Stealth Geekery and FanSpeak

[alanajoli]

shanna_s has talked a number of times about the art of being a Stealth Geek: someone who appears to be a "normal" person to other non-geeks, but in actuality can speak geek just as fluently as he or she can speak pop-culture or sports or a host of other topics. I've always enjoyed this concept, though I suspect I'm a bit less stealthy than true Stealth Geeks.

Recently, however, willshetterly posted a link on FanSpeak as actual body-language dialect. I'm not sure how to think about this, as I suspect my linguistic usage tends to fall somewhere in between FanSpeak and Midwestern. (I catch myself using the past participle of buy not as bought but as boughten, which rhymes with gotten, which I either picked up in Iowa or Michigan. Also, I use cattycorner for... huh... I'm not even sure what the non-Midwestern word for that is. Just across, I suspect.)

So my new ponderance is this: is the difference between classic geeks and stealth geeks the use of FanSpeak (or lack thereof)? Of can stealth geeks just switch between the two? I'll have to ask shanna_s and see what she thinks...

Edit: According to lj's spell-check, ponderance is not an actual word. I think it should be, so I'm leaving it as is, which may somehow relate to the query I'm making.