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Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir
Celebrated actor, personality, and all-around nerd, Wil Wheaton updates his memoir of collected blog posts with all new material and annotations as he reexamines one of the most interesting lives in Hollywood and fandom.
From starring in Stand by Me to playing Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation to playing himself, in his second (third?) iconic role of Evil Wil Wheaton in The Big Bang Theory, to becoming a social media supernova, Wil Wheaton has charted a career course unlike anyone else, and has emerged as one of the most popular and well respected names in science fiction, fantasy and pop culture.
Back in 2001, Wil began blogging on wilwheaton dot net. Believing himself to have fallen victim to the curse of the child actor, Wil felt relegated to the convention circuit, and didn't expect many would want to read about his random experiences and personal philosophies.
Yet, much to his surprise, people were reading. He still blogs, and now has an enormous following on social media with well over 3 million followers.
In Still Just a Geek, Wil revisits his 2004 collection of blog posts, Just a Geek, filled with insightful and often laugh-out-loud annotated comments, additional later writings, and all new material written for this publication. The result is an incredibly raw and honest memoir, in which Wil opens up about his life, about falling in love, about coming to grips with his past work, choices, and family, and finding fulfillment in the new phases of his career. From his times on the Enterprise to his struggles with depression to his starting a family and finding his passion--writing--Wil Wheaton is someone whose life is both a cautionary tale and a story of finding one's true purpose that should resonate with fans and aspiring artists alike.
From starring in Stand by Me to playing Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation to playing himself, in his second (third?) iconic role of Evil Wil Wheaton in The Big Bang Theory, to becoming a social media supernova, Wil Wheaton has charted a career course unlike anyone else, and has emerged as one of the most popular and well respected names in science fiction, fantasy and pop culture.
Back in 2001, Wil began blogging on wilwheaton dot net. Believing himself to have fallen victim to the curse of the child actor, Wil felt relegated to the convention circuit, and didn't expect many would want to read about his random experiences and personal philosophies.
Yet, much to his surprise, people were reading. He still blogs, and now has an enormous following on social media with well over 3 million followers.
In Still Just a Geek, Wil revisits his 2004 collection of blog posts, Just a Geek, filled with insightful and often laugh-out-loud annotated comments, additional later writings, and all new material written for this publication. The result is an incredibly raw and honest memoir, in which Wil opens up about his life, about falling in love, about coming to grips with his past work, choices, and family, and finding fulfillment in the new phases of his career. From his times on the Enterprise to his struggles with depression to his starting a family and finding his passion--writing--Wil Wheaton is someone whose life is both a cautionary tale and a story of finding one's true purpose that should resonate with fans and aspiring artists alike.
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First published April 12, 2022
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About the author
Wil Wheaton
97Ìýbooks225kÌýfollowersWil Wheaton loves to tell stories. He’s been doing it his whole life.
By age ten, he had already been acting for three years. In 1986, at age 12, he earned critical acclaim as Gordie Lachance in Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me; at 14, he began his four-year turn as Wesley Crusher on the hit TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Since then, Wil has appeared in dozens of films and TV series, with recurring roles on TNT’s Leverage, SyFy’s Eureka, and the hit webseries The Guild. He is the creator, producer, and host of the wildly successful webseries Tabletop, credited with reigniting national interest in tabletop gaming. Most recently, he played a fictionalized version of himself on CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, one of the most highly rated and watched sitcoms of the last decade.
An accomplished voice actor, Wil has lent his talents to animated series including Family Guy, Teen Titans, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Batman: The Brave and the Bold. His video game credits include four installments each of the Grand Theft Auto and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon series, as well as Fallout: New Vegas, DC Universe Online, and Broken Age.
His audiobook narration of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and was one of Å·±¦ÓéÀÖâ€� 10 Best Narrator and Audiobook Pairings of All Time. He has also lent his voice to titles by John Scalzi, Randall Monroe, and Joe Hill.
When he isn’t acting, narrating, or podcasting, Wil Wheaton is writing.
A lot.
He is the author of Just A Geek, Dancing Barefoot, The Happiest Days of Our Lives, Hunter, and Dead Trees Give No Shelter, plus a forthcoming novel, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything. He has contributed columns to Salon.com, The A.V. Club, LA Weekly, Playboy, The Washington Post, and the Suicide Girls Newswire.
