Getting a Life

What the “triumph of the nerds” can tell us about the place of media in people’s lives.

This book recentres our understanding of geek culture, drawing on fieldwork in comic book shops, game stores, and conventions, including interviews with ordinary members of the overlapping communities of fans and enthusiasts. Woo offers an accessible introduction to the subculture while exploring ethical possibilities of a life lived with media.

Woo Benjamin :

Benjamin Woo is assistant professor of communication and media studies at Carleton University.Benjamin Woo is assistant professor of communication and media studies at Carleton University.

"Long overlooked by those who study fandoms, subcultures and gendered identities, the Geek now gets the attention it deserves. Benjamin Woo’s Getting a Life: The Social Worlds of Geek Culture is a witty, smart book marked most of all by its methodological agility. Woo moves in to examine geek culture up close, then pulls back to illuminate its relationship to taste cultures, the boundary-work of social in-groups and the shifting relationship of capitalist media producers to their fans. Wit and humour run through this engaging book, but so, too, does a commitment to taking Geek culture seriously and fashioning the analytical tools with which to understand it." Will Straw, McGill University, and co-editor, with Alexandra Boutros, of Circulation and the City: Essays on Urban Culture

"An entertaining and informative romp through contemporary social philosophy and media theory that, for all its academic rigour, never lifts its gaze from its central focus: the geek. Woo's smart prose and the notion of the geek as a subcultural type make for a book that is both lighthearted and readable, yet valuable as a piece of media theory in its own right." Quill and Quire

"Woo presents a witty, multilayered account of geek culture that could be characterized as a game changer in terms of how so-called geeks and nerds are perceived in modern Western societies. Woo's meticulous treatment of geek and nerd cultures is essential in the current hyper-mediated environment in which online communities such as Reddit, Twitch, and Nerd Out have become part of the mainstream. Getting a Life is a must read for scholars and students in fandom studies, media studies, popular culture and media, cultural studies, communication, and sociology. Essential." Choice

"Getting a Life has an important place in the canon of fan studies scholars, sociologists, board game studies, comic book studies, cultural studies, or those studying subcultures and publics. Woo has presented a fresh perspective on an amorphous and difficult to define group that has often been relegated to the outskirts of society. Here we can begin to see how the practices that define such a group and the ways in which they see themselves can come to impact the larger society. Woo's Getting a Life is an engaging, informative, and important piece of critical analysis that is also enjoyable to read." TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies