If you've ever felt like you were better than everyone else because you can recite facts on the original Star Wars trilogy by hearts or that you're a better than everyone else who watched the Batman movies because you read the comics, you might fall into the same trap that others in 'geek culture' have found themselves in.
Unfortunately, the trap is known as grandiose narcissism – otherwise known as being a prick. We have all come across someone who believes they are some special snowflake and sees everyone else as inferior and it turns out that you're more likely to know that person when you engage in 'geek culture.'
"We can say with high confidence that geek engagement is positively related to narcissism," researchers wrote in a study published by PLOS One.
A research conducted across 2,354 people attending a science fiction and fantasy convention in Georgia and an online survey has revealed that those that frequently associate themselves with Japanese animation, science fiction, and video games, have been found to be associated with elevated grandiose narcissism, extroversion, openness to experience, depression, and subjective well-being across.
The interesting thing, besides the fact that you have a higher chance of running into someone with an inflated ego at a Con, is that the association of narcissism to geek culture persisted even when the researched controlled factors like age, sex and education.
Engaging in geek culture was also found to be associated with sub-clinical depression, though it was not established if geek culture is a cause or remedy for it.
