"Mac genius," "Nerd patrol," etc.

Ever heard of a place called Hooters?

yes, what is the point you wish to make?

"Dan Brown has to be one of the best, smartest, and most accomplished writers in the country. THE DA VINCI CODE is many notches above the intelligent thriller; this is pure genius."
-NELSON DeMILLE, #1 New York Times bestselling author

There's also an element of ridiculousness in it--if the folks who work behind the counter at the Apple Store, or who hold down a job at Best Buy, are "geniuses," then what of the people who program the things to begin with? There's a debasing of the notion of genius or even specialized intelligence here.

i'm less bothered by this than by the notion of trumping up through cutesy titles what is still probably underpaid, thankless customer service work.

I love that circuit city or wherever now has those "firedog" guys that are like one step below the geek squad bullshit, these dudes don't deal with computers even, they just hook up your home theater equipment for you. Like hiring people to come put your IKEA shit together, are modern consumers seriously this incapable of basic tasks? We can't even clean our own houses anymore, can we?

remember when it was just "i don't know how to program my VCR"

when i worked at subway they wanted me to wear a gold pin that said SANDWICH ARTIST

I could program a VCR when I was like 2

did you, ethan?

no i worked unsupervised night shift so i spent most of my time talking on the phone or hooking my walkman up to the store radio

we were in the projects and only had about one dude walk up every 45 minutes or so, usually really drunk

also at least once a week somebody would ask if we served ribs

yes, what is the point you wish to make?

The way that the "product" is sold in such a way that seems to debase the people who provide it?

My point is this approach is not new. It's just a different target.

i do think in maybe the last 20 years or so theres been a shift towards awarding the 'genius' distinction for really simple, basic tasks instead of to, you know, actual geniuses

Sometimes I genuinely feel that my manliness is insulted by the simple knowledge that there are dudes out there who want to have powerful computers and big home surround sound theater bullshit and nice furniture yet are completely uninterested and incapable of assembling and maintaining their own equipment. Let's not even get started on cars nowadays. I suppose at one point before all electronics were transistorized a man could repair all his own household appliances right down to the teevee. And back in the day when you could actually fix your car without taking it in to the dealership for a computer-aided diagnosis. We're all becoming a bunch of emasculated chumps, aren't we? They won't let us do anything anymore, it's too complex, too miniaturized, too unreliable to begin with.

we can all learn a lesson in manliness from the Geek Squad

inasmuch as being a bunch of pompous, expendable dickheads in matching shirts, I guess

They're just schmoes doing a (not well-paid) job. Don't hate.

Obviously if people didn't really have that level of discomfort with computers, the marketing wouldn't be effective.

Don't forget it's partly aimed at people of the generation that did not grow up with a computer. My grandfather was a brilliant guy with a lot of technical know-how (he designed his own home, was always modifying his home hi-fi system, etc.), but WebTV beguiled him up to his death.

no actually they're fuckwits who regularly scam people. Just like a lot of "outsourced support staff" to include your stereotypical auto dealership greasemonkey.

http://consumerist.com/consumer/roundups/top-geek-squad-stories-to-date-257316.php

yeah, i don't think the geek squad is really a good example of just your average over-titled, under-paid customer service job like the "mac genius" or similar store stuff.

and I'm not hating so much as I am pulling the "takes one to know one" bit on being an overpaid doofus who only has a job because people basically follow the herd and don't like to read or learn

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,380,000 for "* is a genius". (0.14 seconds)

Sufjan Stephens is a genius!
JOSS WHEDON IS A GENIUS
J.K.Rowling is a genius
Zach Braff is a genius.
Banksy is a genius!
David Sedaris is a GENIUS
Trent Reznor is a genius. There is no other word for him.
Ricky Gervais is a genius
Seth MacFarlane is a genius. I can't wait for the new series and it would truely freakin sweet if they did a live show in the UK!
Anyway, Quentin Taratino is a genius.
Stephen Malkmus is a genius!
Thom Yorke is a genius.
Zach Braff is a genius. "Good luck exploring the infinite abyss!" "Hey, you too!"

Salespersons are the most underrated people EVAH. I want good service, but I can tolerate a lot of shit because I know that being in sales can be a shitty place to be in. (The other day we had a guy SCREAMING in our shop. He later came to apologize.)

Haha "there is no other word for him."

zach braff, twice? jesus.

actually I shouldn't so much blame people for not knowing how to properly maintain things like Windows or OS X or fix their own cars anymore. It's really the industry's fault for taking advantage of the fact that if you make something complicated and proprietary there's a boatload of money to be made (by someone) fixing it for your customers when it inevitably breaks, two or three times a year if possible.

no actually they're fuckwits who regularly scam people. Just like a lot of "outsourced support staff" to include your stereotypical auto dealership greasemonkey.

http://consumerist.com/consumer/roundups/top-geek-squad-stories-to-date-257316.php

-- TOMBOT, Friday, May 25, 2007 3:07 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

look at the filename of the picture on that page

and I'm not hating so much as I am pulling the "takes one to know one" bit on being an overpaid doofus who only has a job because people basically follow the herd and don't like to read or learn

I'm sure your job involves more than installing computers.

HI I UPDATED YOUR RAMS

What bothers me more than "Mac Genius" is the fact that someone thought about the term long enough to get upset. We need fewer people upset over trivialities and more people upset about the big shit.

the big shit is overwhelming though.

I read that in New Scientist.

What bothers me more than "Mac Genius" is the fact that someone thought about the term long enough to get upset. We need fewer people upset over trivialities and more people upset about the big shit.

-- libcrypt, Friday, May 25, 2007 3:30 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

irony genius

Heh, that was the point!

sorry i dont know who libcrypt is

He's in your computer.

that bothers me more than "mac genius"

i would think the whole computer genius concept is on the way out though, the general pop is much more adept with computers and the internets then 10 years ago. isn't this partially why AOL died? I mean aside from the whole broadband thing.

/cue aol address

also why you can talk about the internet in public now without nerd lolz

when i first started posting to ilx i would never ever ever ever credit something to a messageboard i read but now i dont know anyone, including my mom, who doesnt regularly

WoW is our Golf

FARK is the WSJ

"so what do you guys think about this whole internet thing?" is my favorite conversation lag breaker.

I'm mostly glad I don't know anyone who frequents collegehumor

fark >>>>>> wsj

people still making "series of tubes" jokes is still C not D yet right

people = digg

go fug yourself

tabloids = lolcats

What bothers me more than "Mac Genius" is the fact that someone thought about the term long enough to get upset. We need fewer people upset over trivialities and more people upset about the big shit.

-- libcrypt, Friday, May 25, 2007 3:30 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Droste.jpg

i would buy weekly world lolcats in line at the grocery store

also yeah it bugs me as well that these guys are likely undertrained and underpaid and their employers still manage to make hay calling them "geniuses" and suchlike.

also in here somewhere is the pop-cultural reclamation of the terms "nerd" and "geek" as ambivalent superlatives, something that always bothered me.

the way the marketing for "geek squad" works, there's a sort of tacit "these guys are probably out back masturbating to anime porn and trading magic cards, but boy can they ever fix your hard drive!" quality. which is probably wrong, or at least hasty, on all counts.

yeah like why market simple reassurance, professionalism and expertise when you can market a stereotype from high school that "most folks" looked down upon? it's sort of the same thing that I started to hate about crispin porter bogusky's stuff, such a purposefully lowbrow attitude to everything as if that's either original or still a common set of values for people past their 3rd year of college

Doug: In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.

June: Uh, well, uh...

Homer: I'll field that one. Let me ask you a question. Why would a man whose shirt says "Genius at Work" spend all of his time watching a children's cartoon show?

Doug: [embarrassed pause] I withdraw my question.

http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/servlet/com.featureserv.util.Download?file=20070521csbgg-a-p.jpg&code=csbgg

Huh, weird: I never felt like either company was really pitching these people as classic geek geniuses, if only because the social skills associated with classic geek geniuses are not exactly ones you want to project for your customer service team. It's the new geek-light: pleasant young people who will whip your stuff into shape, and then you'll be all like "whew, thanks, awesome, you're a genius!" I dunno, maybe "wizard" was already trademarked, but "geek" stuff that used to be the province of maladjusted techies is now a lot more wide-open -- you can meet young guys now who are into electronics/computers the way they might once have been into, like, cars. Gaming probably helps on this one.

