Editor's note: When he's not teaching the Internet how to fist-fight, why being weird is awesome or how to self-publish your own books, Joe Peacock tours the world, showing his extensive "Akira" art collection. He has 13 cats and loves you.

We know who you are. You shine like a beacon. Geeks aren’t blind: We see you, geek poser.

We know it’s suddenly cool to be smart and passionate. Those qualities earned us derision and exclusion from our peers at one point, and the term "geek" was thrown at us like it was meant to stab us in the heart. But now, it's become something of an honorific.

These days, people actually want to be us - kind of.

I’ve seen geek posers whip out their iPhones while wearing the Secret Wars or Domokun t-shirts they bought at Target for $9.99, telling their friends what a great time they're going to have at DragonCon or San Diego ComicCon, as if those are the happening parties of the day. They say things like, "Deep down, I'm a geek" or "I just  have to embrace my inner geek" or "I bet you didn't know I'm such a geek!"

It reminds me of the late '80s, when teenagers would wear Vision Street Wear or Vans shoes with a Bones Brigade T-shirt because they saw Christian Slater do it in that totally rad movie “Gleaming the Cube” (which, if you weren't alive then, you may know as "A Brother's Justice" - one of the few examples in film history in which a simple title change made a movie go from utterly awesome to completely crappy).

Or the early '90s, when everyone was wearing Z. Cavaricci pants and Cross-Colors jackets because MC Hammer was all over MTV singing "U Can't Touch This." Or when every white kid over the age of 13 was wearing flannel with corduroy and Doc Martens because Pearl Jam was the hot band of the day.

For some reason, "geek" has become the label that the mainstream has placed on a culture that mixes comic book fandom, sci-fi and fantasy movies, and tech consumerism. And those things all together have become very popular. So the trend is to call yourself "geeky" if you like them.

But that's the problem. Those things aren't the sum total of geekdom. Geek isn't a scene. It's not a fashion. It's not a lifestyle. It's a life – my life. Geek is who you are. When geek posers are off doing the next trendy thing and "geek" is, like, so 2012, we will still be us. FULL POST