I Want More Boring Genius Representation.
By: Lisa Martens
Tags: Satire, Television, Humor, Entertainment, Series

I Want More Boring Genius Representation.

Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash

Hi! “Gifted child who developed anxiety” here.

I was super good in school and I read all the time, but actually I was dissociating. Then, I spent most of my 20s figuring out what the hell I want to do with my life…because I spent my teens anxious about becoming some kind of mega-success.

Anyway! I’m well-grounded in reality now, but I have a bone to pick with genius representation — a representation that super, super freaked me out as a kid.

Can we like, get rid of the whole “smart people have a horrible, terrible price to pay” thing?

You know what I mean. There’s always this idea that the genius has serious issues because they’re a genius…like the two are always linked. But I’ve met a lot of non-geniuses who are super fucked up, too. So I’m starting to think it really has nothing to do with being a genius, and everything to do with being human.

Can we just admit some things are part of the human experience, instead of always having these tortured geniuses who must drug or drill out their intelligence like they’re some kind of sacrificial lambs before god?

Because, like, I’m not a genius, but when I was a child, and everyone was saying how smart I was, this whole trope definitely filled me with a sense of doom and dread.

I thought that if I was smart, I would eventually suffer horribly, and if I never suffered horribly, it would mean I was never really smart. I thought the validity was in the suffering, not in the accomplishments.

We all know how it goes. Smart kid becomes successful, then has a horrible fall from grace. All prodigies must die tragic deaths. Burn fast, burn out.

So I propose, for the new generation of smart kids, that they become productive smart adults instead of anxious messes, and for my inner child, that we have some boring fuckin’ geniuses.

Here are some suggestions:

A traveling nomad genius who plays online Poker for one hour a day and spends the rest of their time learning to surf and failing miserably. A supermodel genius who is Instagram famous and anonymously mails mathematical breakthroughs to famed institutions. A musical genius who writes songs for other people for large sums of money and ridiculous favors, like getting Lady Gaga to perform at their niece’s tenth birthday party and borrowing private helicopters for trips to the grocery store. A vampire genius who uses immortality to really play the long game in the stock market and real estate. And I mean the lonnnnnng game. Something happens maybe once every 50 years. A brilliant author who has successful accounts on all the major writing platforms under different names and spends their free time pet sitting for New York’s elite.

I want to see that people can be smart without being punished by society, the divine, and their own thoughts. I want geniuses who have abnormal lives but aren’t miserable in them.

I would be happy to collab on any of the above ideas. But please, for the inner children of all us anxiety-ridden messes who believed to be tortured was to be special, please make us some boring TV shows.

In short? I want geniuses who are happy.