Anyway, yeah, it's a little weird that people go both ways on this stuff: they'll kind of act like their lack of high-level computing skill is a deficiency, but then act like other people's high-level computing skills are amazing. I think it's just confusing that the computer is one of few items used by nearly everyone that can also be used at WILDLY varying depths and levels of complexity; the level lots of people use it at is not actually deep enough to justify learning much about how the computer works or how to maintain it; and so there's no general cultural rule about how much of this stuff is "normal" to know. Which is maybe bad. Most people should feel normal treating their computers about like cars, and acknowledging that specialists should be dealing with it often -- but the big difference is that everyone knows how to use a car completely (it's not like you can be a "power user" in your Camry), which is just not true with computers.

I hate the Genius Bar.

Come on nabisco, no black person in their right mind is going to invite The Wizard Squad into their home!

"You're having a problem with your wifi? Let me set up a cross in your living room and set it on fire; that will solve the part of the problem where you live in our neighborhood."

http://wizardishungry.com/blog/_/2007/05/ram.jpg

http://www.macmall.com/ vs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mall

threads like this are like rock songs that have "rock and roll" in the title - no value judgement, just sayin

i don't understand

He means that there is a parallel universe where you are billy joel, and billy joel is you

The thing about calling it "Mac Genius" or "Geek Squad" is that it is designed to make the average consumer think that they are not really smart enough to do some simple computer setup tasks when, in fact, most of the tasks they need help on are probably really simple and just take a little bit of patience to figure out. If Best Buy or Apple can convince them that it takes a "Genius" to do something really basic, they can then get away with charging unreasonable rates for their service.

In other words, I don't think it really debases these guys, quite the opposite. I think it makes them seem much more important and knowledgeable than they really are.

The average person on the street still doesn't know what ROFL means. I know! I've tried!

The stores were born fully formed and have not required any fundamental changes. The best innovation was present on Day One: the “Genius Bar,” with a staff of diagnostic wizards whose expertise is available in one-on-one consultations — free. Pure genius. More than half of the retail store’s staff is assigned to post-sales service.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/business/yourmoney/27digi.html

the "genius bar" sounds like a sarcastic nickname for a local watering hole

I'm a regular

It's really the industry's fault for taking advantage of the fact that if you make something complicated and proprietary there's a boatload of money to be made (by someone) fixing it for your customers when it inevitably breaks, two or three times a year if possible.

The whole "genius" thing is completely stupid. I work in IT and this is a trend that extends beyond tech support and into software development where I've seen people market themselves as the "genius" who is going to save your company's technology environment. For example, we had this one dude put his job title on his resume as "Master Geek." What a jackass.

However, to defend the lowly denizens of tech support (which I did for a year and subsequently feel depressed for the people who do it), most computer users are kind of idiots. No, actually, they aren't idiots, they are afraid of their computers--especially most users over 40. They are afraid that they don't know anything about this thing which is becoming more and more important in their lives and they are frustrated that they don't know how to fix it. The "genius" marketing concept assuages this fear by selling the fantasy that the "genius" is going to wave his magic wand and solve your problem. Sadly, it doesn't really work like that. If the "genius" conceit went away and computer manufacturers went out of their way to try to alleviate consumers' anxiety about their computer, everyone would be better off. For example, why does Apple not ship any computer with an extensive manual and handy troubleshooting guide? Oh wait, there's some cash made to be off of this fear...silly me.

smart bars

You people are such Negative Nellys and Cynical Cindys.

why does Apple not ship any computer with an extensive manual and handy troubleshooting guide?

Because people don't read manuals and often lack the knowledge on how to frame their problem in the language of a prewritten text?

Your whole post is full of wrong. The fundamental reason why older people have trouble is that rather than having a cognitive gestalt of how thing works, their knowledge is entirely task based (aka here is how to run word, etc).

