood to get in their sacred, geek pants.  I've had a run-in with it lately while playing a game on Kongregate of all places. I got accused of "getting all the men riled up because you let them know you're a girl who plays LoL". My horrible deed? One of my buddies on the game asked me what my League of Legends account was so he could friend me. Why? Because he liked playing games with me. So because I answered and because I had not hidden the fact that I was playing the game with my husband, I had obviously lured all these men to treating me better by... I don't know. I got lost in trying to follow his line of thought. He obviously had a problem with me playing an online game and being a chick. Here's the thing, though. That's HIS problem. He temporarily made it mine, but it was VERY temporary.

The meme, however, is not the result of a bunch of sexist, misogynistic men who are out to destroy all nerd women. In fact, before I knew it was "sexist", I made a bunch of them just to amuse myself. I even used the template to make up one for some of the sanctimonious role-players in a certain game where I can often be found. By attacking the meme, we're allowing the douche canoes who are making us defend our "nerd cred" to  have a rally point and to hide behind that meme. And really, those guys are like that with EVERYONE, even other guys who aren't in their accepted group and their accepted level of knowledge. It's their version of pissing on a tree to tell others to keep away, and it works remarkably well.

I was on the other side of Idiot Nerd Girl at Barnes & Nobles the other day. I had found a Lego Death Star, complete with a Tie Interceptor there, and of course, I bought it for my husband. When I got up to the register, the cashier gushed all over my Death Star. Then I said that I saw that there was a Yavin 4 and a Tatoonie as well, and I was thinking about getting one of those. She told me that she teared up every time she thought about Tatoonie. I thought that maybe she was sad that Boba Fett had died in the Sarlac Pit, and I was about to tell her that he actually makes it out when she said, "I never understood why Princess Leia wasn't more upset when they destroyed her planet. I would be devastated."

Before I could help myself, I blurted out, "Oh, you mean Alderaan."

She looked at me and said, "What?"

I said, "You mean Alderaan. Princess Leia's home planet was Alderaan, not Tatoonie."

Immediately, the lady got flustered and said that she couldn't keep any of the planets straight. There were just to many. For a moment, I doubted myself and started to feel like a guilty nerd who had spent too much time watching Star Wars. (Which I probably have, especially since my daughters are now getting into it.) I had a flash of resentment that she'd brought up Princess Leia in relation to Tatoonie at all and putting me in this position. She could had just gushed about my Death Star and left it at that. At the same time, I felt bad that she was trying to engage me, and it turned out awkward. So, I suppressed my nerd guilt and said, "Yeah, there's a lot of planets. The only reason I remembered it is because one of my favorite T-shirts shows Luke and Leia together with Alderaan in the back, and the hilarious caption said LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALDERAAN PLACES." We had a good laugh and moved on away from the awkwardness. She helped me bag everything up, gave me about a thousand coupons, and rang up my discounts. We were both happy by the time I was done.

Still, I had that flash of resentment, but I'm a 37 year old woman with two daughters and a TON of geek/nerd friends and customers. I knew better than to let it unleash or to even hold it against that woman who was just trying to engage me. The Cred Warriors just don't know any better. They feel the need to stomp, moan, and freak out over their Nerdom. I leave it to them. They can have their little corner of the universe while I find friends who don't mind if I make a little bit of a mistake every now and then as I try to share their passion, and they don't mind if I correct them in my moments of extreme geekitude.