Calling all geeks who remember the 2000s.

November 27, 2024 1:52 AM

I need your help figuring out what the hell my (female, Desi, LA native) geek's apartment looks like.

So I'm writing a story where the protagonist is an astrophysics/math genius and college professor in Los Angeles. She's also a gamer, playing a version of WoW, and has since she was in college. She's 33, it's 2008, what does her apartment look like? I was alive at the time, but only just out of my teens and also not conversant with anything geeky outside of HP and LotR, and I want more options for her than that.

Constraints/considerations:
- Budget: generous; she makes good money consulting for the government.
- Apartment itself: 450 sq ft studio, she's got plenty of shelving and a gaming desk.
- Personality: Liberal, geeky as mentioned, very grounded, interested in the real-world implications of things.
- Interests: Math, astrophysics, fashion, SFF and fantasy by women.
- She went to Berkeley and worked in Silicon Valley for a few years before coming back to LA for grad school.
- Level of Desiness: reasonably connected to her heritage, culturally Hindu but not very religious. Speaks but does not read Tamil, did Bharatnatyam as a child. Visits her home country every couple of years as an adult; went regularly as a child.

Google is not super helpful; all I'm getting are hits for products/media that didn't exist in 2008. So. Help, please!

posted by Tamanna to Home & Garden (27 answers total)

Whedon hadn't milkshake ducked himself yet, and was probably in their peak in terms of popularity. I could see a Dr. Horrible poster or something being on the wall -- though not a DVD or BluRay because this was one of the earliest examples of an internet-first release, due to the writers strike (Which she'd probably have opinions on, but that's getting way off topic I guess.) The physical media releases wouldn't be common until at least 2009, as they came after. But also other Whedonverse stuff of course, Buffy/Angel merch perhaps.
posted by Rhomboid at 2:28 AM on November 27 [4 favorites]

Probably some Battlestar Galactica reboot stuff in there. Multiple screens was still a bit of a flex in your setup then. Jolt.Cola and Club Mate probably weren't ousted by basic ass Monster and stuff yet.
posted by Iteki at 2:40 AM on November 27 [2 favorites]

Does she have interest in Bollywood? Are there posters or a wall of DVD's?

What's her experience of life post-9/11 been? At work (say, more lie-detector tests than randomness should permit, or more weird loyalty-checking from associates) and at home? Are there headscarves for meeting family members or friends?

How many cousins does she have, and how involved are family? Would they visit, are there food containers of leftovers to take back to a family meal?

Are there Bangla beats on her iPod?
posted by k3ninho at 3:33 AM on November 27 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: k3ninho, thank you for making me realize I was missing important information.

MC is second-generation Indian-American, specifically Tamil Brahmin, from an upper-middle-class family with parents who both have white collar jobs. She herself is at a very liberal world-class university. I was using Desi to mean from the subcontinent, I should have clarified.

She is distant from her parents, but has family in San Franciso she drives up to visit regularly, including her paternal grandmother. She gets sent back with a cooler of food every time, lol. I think cousins visit occasionally but none of them are in the same city. No siblings, and I don't believe she's very involved in the local Indian community.

She does not watch Bollywood movies or listen to Hindi music (she doesn't speak it being Tamilian), but she will occasionally watch Tamil movies/TV with her grandmother.
posted by Tamanna at 3:42 AM on November 27

I was 31 in 2008, a geeky female software engineer with lots of fantasy and science fiction novels. British, but there would have been plenty of overlap.

Harry Potter hit too late to catch my interest - I was already at university by the time the first one came out, and although I did read the books, they didn't grab me the way they might have done if I'd been ten. But I did have plenty of SF and fantasy by women. Focusing on American authors: Patricia Briggs, Lois McMaster Bujold, Barbara Hambly, Robin Hobb / Megan Lindholm, Rosemary Kirstein, Nancy Kress, Mercedes Lackey, Robin McKinley, Elizabeth Moon, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Sheri S. Tepper, Patricia McKillip, Martha Wells (admittedly not as well known pre-Murderbot, but I've been reading everything she writes since about 2002), Connie Willis, Patricia C. Wrede, Janny Wurts. I never got into Anne McCaffrey, but lots of my peers did.