In recent years, Wil has earned recognition as an outspoken mental health advocate, chronicling his own journey in his blog and as a public speaker for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. His powerful, candid essay about his struggle with chronic depression and anxiety garnered national attention.
Wil lives in Los Angeles with his badass, irrepressible wife Anne, two rescued dogs, one cat, and two vintage arcade cabinets. If you’re not a robot, you can reach him at: wil at wilwheaton dot net.
By age ten, he had already been acting for three years. In 1986, at age 12, he earned critical acclaim as Gordie Lachance in Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me; at 14, he began his four-year turn as Wesley Crusher on the hit TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Since then, Wil has appeared in dozens of films and TV series, with recurring roles on TNT’s Leverage, SyFy’s Eureka, and the hit webseries The Guild. He is the creator, producer, and host of the wildly successful webseries Tabletop, credited with reigniting national interest in tabletop gaming. Most recently, he played a fictionalized version of himself on CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, one of the most highly rated and watched sitcoms of the last decade.
An accomplished voice actor, Wil has lent his talents to animated series including Family Guy, Teen Titans, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Batman: The Brave and the Bold. His video game credits include four installments each of the Grand Theft Auto and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon series, as well as Fallout: New Vegas, DC Universe Online, and Broken Age.
His audiobook narration of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and was one of Å·±¦ÓéÀÖâ€� 10 Best Narrator and Audiobook Pairings of All Time. He has also lent his voice to titles by John Scalzi, Randall Monroe, and Joe Hill.
When he isn’t acting, narrating, or podcasting, Wil Wheaton is writing.
A lot.
He is the author of Just A Geek, Dancing Barefoot, The Happiest Days of Our Lives, Hunter, and Dead Trees Give No Shelter, plus a forthcoming novel, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything. He has contributed columns to Salon.com, The A.V. Club, LA Weekly, Playboy, The Washington Post, and the Suicide Girls Newswire.
In recent years, Wil has earned recognition as an outspoken mental health advocate, chronicling his own journey in his blog and as a public speaker for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. His powerful, candid essay about his struggle with chronic depression and anxiety garnered national attention.
Wil lives in Los Angeles with his badass, irrepressible wife Anne, two rescued dogs, one cat, and two vintage arcade cabinets. If you’re not a robot, you can reach him at: wil at wilwheaton dot net.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 598 reviews
April 1, 2022
Wil Wheaton is a national treasure. Not just for being in one of the most popular science-fiction shows of all time. Not just for being in Stand by Me. Or Big Bang Theory. Or The Guild. Wil Wheaton is a national treasure because he has spoken openly and fearlessly about his experiences of child abuse, depression, and anxiety. He has made countless survivors, including myself, feel less alone, less afraid, and more hopeful. And I will always grateful for that. Thank you, Wil.
This book has a fascinating structure. Essentially, it is a reprint of his 2004 memoir, JUST A GEEK, which he has annotated in order to reflect upon his experiences with more distance, to demonstrate his growth and changes in perspective, and yes, to tell silly jokes. Though I am in the library world now I am an academic at heart, and I love a good footnote apparatus. It's really fun to flip back and forth between the TNG days, the early aughts, and the present. Wil is an entertaining, thoughtful, and insightful narrator of his own experience, and it is a whole lot of fun to watch him interact with his past selves.
This book has a fascinating structure. Essentially, it is a reprint of his 2004 memoir, JUST A GEEK, which he has annotated in order to reflect upon his experiences with more distance, to demonstrate his growth and changes in perspective, and yes, to tell silly jokes. Though I am in the library world now I am an academic at heart, and I love a good footnote apparatus. It's really fun to flip back and forth between the TNG days, the early aughts, and the present. Wil is an entertaining, thoughtful, and insightful narrator of his own experience, and it is a whole lot of fun to watch him interact with his past selves.
Read
January 15, 2022DNF...but please don't take that as a condemnation of the book, as a whole. Read on, if you're interested.
I still have Just A Geek on my bookshelves, though I haven't read it in ages. And while I read a ton, I don't actually keep a lot of books. So I was excited when I got the ARC for this from Edelweiss. But it is just not fun to read digitally. I read relatively quickly, and it took me over an hour to get through the first chapter. At the end of that, my Kindle tells me it will be 17 more hours to finish this book. The original is not a long book! I've not read a book where the footnotes at clickable and it opens a small window, which you read, then close before. Turns out, that severely increases the amount of time it takes to read this book and it's trying my patience.
For the actual content, I'm enjoying it. It's a bit repetitive, but I do appreciate the introspection and the humor.
So, do what I'm going to do: wait until this actually comes out and buy a real, dead tree copy and enjoy. And buy it from an indie book store, damnit!
I still have Just A Geek on my bookshelves, though I haven't read it in ages. And while I read a ton, I don't actually keep a lot of books. So I was excited when I got the ARC for this from Edelweiss. But it is just not fun to read digitally. I read relatively quickly, and it took me over an hour to get through the first chapter. At the end of that, my Kindle tells me it will be 17 more hours to finish this book. The original is not a long book! I've not read a book where the footnotes at clickable and it opens a small window, which you read, then close before. Turns out, that severely increases the amount of time it takes to read this book and it's trying my patience.
For the actual content, I'm enjoying it. It's a bit repetitive, but I do appreciate the introspection and the humor.
So, do what I'm going to do: wait until this actually comes out and buy a real, dead tree copy and enjoy. And buy it from an indie book store, damnit!
January 9, 2022
I never read Just a Geek and I never watched Star Trek, but I became familiar with Wheaton through Big Bang Theory and other geeky endeavors. I found his original writing touching, funny, and bittersweet, and his annotations made it that much better. He calls himself out for problematic language and jokes, he explains things in greater detail, he gives insight into who he was and what he was thinking at the time. I'm oddly proud of him??
September 13, 2022
I should've loved this book, or at least liked it, but I didn't. At all. In fact, I hated it. All of it.
Here is why:
THE BOOK
This isn't a new book. This is a previously written book published in 2004, based on blog posts started in 2001, and now said 2004 book was re-published in 2022 with annotations (more on those later). So basically there are 3 timelines here: 2001 Wil Wheaton, 2004 Wil Wheaton, and 2022 Wil Wheaton. And if you think it was always easy to differentiate between the three Wils, it wasn't. I had to pause frequently to think, 'oh is this new text? Or was this from the first book? Which Wil is saying this: 2004 or 2022?' It's like the first season of Westworld with the overlapping timelines and no one has any idea what the f. is going on.
The aforementioned annotations added very little, if anything, to the original story, or the new story, or any story. Most of them were (a) endless, needless apologizing (more on that later) by Wil on behalf of his younger self; (b) overused cultural references (Clerks, The Simpsons, The Big Lebowski); (c) a lot of back and forth with his editor over the word 'cool' (literally, no one cares); and (d) explanations of things that needed no explanations (who does Wil imagine his target audience to be that they don't know what a record or a palm pilot were, or who Beavis and Butt-Head and Carson Daly were??).
Also, the annotation symbols were small and easy to miss. This made for such clunky, uneven reading. I had to go back and reread so many freaking times because my brain won't let me skip even just one.
And how bloated was this book? We had 3 introductions, a note to reader, an author's note, a long-ass epilogue, 2 appendixes, 2 acknowledgements, a further reading, an afterword, and an about the author page. In between all that business was a ho-hum story about how Wil's family wronged him, how he hates acting, no he loves acting, how he hates Star Trek, no he loves Star Trek.
There wasn't a lot of storytelling here for someone who supposedly loves writing and storytelling. There was a lot of telling and not showing, though. A lot of jokes that fell flat. A lot of filler (that speech to Mensa, Wil? Chef's kiss on the self-congratulatory, pompous cringe. So happy you included that for us little people).
THE MAN
This next part won't be fair.
Do I have to like a celebrity to enjoy their memoir? Well, no. But it helps. I had lukewarm feelings on Wheaton before I read this. He existed, but did I care? No. But I loved, loved Wesley Crusher when I was nine-years-old. My parents watched TNG when it first aired, and--as we had one television in the house--it was either watch Star Trek or watch nothing. I liked Wesley because he was a kid like me. And he was cute. Now as an adult, I tend to skip the Wesley-centered episodes, but that's not Wil Wheaton's fault. As he points out many, many times: he was just an actor reading words off a script.
But god damn, after reading this book, I don't really care for Wil Wheaton. Some of that may not be his fault; he is who he is, you know.
