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.

Comments

[eclectic-writer.livejournal.com]

I think "preponderance" is a word and has to do with a lot of something.

One of my sisters' friends is what I call a "hot Geek". After reading this I'd probably call him a Stealth Geek because, seriously? The guy can party. He clubs, goes to raves, has intelligent, witty conversations with girls, is fairly good looking - the kind of dude you'd go with to just have fun. He's also a hardcore gamer and computer whiz, tests software coding for a big company, and knows all about 133t-speak. So I know they exist, perhaps in greater numbers than previously believed.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

You're quite right. According to Princeton's it is:

a) superiority in power or influence; "the preponderance of good over evil"; "the preponderance of wealth and power"
b) a superiority in numbers or amount; "a preponderance of evidence against the defendant"
c) exceeding in heaviness; having greater weight; "the least preponderance in either pan will unbalance the scale"

Perhaps "wondering" could be used as a noun instead? There really must be a word out there somewhere that means "a matter to ponder."

And hurrah for your "stealth geek" friend! I figure that there are more stealth geeks now than ever, due to the pop-culture influence on fantasy/sci-fi and vice versa.