I had a few graphic novels (Sandman, Girl Genius, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), but they were expensive, so I had a lot more manga. Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hunter x Hunter, Inuyasha, Monster, YuYu Hakusho.

Media-wise, I had DVD box sets of Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Lost; I had a lot of Studio Ghibli DVDs; I had X-Files, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings merchandise. No posters, though, because I'd moved on to actual framed pictures by then. Mugs, a cuddly Tribble, some mini starships.

I had a cuddly Cthulhu on my desk. At home, I had a plasma globe, one of those optical fibre lamps, a lava lamp and a Galileo thermometer... which probably weren't cool any more, but I liked them. I had a lot of juggling balls, and some juggling-adjacent things - devil sticks, a diabolo, a yo-yo.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 3:52 AM on November 27 [12 favorites]

An X Files poster? I know this is a bit retro but how about the collected volumes of Elfquest?

I agree on the Firefly, Lost paraphernalia and she may well use Whedonisms in her dialogue and written comms. When I was at uni, a bit before this, everyone had the same LOTR poster on their wall including me, of Gandalf.

Has she ever been to India and might she have some souvenirs from there or gifts from family (grandmother) in a sentimental place in her apartment?

Love this, by the way, we need more stories about brown female nerds.
posted by unicorn chaser at 4:39 AM on November 27 [2 favorites]

Nerdy 2000/2010s is incomplete without something Homestar Runner. The earlier internet memes were also a thing, I Can Has Cheezburger, Leeeeroy Jenkins, etc.
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:12 AM on November 27 [3 favorites]

33 in 2008 - Born 1975, gamer.

A couple options for retro posters(?) for (similar mmorpg) games before WOW may include; Everquest, Everquest2, Dark Age of Camelot
Or adventure game like, (the original) Bard's Tale, Planescape: Torment, Diablo.

In addition to ManyLeggedCreature's excellent list -
May have been a Marion Zimmer Bradley fan (The Mists of Avalon, Lady of Avalon, the world of Darkover), before the terrible crimes of Bradley were discovered.
CJ Cherryh - prolific and excellent sci-fi writer, including a SF series about Space Lions (with the females in charge) - The Chanur series. As well as the Alliance-Union universe.

Shows/Video, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog for sure, Buffy, Serenity, X-files, as mentioned
Maybe Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek Deep Space 9, Star Trek Voyager (with Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine)
Aeon Flux and Liquid Television
Fave movies might include: Tank Girl, Alien and Aliens, Underworld, Resident Evil, eXistenZ
posted by Glinn at 6:59 AM on November 27 [2 favorites]

I was actually working in interior decor at that exact time, in Los Angeles. Mid-Century Modern! (!!). At least something. A chair, a mondrian-looking shelf unit, wallpaper, something. Antique Wallpaper had a big, big revival then...mostly used as a 'feature wall' with a co-ordinating color on the other walls...a color pulled from/matched to the wallpaper. (Instead of wallpaper on all the walls.) Like, literally everyone in L.A. was typing 'mid-century modern' into craigslist, regularly, in that decade...it goes with all the craftsman/sears houses in the area. And I would say 'nay' on buffy in 2008...dvd collection on the shelf, absolutely...poster on the wall, not so much...if there's a poster on the wall it's going to be from some band like le tigre that's 'cooler than you', and the poster itself is going to be like some kind of 'art print' silkscreen from WACKO/Soap Plant. (Definitely go to that store and look around...your character definitely definitely definitely went shopping there at some point (like, absolutely)...geeky nerdy bookstore, novelty home decor stuff, collectibles, and underground art gallery, etc.)
posted by sexyrobot at 7:18 AM on November 27 [6 favorites]