In one of the many prologues, Wil prepares us in his most serious adult tone that what we are about to read next will shock and offend us. That he was a casual bigot, that he was hateful. And I'm clutching my pearls, thinking 'dude, were you a skinhead or something?' Atlas, no. Not even close. Not even laughably close. All that apologizing, all that bending-of-the-knee to the gods of political correctness, and for what? For using the word 'lame'? For being a little bit weirded out by homosexuality? Jesus Christ.
But fear not! Wil knows now the correct language to use and the right words to regurgitate to keep his career afloat: something something white privilege; something something cis gender; something something the patriarchy.
Here's where it gets personal (for me). After spending several paragraphs on why he likes space and space travel, Wil later on refers to Elon Musk as "garbage", and I lost it and also any respect for him. Dude, it's one thing to dislike someone as a person for whatever brash personality quirks they may have but to dismiss someone entirely who has done more to ignite interest in space and space travel and engineering than anyone else in recent decades is so short-sighted and willfully ignorant and incredibly rude. You're garbage, Wil Wheaton. You're a freaking actor.
And one last thing, The Big Bang Theory sucks. I've never met a nerd who likes that show. It's nerd cosplay. The producers or writers or whoever were like, "how can we make a show about nerds? Oh, I know, we'll just shoehorn in some Luke Skywalker references ('cause nerds like that shit, right?) around some unfunny jokes and throw a laugh track over it." Watch Silicon Valley, instead.
Here is why:
THE BOOK
This isn't a new book. This is a previously written book published in 2004, based on blog posts started in 2001, and now said 2004 book was re-published in 2022 with annotations (more on those later). So basically there are 3 timelines here: 2001 Wil Wheaton, 2004 Wil Wheaton, and 2022 Wil Wheaton. And if you think it was always easy to differentiate between the three Wils, it wasn't. I had to pause frequently to think, 'oh is this new text? Or was this from the first book? Which Wil is saying this: 2004 or 2022?' It's like the first season of Westworld with the overlapping timelines and no one has any idea what the f. is going on.
The aforementioned annotations added very little, if anything, to the original story, or the new story, or any story. Most of them were (a) endless, needless apologizing (more on that later) by Wil on behalf of his younger self; (b) overused cultural references (Clerks, The Simpsons, The Big Lebowski); (c) a lot of back and forth with his editor over the word 'cool' (literally, no one cares); and (d) explanations of things that needed no explanations (who does Wil imagine his target audience to be that they don't know what a record or a palm pilot were, or who Beavis and Butt-Head and Carson Daly were??).
Also, the annotation symbols were small and easy to miss. This made for such clunky, uneven reading. I had to go back and reread so many freaking times because my brain won't let me skip even just one.
And how bloated was this book? We had 3 introductions, a note to reader, an author's note, a long-ass epilogue, 2 appendixes, 2 acknowledgements, a further reading, an afterword, and an about the author page. In between all that business was a ho-hum story about how Wil's family wronged him, how he hates acting, no he loves acting, how he hates Star Trek, no he loves Star Trek.
There wasn't a lot of storytelling here for someone who supposedly loves writing and storytelling. There was a lot of telling and not showing, though. A lot of jokes that fell flat. A lot of filler (that speech to Mensa, Wil? Chef's kiss on the self-congratulatory, pompous cringe. So happy you included that for us little people).
THE MAN
This next part won't be fair.
Do I have to like a celebrity to enjoy their memoir? Well, no. But it helps. I had lukewarm feelings on Wheaton before I read this. He existed, but did I care? No. But I loved, loved Wesley Crusher when I was nine-years-old. My parents watched TNG when it first aired, and--as we had one television in the house--it was either watch Star Trek or watch nothing. I liked Wesley because he was a kid like me. And he was cute. Now as an adult, I tend to skip the Wesley-centered episodes, but that's not Wil Wheaton's fault. As he points out many, many times: he was just an actor reading words off a script.
But god damn, after reading this book, I don't really care for Wil Wheaton. Some of that may not be his fault; he is who he is, you know.
In one of the many prologues, Wil prepares us in his most serious adult tone that what we are about to read next will shock and offend us. That he was a casual bigot, that he was hateful. And I'm clutching my pearls, thinking 'dude, were you a skinhead or something?' Atlas, no. Not even close. Not even laughably close. All that apologizing, all that bending-of-the-knee to the gods of political correctness, and for what? For using the word 'lame'? For being a little bit weirded out by homosexuality? Jesus Christ.
