I read Patton Oswalt’s dissection of geek culture the other day, and I’ve had some mixed feelings about it. He’s going to catch a lot of hell of it, that I can tell, but really, I think he’s not wrong. He’s mostly right, in fact. I just think that he doesn’t assess the real danger of geek culture, nor does he prescribe an appropriate response.

Personally, I’ve always had a touch-and-go relationship with geek culture, if you can believe it. In my family, I’m definitely the geekiest, I’d say. I’m the guy who’s On The Internet All The Time, dredging up obscure memes and silly trends and finding the most bizarre articles to send to people during slow work hours. I’m also the guy who is sometimes unapologetically geeky in my tastes. Yes, I had Hellboy comics on my Christmas list. I also had Avatar: the Last Airbender DVDs, and I asked for Windows 7 so that maybe I can fix my laptop up to play Portal 2. (A pipe dream if ever there was one.)

These tastes are geeky. But if you asked me if I was a geek, I’m not sure I’d say I am.

Part of it is that I’m a coward.

Straight-up. When I was a kid and someone found out I liked Warhammer 40k, I was the one who would cringe and rub the back of my neck and come up with excuses. I never had a fiery defense, nor was I willing to just give my critics the finger. No, I’d mumble something about how I was actually in it because I liked building the models, or maybe just painting them (and how that is less geeky is utterly beyond me). I always had an apology or a qualifier to say no, actually, I was not in this because I’m a dork, I’m in this because of this perfectly valid reason which totally makes sense. (By the way, my excuses were both lies – I was into 40k because I liked reading the stories in the codexes. And the illustrations.)

But there’s a much deeper reason to my reticence to fly the geek banner than shame. I mean, it can’t be shame anymore, not if Patton’s right, and pop culture is geek culture now. We’re all drinking the same Kool-aid. So what’s there to be ashamed of?

There’s a part of Patton’s essay where he says that the otaku culture (and by the way, my God, MS Word thinks “otaku” is a perfectly valid word) is an escape hatch culture. It’s a place you can go that’s outside of the real world, a thought-palace you can retreat to where you can feel safe. This is okay, so long as it’s an escape hatch. A momentary retreat is fine, provided it’s momentary.

But if the thought-palaces have expanded until they house every aspect of our lives, there’s a problem: insularity.

Insularity is when you can’t get out of your escape hatch. No, that’s wrong – it’s when you don’t want to get out of your escape hatch. It’s when you’re fine in there, perfectly fine, and you like and pay attention only to things made to go within the escape hatch. Why would you want to go outside, after all? Everything in the escape hatch draws on things you know. Nothing new and difficult and unsettling is allowed in the escape hatch. It’s familiar. It’s good. It’s safe.

That’s insularity. It’s when art is made within the boundaries of a culture because it’s safe and popular, rather than choosing its own boundaries for itself.

And insularity is cowardly. It’s just as cowardly as the twelve-year-old me, tomato-red and sputtering as I tried to explain why I had a lead sculpture of Bilbo fucking Baggins sitting on my shelf. It’s when someone can’t summon up the will to look beyond the boundaries of the comfortable familiar to try and experiment with something new.

In the escape hatch, we’re familiar with such an enormous litany of well-established tastes that all you have to do is reference them one after the other, playing each cherished obscurity like the keys of a xylophone, in order induce the groundswell of support we all so desire. Slap a superhero or a zombie with any underground mythology, like Thundercats or Transformers, and it pretty much writes itself.

Patton thinks that’s cross-pollination. It is, in a way, but it’s within one small field, and it’s among only a handful of flowers. And I don’t think it’s as self-destructive as he presumes. We’re human. We like the familiar. We like the routine. And we don’t like challenge. But that encourages repetition, and sloth, and becomes akin to a terminal patient pressing that morphine button over and over again. It does not engage in the limitless array of culture, and art, and thought that is available in the wide world. And this is what’s necessary to produce a healthy sense of art, of purpose, and of self-awareness.

The escape hatch doesn’t have balance, and it doesn’t have space. There’s not enough room in there to do the really important stuff that we desperately want, and even need. And, to me, that’s discouraging, and even depressing.

That’s why I’ve always been reticent to fly the geek flag. When you commit to one culture and one audience, sometimes it’s like putting a nail through one foot: you’re just going to keep walking around and around in a circle, doing the same thing over and over again, and never getting anywhere.

I was in the escape hatch for most of my life. I lived and died geek culture for years. I don’t know when I got out – and I’m not even sure if I got out, really – but at some point I just plain got tired of it. I stopped reading nothing but fantasy and science fiction novels. I stopped listening to the same music over and over again. And yeah, I even stopped playing video games. I haven’t bought a new video game in about two or three years. I still dip into the escape hatch occasionally, because hey, I still love some of the stuff that’s in there. But it doesn’t define my tastes.

It’s nice outside of the escape hatch. Because there’s really nothing to escape from.

Patton jokingly suggests we destroy the geek culture by burrowing inwards, invoking an endless cycle of solipsism and cultural incest until finally everything turns to ash. I have two problems with that: one is that it’s a lot of work that could be put to something better, and two is a grave fear I have that the cycle might not be endless. What if we’re all okay with regurgitative, derivative art, and remakes, and ironic pastiches? What if we like being trapped within our prisons of artifice and quirk? What if being earnest and new never comes back in style?

My advice is, don’t go in – go out. Not necessarily outside (har har, how I hate that nerd insult), but outside of what you’re comfortable with. Try and find something totally new and bizarre and study it. You’ll be like an explorer, or an adventurer.

And there will always something new to explore. Because it’s a pretty wide and wild world outside of the escape hatch.