A company called Lawn Love ranked 2022’s Geekiest Cities. They compared the 200 largest U.S. cities, using metrics like stores selling comics, video games, trading cards, and board games and also looked at the number of geek Meetup groups, costume shops (for cosplayers), and whether the city has hosted events like Comic-Cons and Renaissance festivals.
San Diego ranks #16 overall in the U.S. based on these key metrics (1st = Best)
• Number of Board Game and Trading Card Shops - 14th
• Number of Cosplay/Costume Stores - 6th
• Number of Geek Meetup Groups - 25th
• Number of Comic-Cons - 6th
To see how the rest of the country ranked, visit Lawn Loves full report.
And if you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between a geek and a nerd, Professor J. Richard Stevens sheds has some insight:
“In the 29th Century, “nerd” and “geek” were more synonymous, different kinds of derogatory terms for fandom behavior. But in the 21st Century, the tech boom led to a surge of popularity for fandom spaces, and entertainment media started mainstreaming “geek” culture as a more celebratory space.
In today’s vernacular, that tends to be the distinction: “geek culture” is pro-social, often with a love of science and technology. When “nerd” is used as a pejorative, it is usually used in an anti-social manner, to suggest that interests in popular culture have overtaken “healthy” social interaction.
All that said, different groups and different fandoms employ both terms differently, so both terms can still be used in a positive or derogatory way, depending on the context.”
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