But fear not! Wil knows now the correct language to use and the right words to regurgitate to keep his career afloat: something something white privilege; something something cis gender; something something the patriarchy.
Here's where it gets personal (for me). After spending several paragraphs on why he likes space and space travel, Wil later on refers to Elon Musk as "garbage", and I lost it and also any respect for him. Dude, it's one thing to dislike someone as a person for whatever brash personality quirks they may have but to dismiss someone entirely who has done more to ignite interest in space and space travel and engineering than anyone else in recent decades is so short-sighted and willfully ignorant and incredibly rude. You're garbage, Wil Wheaton. You're a freaking actor.
And one last thing, The Big Bang Theory sucks. I've never met a nerd who likes that show. It's nerd cosplay. The producers or writers or whoever were like, "how can we make a show about nerds? Oh, I know, we'll just shoehorn in some Luke Skywalker references ('cause nerds like that shit, right?) around some unfunny jokes and throw a laugh track over it." Watch Silicon Valley, instead.
March 12, 2023
‘Still Just a Geek� by Wil Wheaton is an episodic memoir by an adult who was a child star. It’s choppy because the first part is reprinted blog posts. The second half consists of reprinted and new short writings - stories, essays and interviews. Mr. Wheaton, you definitely are a writer!
I became interested in reading Wheaton’s book because I am an audible.com member and he narrated a book I was interested in. I was like, wait, that name sounds familiar? He was a child actor, acting since the age of seven years old, but his most famous role was that of the character Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: the Next Generation, 1987-1994. I was in college then, in my late thirties, trying to keep up with eighteen-year-olds at this time. I wasn’t watching much TV, but I did catch some of the episodes of TNG. My husband was a big fan of the show! He loved Data best, though.
In reading these celebrity autobiographies, I am shocked by what happened to many of these stars who were child actors. Wheaton did move on from the show, but it clearly was hard. Fans are tough on actors. One minute, an actor is being mobbed by fans out of their minds with lust and love, the next minute the same actor is being mobbed by ex-fans who hate his guts. Actors who are adored live in a gilded cage they often long to escape. But escaping the cage because fans don’t care about them anymore is like being dropped down a deep dark well all alone into murky, sometimes befouled, cold water! Ex-child actors have it exponentially worse than adult actors. They don’t have the mental defenses of adults when they are acting as a child actor. They face the world when ex-child actors without having had normal socialization. Their autobiographies often reveal these deficiencies in their mental/educational development in their or a ghost writer’s writing, sometimes unknowingly by the author/narrator. Often their parents were more interested in the paychecks instead of the child. The studios take their cues from the fans and from how cooperative the parents and the actor is. If a star is no longer a star, the studios don’t just move an actor off of the A-list, they drop kick them down into that cold well the fans dug.
After having read a couple of autobiographies of ex-celebrities who were A or B-listers, I am now wondering how they all do not end up in psychiatric hospitals. The social and professional lives of these famous faces of television and movies is often one involving work requirements which mirror the techniques the CIA and some police interrogators use to break down people psychologically.
This 2022 book is apparently a new rendition of , a 2004 book Wheaton published. I am calling ‘Still Just a Geek� a rendition because he is doing a re-interpretation of his past life and ‘Just a Geek�. As I write this review, he is 50 years old. He has added annotations to the reprinted blog posts. It was cool to touch asterisks in my ebook and bring up the notations he’s added. I am old, ok? I like ebook gimmicks a lot, even those that have been done for years. Cell phones are still a marvel to me.
The original blog entries are those of a young, very stressed-out recently married thirty-year-old, stepfather to two young children. He had been a child star and he evidently got fucked up by the job and his parents, although in this book it is only alluded to. The studios drop kicked him down that dark well of forgotten actors after he left TNG, although he doesn’t say it that way, of course. He had jumped ship, ran away from Star Trek when he turned eighteen, thinking he could do better as an actor in film roles. As it turned out, no one wanted him in any big Hollywood movies. He doesn’t say so, but it appears that in some way he burned bridges when he left. It could have been simply the belief that child actors can’t remain fan favorites when they grow up that caused Wheaton’s fall in studio minds. In any case, he has been on the hustle ever since (my words and opinion). Self-promotion is THE major work of the job of being an entertainer.