I'm not sure how the gaming might be worked in and how detailed, but if she was playing a WoW-like game (an MMO, presumably), then she'd likely have a headset for chatting, and would talk with folks she was playing with over a chat server. Ventrilo, or Vent was the big player in MMO chat servers circa 2008 (way before the age of Discord). If she has cash to toss around, then probably a pretty decent gaming PC! No laptops here, a chonky desktop PC with a GeForce 900-series video card and a generous 8GB of RAM :) She almost certainly built it herself.
posted by rachaelfaith at 7:28 AM on November 27 [1 favorite]

Seconding the manga—I feel like someone like this might have several shelves of manga volumes, DVD box sets, and graphic novels. If she's making that good money, she'd probably be buying graphic novels. This is before a lot of people were canceled, so probably Sandman as mentioned, and maybe also some cyberpunk like Transmetropolitan. Also William Gibson novels, DMZ, Watchmen, maybe Lucifer... Maybe the Bone omnibus edition? I bet she's read Pattern Recognition and is familiar with Cayce Pollard. Seconding CJ Cherryh books, and she's likely also conversant with the works of Orson Scott Card, at least the Ender's series. I bet she has Veronica Mars and Firefly DVDs.

And yeah, definitely a modicum of geeky plush toys. I have a beloved plush talking shark from just before that era that started my plush sea creature collection. I'm not sure when plush Portal companion cubes first came out, but seems like possibly that era? Also possibly webcomic merch or collections... Ctrl+Alt+Delete also hadn't been canceled yet. Mac Hall was a gamer webcomic that I bought as a collected volume around that time. Ahhh, also maybe a few tasteful obscure anime- and video game–related figurines?

Also, basic knowledge of anime would fall in this realm. So it's possible she has fan art from Etsy of Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki movies (it was hard to find official stuff in the U.S., though in L.A. she had a better chance at finding good imports). Possibly one tasteful wall scroll from anime or a video game? Iron Man came out in 2008, and everyone geeky saw it, so if there was any merch from an early showing, she might have it.

Also, from what I recall, cosplay wasn't quite as huge and not as mainstream as it is now, but this is the kind of Gen X geek who would have the money and dedication to at least put together a kickass geeky Halloween costume. So maybe a papier-mâché mask of some sort that she meticulously made? Or remnants from another arts-and-crafts project, because this is probably someone with wide-ranging interests and maybe some undiagnosed ADHD-based half-abandoned hobbies. As mentioned above, she probably also has some real art, likely gifts from or purchased from friends, possibly music-related. She might like CSS or Tegan and Sara. Underground art and obscure comics might be the vibe for sure.

Oh, also, I bet she has a Nintendo Wii but already doesn't play it as much as she thought she might. She might have extra controllers for friends to play as a group, but none of them do that as much anymore. Also she might still have her GameCube from before that, and other older game systems on the shelf or in the closet. It's also likely she still has a small CD collection and a small shelf stereo as well.

Did she build her own gaming rig? Yeah, possibly. There's definitely some things in her space with a blue or green LED that might be a little too bright at night.

Also, she's a professor, so in addition to a bit of art, and some midcentury modern decor (black leather couch? a cool lamp?), she might also have a plant or two on the windowsill. And at least a couple good Riedel wine glasses, and maybe some Crate & Barrel plates. Also maybe at least a few geeky mugs—that's where your Star Trek stuff might be.
posted by limeonaire at 7:30 AM on November 27 [1 favorite]

I am pretty close to the same age as your protagonist and also a woman who read (some) fantasy by women. She maybe read Mists of Avalon when she was younger and it maybe had a big influence on her. She’s too old to have read HP in a way that influenced her, or gotten caught up in it. Maybe she encountered it through a younger cousin but you can also ignore it mostly for sure because she would have thought of it as kids’ books.

