I’ve been a geek my whole life. I just didn’t always have the word for it.
It started early. It survived a Tandy, MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, and decades of blogging across more platforms than I care to count. Eventually it even became the name of this blog.
Which made me start wondering where the word actually came from — because it clearly didn’t start as a compliment.
The Spark
Honestly, it started right there in the classroom. I’d be hunched over the keyboard, completely tuned out from everything else around me.
I couldn't tell you the exact model of that computer now, but I can still see that ghostly green text glowing against the black screen.
I remember the steady, rhythmic pulse of the blinking cursor, just waiting for me to tell it what to do. _
I was having the time of my life. Typing lines of BASIC and watching the machine respond felt like performing a magic trick for myself. It was the realization that I could build something out of nothing.
That was the moment I knew: I wanted a computer of my own.
Falling in Love
A few years later, for Christmas, it finally happened.
I got my first computer — a Tandy with 16KB of RAM and a stack of 5¼-inch floppy disks. No hard drive. I was only 14 years old.
I spent hours learning MS-DOS commands and figuring out how to make the machine tick.
But it wasn't just the tech. Having that Tandy in my room is when I realized I loved the act of writing too. For years it was just me and the machine.
It took another decade before I discovered blogging, but once I did, there was no looking back.
It started with Dean's Cyberspace, mostly focused on tech. But over time my curiosity started pulling me in other directions.
I realized I didn't just want to write about computers — I wanted to geek out about whatever sparks my curiosity.
At some point along the way the blog became Toby Geeks Out. It felt like the only name that fit.
The Original Geek
The Origins: It traces back to the early 1900s carnival circuit. A geek was the lowest-status performer in a traveling sideshow — someone hired to do something shocking enough to draw a crowd.
And yes, the most famous version involved biting the head off a live chicken.
The word itself comes from the Low German word Geck, meaning fool or simpleton. Merriam-Webster still carries the original definition: "a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake."
Originally, a geek wasn't a tech enthusiast. It was someone performing oddness for a paying audience.
Reclaiming the Label
By the 1950s and 60s, "geek" had become a schoolyard insult — usually aimed at someone socially awkward or overly obsessed with unusual interests. But then something interesting happened.
As computers, science fiction, gaming, and internet culture grew, the people once labeled geeks started reclaiming the word. Instead of rejecting it, they embraced it.
A term that once meant carnival fool slowly turned into a badge of honor for people who are deeply passionate about something.
A Word That Changed
Language does this sometimes.
Words that once mocked people slowly become labels people choose for themselves.
Funny how that works. A word that started in a carnival sideshow spent decades as a schoolyard insult before an entire culture decided to just... own it.
I've been calling myself a geek for years. Knowing the word started as an insult — and got reclaimed anyway — honestly makes me like it more. That's exactly the kind of word I want attached to my name.