Weighing in on the pop culture taxonifier taxonomy.

Indie pop versus power pop versus garage rock versus punk rock. Comedy versus drama versus dramedy. Versus reality tv. Reality tv versus reality. Even more relevantly: Nerd versus geek. Nerd versus geek versus dork. Nerd versus geek versus dork versus TV detective on a bicycle. Forget your old categories and and domains of the categorizable. The fact is that anyone worth her hipster salt is taxonifying these days, and taxonifying good.

If it's worth thinking about, then it's worth thinking about stuffed into little boxes and measured up against other things. Finding the edges of types. Exploring whether the taxonomy of types obviates the need for or relevance of types in the first place.

It's kind of the anti-post-modernist movement. In a way it's a return back to the old-school naturalist way of thinking about things, looking at what's observed and finding the limits of its identity. It's just that the domain of application crosses over into the completely mundane: cartoonish family-in-another-time-and-place shows (The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Little House on the Prairie, Lost) take on a significance of their own right up against species, genus, and the like. We categorize not because the items are important but because categorization itself is interesting; we categorize because we can.

On the nerd versus geek versus dork categories: I fit all three.