She would have been reading Ursula Le Guin and for sure Octavia Butler.
posted by bluedaisy at 7:32 AM on November 27 [1 favorite]

Oh also, she's a consultant, so probably at least a little bit of tech conference swag? Like a stress ball with a logo on it, or a branded Rubik's Cube keychain. Oh, also I bet she's on Twitter, but just a little bit, to reserve her username as much as anything, and see occasional actual updates from friends.
posted by limeonaire at 7:35 AM on November 27

Also, colorful letterpress prints were having a big moment at that time as well, and she might have at least one art glass fruit bowl. (Might have collected other stuff in it, though.)
posted by limeonaire at 7:50 AM on November 27 [1 favorite]

Oh, and it was too early for the nice gaming chairs, but she might have had an office-surplus Herman Miller Aeron or Embody or similar.
posted by limeonaire at 7:56 AM on November 27 [2 favorites]

Also, colorful letterpress prints were having a big moment at that time as well

These very specific neighborhood posters were huge in 2008, and many people had one of a city that was important to them but that they didn't live in.
posted by dizziest at 8:03 AM on November 27 [3 favorites]

If you decide to bring in some midcentury modern, Shag (the artist) was really big both in LA, and for his frequent collabs with Disney which brings me to...

...there's a non-zero chance that as an LA Native, she's a Disneyland girl. That would be ears, maybe some shelf decoration, a throw, mugs.
posted by ApathyGirl at 9:32 AM on November 27 [2 favorites]

Definitely on the self-built gaming PC. My freshly built PC in 2008 had an Intel Core 2 Duo, a 500gb SATA hard drive and an absurd heat sink called the Tuniq Tower. The entire thing was in a huge sleek black case that had a door to hide the drives, etc. LEDs all over the motherboard but other than that just a blue glow visible from the outside (the ostentatious LEDs were the previous generation of cases, though still very popular then). I had two LCD monitors, one 24in Dell and an older 17in. If I'd had money, it would have been two 24in Dells. I could recite the specs of my setup and would do on various forums.

I had an enormous L-shaped desk with a hutch above it. It had actual drawers for files and shelves for books. The PC was mounted next to the desk for airflow. Monitor arms were atrociously expensive, so I had my monitors on a metal stand from Staples. I had a fancy gaming mouse with many, many buttons. I had a Logitech 5.1 set of speakers. I would also use a very wired headset for gaming. If she has money, she maybe had Das Keyboard.

I'm younger than your MC but I had already grown out of posters on the wall. Agree with tons of boxsets of DVDs etc. I also had some replica jewelry from Lord of the Rings from The Noble Collection. This was also prime Thinkgeek era. There'd always be a catalog from them around. I cannot really remember what I bought from them other than some t-shirts (I believe I had a "Self-rescuing princess" t-shirt), and also buckyballs. Buckyballs were spherical magnet toys that have since been recalled/banned in the US for dangers of ingestion. Oh, I also had a petri dish filled with ferrofluid (a fluid that reacts to magnets).

Definitely the Wii, probably a PS3. The living area would have all the instruments for Rock Band and maybe also stuff for Guitar Hero. Probably significant area devoted to bookshelves. Both fiction and non-fiction but also at least a shelf of textbooks leftover from college.
posted by miscbuff at 11:01 AM on November 27 [2 favorites]

Apartment Therapy was doing photo tours of folks' homes by 2008. It will take some creative searching to find them - the current site isn't set up to easily filter by date - but they exist. "Fall Cure" photo albums might also be available on other platforms.
posted by VelveteenBabbitt at 11:25 AM on November 27 [1 favorite]

If she has a poster it's framed, this isn't a college student. I would be surprised if a 33-year-old in 2008 would still be into anime, although she might have some DVDs leftover from younger years. Agreed on Wii and PS3, with stuff for that, and DVDs, books, and CDs (although the CDs might just be in an old binder under the bed by this point). The books should include old college textbooks, perhaps the Springer undergraduate texts in mathematics, much more advanced texts given that she's a professor, and cookbooks even if she doesn't cook because people will have given her some (perhaps some from her parents for cooking Indian cuisine).

