I have never been comfortable advertising myself as a geek because to me there's no way to distinguish oneself using that word without coming across as a wannab

I have never been comfortable advertising myself as a geek because to me there's no way to distinguish oneself using that word without coming across as a wannabe or fanboy. You don't crown yourself smart. When somebody today tells me they're a geek my private reaction is "what specifically are you a geek of?" If it's "social media" then I'm starting to lose interest because there are no skills involved. I'm thinking "for chrissakes Shaquille O'Neil is on Twitter." If these people want tech cred they've got to lose the "Hi, I'm Bob. I am a big social media geek." Although I suppose today that gets you more female admirers than "Hi I'm __, I'm a hacker working on a project that __." Words evolve. Language corruption is a well-documented phenomenon in linguistics. The word geek is a good example. Geek started off dodgy then it turned edgy and now that it has become so popular its connotation bares little resemblance to the original. Another example is the word awesome which used to be reserved only for truly magnificent, spectacular things; over time the edge dulled and we now refer to things as common as potato salad as "awesome." For an interesting lecture on language evolution listen to John McWhorter: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/142733/Audio/Lectures/Story%20of%20Human%20Language%20-%20John%20McWhorter/03%20How%20Language%20Changes%20-%20Sound%20Change.mp3 http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/142733/Audio/Lectures/Story%20of%...