Then why were we discussing upthread about how in the good old days you could fix your car because you knew how it worked? Or are you saying that older people are just simpletons who are only capable of figuring out that if they pull the lever they get the fish biscuit?

In some cases, they might only understand how to do things on their computer and not understand how things work, in my experience the reason they don't want to delve into why things work is that they are afraid they aren't going to get it--which is completely false.

I got a CV once where the guy referred to himself as the 'King of Development'.

why did jon send you his resume

Ha!

without getting too deep into this thread, I just want to say that most of what is wrong is with my computer I can fix myself, and the rest it I will trust to someone like Tombot, not to the zit-faced idiot at Best Buy.

And also that Miss Misery seems almost willfully clueless, and really needs to hush it.

Sam... meet Jaymc.

Thanks Kenan, love you too.

Kenan, go drown in Lake Michigan. Your campaign for biggest dick on ILx is starting to get old.

waht

RREOWW

A Day in the Life of an Apple Genius

shit still irks me

tbh this shit pisses me off mostly because people waste their money on it. like taking an interest in computers is so loathsome and degrading that you would rather send it off and pay (sometimes a lot!) of money for someone else to do it.

i design computer hardware on a pretty low level for a living and when my friends ask me (this happens often) what i do at my job i just don't know where to start.

me: i design a chip that sits inside a hard disk drive
friend: oh so is that like for a PC...or for a mac???
me: change subject

i understand computers are not everyones thing but sometimes my mind just boggles at how otherwise intelligent people have absolutely zero concept of how these machines we have all become so reliant on work other than the branding of it all.

(this is how the machines will rise and take over btw)

the PCs...or the Macs???

loll

how can i tell if i am on a pcs or a macs????

am i a genius yet????

ask everyone around you whether they think ure kewl or not

can you design me a BBQ chip????

"otherwise intelligent" people have looked down on those who are interested in the workings of machines for years, this is nothing new. doesn't make it less annoying tho huh.

sometimes my mind just boggles at how otherwise intelligent people have absolutely zero concept of how these machines we have all become so reliant on work other than the branding of it all.

Why does this boggle you? I know a little about how my computer works but nothing about how my car works, or how crops are grown, or how the financial system works, and all these things are equally foundational to my everyday life. Most people don't know most things.

eephus!, stop making sense!!!

i guess my mind boggles at the level of abstraction that most ppl deal with (or try to) daily given the complexity of what happens to your 1's and 0's inside your computer. i'm not saying that the ppl who design cars, grow crops or manage (or try to) the finanical system don't feel the same way of course.

'I know a little about how my computer works but nothing about how my car works, or how crops are grown, or how the financial system works'

--dunno about this argument. i reckon if you think about it you'll realise you know kind of a few things about how plants grow, or like basic banking/free market theory, even if you wouldn't know say how to run a farm or defraud savers in a small town in wisconsin

that's not akin to the kind of knowledge people lack with computers, though, which is more like being able to cook a meal or balance your budget

hey uh or like this:

Most people should feel normal treating their computers about like cars, and acknowledging that specialists should be dealing with it often -- but the big difference is that everyone knows how to use a car completely (it's not like you can be a "power user" in your Camry), which is just not true with computers.

even a lot of people i know who are 'good' with computers (can help other ppl with their problems etc) don't know what a binary number system is and don't see this as strange at all

i'm not saying that these ppl should know about this stuff really. i just think the level of abstraction that modern operating systems have achieved is truly amazing and makes it really hard for me to explain to ppl what i do. also it is interesting and i want ppl to be interested oh well.

there are 10 kinds of people in this world tpp

I read slashdot pretty regularly and try to maintain at least a passing interest in computers. low level hardware stuff is pretty righteous imo and you should be proud tpp that you are making today's SSDs safe for tomorrow's children

but the big difference is that everyone knows how to use a car completely (it's not like you can be a "power user" in your Camry)

This is so not true. Unless you define "using a car" as merely going from point a to point b in it. There's so many people who don't even know how to change their oil or a flat tire.

^truth, shamefully admits