(http://readwrite.com/files/styles/800_450sc/public/fields/starwars.jpg) Ready to embrace another arbitrary holiday - or just looking for an excuse to slack off and eat cake? Who isn't?
This Saturday, May 25, is internationally known as Geek Pride Day. "But, Pi Day (http://www.piday.org/) and Star Wars Day (http://maythe4th.starwars.com/) already happened," you might be thinking. Which leads me to retort, "Do you want this holiday or not?" In actuality, Geek Pride Day is the only one of the bunch that works overtime as a general celebration of all types of geekery.
3 Reasons To Geek Out In fact, there is a trifecta of different reasons May 25 is considered the geekiest day in the year.
- It's Towel Day (http://towelday.org/), the day two weeks after Douglas Adams' passed in 2001 in which fans celebrate by keeping a towel handy a la The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (http://www.amazon.com/Hitchhikers-Guide-Galaxy-Douglas-Adams/dp/0345391802).
- It's the anniversary of the very first Star Wars movie, Episode IV: A New Hope, which was released on May 25, 1977.
- It marks the Glorious 25th of May (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld_(world)#The_Glorious_Twenty-Fifth_of_May), on which fans of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books wear lilac and raise awareness of Alzheimer's, following the author's 2007 diagnosis.
Geek Pride Day has been celebrated in dorky masses since 2006, when it originated in Spain as "Día del Orgullo Friki (http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2006/05/26/descodificador/1148596810.html)." (That's "Day of Geek Pride" in Spanish, natch.) The Internet did the rest, and today it's an (unofficial) celebration all over the world. Here are a few of ways you can commemorate it:
Geek Stats For three years running, IT recruitment agency Modis has conducted an annual Geek Pride survey (http://www.modis.com/it-insights/press-room/survey-downloads/modis-geek-pride-survey-2013-media-deck.pdf) in honor of the holiday. More than 1,000 American adults shared their thoughts about all things geek. Some of this year's findings:
- The majority of Americans (87%) are proud of their geeky hobbies. Or, as the survey cringingly puts it, most "don't sneak their geek."
- Good news for Google Glass! More than half of respondents (60%) are interested in "wearable tech," with 56% specifically interested in "smart glasses."
- You might want to dial it back a bit with the Doctor Who in-jokes. While 74% of self-identified geeks rated themselves "very funny," only 53% of non-geeks agreed.
Learn A New Geek Skill Historically, we've used "geek" to refer to people "who are unabashedly interested in learning and will eventually be our bosses." (And before that it referred to sideshow spectacles, but let's not get into that.) What better day to encourage your own intellectual curiosity?
ReadWrite has covered many online programs that can teach anyone — even kids — how to become programmers. But one we didn't cover, Code School, is offering a free trial specifically in commemoration of Geek Pride Day. Sign up on its celebration page (http://www.codeschool.com/free-weekend) to dabble in Ruby, JavaScript, HTML/CSS or iOS for free over the weekend.
Acquire, Collect & Consume Geekiness Where would our economy be without geeks lining up in droves to snag the foil-cover limited-edition 3D-capable Blu-ray copy of
The Avengers? Embrace capitalism while ensuring that any date you invite to your apartment will have to stare down your anime figurines first.
Predictably, ThinkGeek has an annual Geek Pride Day promotion (http://www.thinkgeek.com/geekpride/). Just like last year, it's shipping out freebies and holding a giveaway. Redbubble (http://robotmutant.com/celebrate-geek-pride-day-redbubble/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=celebrate-geek-pride-day-redbubble) is also kicking off a geeky weekend sale. Actually, just Google "Geek Pride Day Sale (https://www.google.com/search?q=Geek+Pride+Day+Sale&oq=Geek+Pride+Day+Sale&aqs=chrome.0.57j62l3.6341j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)" and you'll find tons of companies hungry to snatch up your nerdy, nerdy money.
Meet Up, Geekily Not one, not two, but eleven (http://animecons.com/events/) different science fiction, fandom, gaming and anime conventions take place on the weekend of Geek Pride Day 2013. From San Jose's FAnime Con (http://www.fanime.com/) to Houston's Comicpalooza (http://www.comicpalooza.com/) to Toronto's Anime North (http://animenorth.com/live/), the convention centers of Northern America are bound to be crawling with fellow geeks.
It should be easy to find people out and about who are celebrating Geek Pride Day in particular. If Twitter (#GeekPrideDay (https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%23GeekPrideDay&src=typd)) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Geek-Pride-Day/112614348755335) aren't enough, just look for people inexplicably carrying lightsabers, lilacs and towels.
Photo by betsyweber (http://www.flickr.com/photos/betsyweber/4961703633/).ReadWrite