![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Lovely company.
Yesterday was ThinkGeek's last day as an online store. We're in a post-ThinkGeek world now. Plug in the URL and you're redirected to Game Stop where you can still buy some of the same stuff, but it's nowhere close to the same thing. What I knew for years is gone.
I'm not all that mournful to see it go. Saddened, a little bit, but not mournful. When I got into fandom, nerdity, geekery, and all the rest, it was still an underground thing. It was still the stuff you hid under your bed and at the bottom of your backpack. Maybe you could talk about it in couched terms and in understanding company - good luck finding such company, and figuring out exactly how much or how little to say was never an easy thing. These days, I look around, and it's like Ben Wyatt said. Nerd culture is mainstream now. It was a slow trickle that turned into a flood.
I was, and still am, happy to have seen that. I'm not saying we wouldn't have done well to remember certain aspects of the older forms of decorum and formality. I'm saying I'm glad I can look around and see a lot of places my interests are reflected and appreciated.
That said, what ThinkGeek's biggest selling point for me had been had, itself, long since gone. I wasn't ever really there for the collectables. I was there for the more exclusive products: the bags of holding, the USB-powered rocket launcher, the tactical aprons, the beer soap, the caffeinated brownies. Even the merch - Aperture Science shower curtains, for example, and towels with "DON'T PANIC" on them - were of a more particular vibe than one gets with brand-specific backpacks.
It's that store, which has long since gone, I miss more than what was here yesterday.
I checked. The last thing I bought from them was the Handbag of Holding in 2014. It's a nicely made, sizeable bag, with a 20-sided die as part of the zipper decoration. I still use it sometimes.
Anyone else remember their last ThinkGeek purchase?
I'm not all that mournful to see it go. Saddened, a little bit, but not mournful. When I got into fandom, nerdity, geekery, and all the rest, it was still an underground thing. It was still the stuff you hid under your bed and at the bottom of your backpack. Maybe you could talk about it in couched terms and in understanding company - good luck finding such company, and figuring out exactly how much or how little to say was never an easy thing. These days, I look around, and it's like Ben Wyatt said. Nerd culture is mainstream now. It was a slow trickle that turned into a flood.
I was, and still am, happy to have seen that. I'm not saying we wouldn't have done well to remember certain aspects of the older forms of decorum and formality. I'm saying I'm glad I can look around and see a lot of places my interests are reflected and appreciated.
That said, what ThinkGeek's biggest selling point for me had been had, itself, long since gone. I wasn't ever really there for the collectables. I was there for the more exclusive products: the bags of holding, the USB-powered rocket launcher, the tactical aprons, the beer soap, the caffeinated brownies. Even the merch - Aperture Science shower curtains, for example, and towels with "DON'T PANIC" on them - were of a more particular vibe than one gets with brand-specific backpacks.
It's that store, which has long since gone, I miss more than what was here yesterday.
I checked. The last thing I bought from them was the Handbag of Holding in 2014. It's a nicely made, sizeable bag, with a 20-sided die as part of the zipper decoration. I still use it sometimes.
Anyone else remember their last ThinkGeek purchase?
no subject
no subject
no subject
*sigh* I miss the days when it was eclectic enough for things like that too
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject