Little Brother: The Tech Geek Subculture

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Little Brother: The Tech Geek Subculture

The culture of a society, ever since its creation, is divided into two groups: the dominant culture and the subculture. The dominant culture is held by the majority as the standard; while the subculture, being distinct or hidden from the majority, is often characterized as systematic opposition to the dominant culture. Subcultures are often perceived as negative because of the nature of their criticism to the dominant societal standard (Hebdige 6). Often, subcultures are composed of like-minded individuals, mostly youths, who feel neglected by societal standards. Through their group orientation, these groups of like-minded individuals are able to develop a sense of identity which is quite distinct from the dominant culture. This self-identity is manifested through the choice of their wardrobe, technological gadgets, music, hairdo, activities, friends, and other stuffs. In America, the association of White kiddos with Black or Mexican kiddos often earns negative criticism from elders.

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Little Brother (Cory Doctorow novel)

As Dick Hebdige wrote, "This unprecedented convergence of black and white, so aggressively, so unashamedly proclaimed, attracted the inevitable controversy which centered on the predictable themes of race, sex, rebellion, etc., and which rapidly developed into moral panic."

The Geek subculture is one of the current notorious subcultures existing everywhere in the world. Elders regarded them as the new breeds of the Hippies, Yuppies, mob, punks, teddy boys and others. Sociologists defined a geek as "a bright young man turned inward, poorly socialized, who felt so little kinship with his own planet that he routinely traveled to the ones invented by his favorite authors, who thought of that secret, dreamy place his computer took him to as cyberspace-somewhere exciting, a place more real than his own life, a land he could conquer, not a drab teenager's room...