With good money, she'd have nice-ish midcentury modern type furniture because that's what everyone had (and mostly still does), but maybe some accent pillows, nice throw blankets. She would probably have keepsakes on some of the shelves, things from trips to India (I have like, a cute statue of an elephant from a trip, but I wouldn't presume to speak to what a Desi woman might actually want to pick up for herself), a framed photo or two at least, some sort of college/grad school labeled memorabilia somewhere. Probably a large variety of coffee mugs, as everyone somehow manages to collect at least in the US. If she's put-together she has a vase that sometimes has flowers in it; if she's a slob there's papers all over the pace.
posted by ch1x0r at 11:51 AM on November 27 [2 favorites]

Oh, and one of my favorite TV shows from this time period had a brilliant female Indian scientist and was set in LA, Num3rs, so perhaps watching a few episodes of that (it's streamable somewhere) will give you a much clearer picture of what at least TV said LA living spaces looked like back then.
posted by ch1x0r at 11:54 AM on November 27 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Not thread-sitting, mods, but I just had to respond, ch1x0r, because the story is Numb3rs fic featuring an actually culturally accurate version of Amita. (Love her, but JFC did they not do their research.)
posted by Tamanna at 12:02 PM on November 27 [5 favorites]

A geek in 2008 would, no doubt, have been a Mefite and à trawl back through posts from that year could thus be an inspiration. Something I remember from here, at that time, were quite a lot of well informed posts and questions about the financial crisis which was predicted to unfold and then did.
posted by rongorongo at 3:24 PM on November 27 [1 favorite]

the show by Ze Frank, though about a year before you time frame, was one of the early vlog projects that had a significant although not mainstream following. Web comics were a thing in the years before your setting, your character might've been into some combination of xkcd, Questionable Content, Penny Arcade, A Softer World, Hark, a Vagrant, etc.
posted by axiom at 5:21 PM on November 27 [1 favorite]

I was also 33 in 2008! I did some digging and here are some things you might have found in my southern CA 1-bedroom apartment:

Books: Neal Stephenson, Mary Roach, Murakami, Phryne Fisher mysteries

Magazines: Bust, Bitch, Wired, Entertainment Weekly, Cooks Illustrated

Media: Heroes, True Blood, Project Runway, many red Netflix envelopes, lots of burned cds, often mp3 mixes with like 100 songs (I had an iPod but had to use cds in the car or to share music with friends)

Decor: vintage movie posters (including Gilda of course, see my username), coffee mug or magnet with geeky take on “keep calm and carry on”, Twin Peaks pie plate, Shepherd Fairey prints, Obama HOPE and “no on Prop 8” stickers, art prints from 20x200, t-shirts from Threadless, one of those cube-shaped microwaves that looked like an iMac :-)

Also there was a fair amount of intersection between geek and hipster culture, so the letterpress/diy/mason jar aesthetic was also a thing.

What a time it was!
posted by exceptinsects at 11:18 PM on November 27 [3 favorites]

(And wow, you’d think someone who’s 33 would be a boring adult but I go back and read my emails and posts from that time and it feels like some clueless teenager wrote them)
posted by exceptinsects at 11:23 PM on November 27 [1 favorite]

If she's a 33 year old professor at a world-class university who also does consulting work and we're aiming to be realistic, I think she would typically be pretty work-obsessed and definitely time-poor, even if she's a genius and it's 2008. How that might affect her living space would depend how organised and together she is. In my experience the geek culture / academic geek crossover is much less of a thing than is commonly depicted, though maybe this character just happens to be both. In any case with the physics background there is a high chance she's at least into science fiction to some degree. It's unlikely she'd have much time to actually game these days although she might have bought the setup and misses having time to use it.

Definitely a lot of obscure reference books, e.g. tables of integrals, her thesis
Biography of Ramanujan
Stacks of paper with unfinished work that the cleaner is not allowed to touch
Paraphernalia relating to conference travel and bookings
Depending on the university perhaps some kind of academic dress required for official occasions
posted by d11 at 1:33 AM on November 28 [2 favorites]