Ironically, some of his income in later years, meager as may have been, came from working as an ex-Star Trek entertainer in those various fan conventions where people enjoy themselves by being near some part of the Star Trek universe. He often reiterates his respect for Star Trek fans and the actors on the shows. He did and still does other things, including appearing in a comedy sketch group, doing voice acting, and being in another TV show ‘The Big Bang Theory�.
Excerpted from Wikipedia
Wheaton played Joey Trotta in the action film Toy Soldiers (1991). After leaving Star Trek, he moved to Topeka, Kansas, to work for NewTek, where he helped to develop the Video Toaster 4000 doing product testing and quality control and later used his public profile to serve as a technology evangelist for the product.
Afterward, he returned to Los Angeles, attended acting school for five years, and then re-entered the acting world. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Wheaton appeared in several independent films, including the award-winning The Good Things (2001), in which he portrays a frustrated Kansas tollbooth worker. For his performance in Jane White Is Sick & Twisted (2002) he received the award for Best Actor at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival.
The real question is, is it a good read? That is a complicated question for me. I was in my 50’s in 2004 when ‘Just a Geek� was published. For almost 70% of the things Wheaton mentions in his short blogs collected in this book I have to do a google search to know what they mean. He is extremely plugged into youth-media culture and the worlds of fandom and I am not. I hate game shows, but he has been on some of them. He also mentions in passing the business side of television/movies - the “screen chemistry� testing of actor personalities, the interviews, the filming retakes, the horrible meat-market (my words) auditions, etc. These particular subjects are interesting to me, but Wheaton does not linger on them much. I suspect he is tailoring his book to a certain audience, one which he cannot afford to alienate. However, he also is surprisingly frank sometimes. I think those are the areas he cannot NOT tell what he wants to say, lines into public-persona illusions he can’t step across out of self-respect.
He also has a somewhat dual personality in his early blog posts. Wil One is a perky teenager, upbeat, hopeful, positive thinking, generous, thoughtful, professionally self-promoting. Wil Two is anxious, constantly worrying, self-involved, incredibly concerned about his image, extremely sensitive to what people say and think, cringing with regrets and fears he has said the wrong thing. This is the Wil many of the reviews I have read whom was called out as whiny.
Omg, no. Just no. Ffs. Whiny? His fears and anxieties are anything but whiny! They are real, and very very scary, as real and scary as a train wreck.
Gentle readers, put yourself in the shoes of any actor or entertainer. Try to think how life must be lived offscreen today as a working actor or entertainer, someone who is in the business of presenting a shinier image of themselves onscreen, or one that fits a stereotyped character actor part. They have to be ‘on� a lot, even sometimes when shopping for hemorrhoid salves in grocery stores. Self-promotion is a requirement, and a very demanding one. Appearances are EVERYTHING. How do actors handle being a rounded personality smarter than their fans in real life, or maybe are as ordinary and ignorant of the world as most of us are, or are maybe mentally ill, and yet also they must be the ‘on� person who is pretending to be bigger better stronger than you or me? Many have much difficulty psychologically over time, from what I can see. The child actors seemingly never complete the ordinary social socialization that the rest of us do (arguably), and appear to be often immature or messed up adults from what I’ve picked up in autobiographies and biographies. But how could they be anything else, given what their lives have been, growing up on movie/tv sets, all of their mistakes being judged by literally EVERYONE around them ALL OF THE TIME. Professional kids are displayed in a metaphorical meat market, being sized up by everyone for their looks, weight, hair, skin, personality, bodies. Kids are not able to hide themselves much from judgmental eyes normally! I can imagine the cruelty of hearing constantly the professional judgements on kids in the entertainment business.
The producers, the studios, the movie/television technocrats are dispassionately cruel about looks and appearances. Actors have often gotten big breaks not because they can act, but because they have the right shade of red hair for a part, or because they have a ‘look� which is becoming popular with fans of other stars. When the technocrats put out an ad or call for actors, they include descriptions of the ‘look� or body type they want to audition. I saw these ads in the LA Times when I lived in North Hollywood for awhile.
Fans are unforgiving of personal opinions they don’t like, but they are also severely critical of weight gains, of face lifts, of aging, of anything less than a shiny shiny appearance. Julia Roberts was severely condemned when pictures of her with unshaven pits came out. Omg. Really? Many actors are caught in unflattering poses, in photos taken secretly. They are mortified - wouldn’t you be? But entertainers must deal with this all of the time in a way to not turn off the public, if they want to earn a living. How can this be done without projecting a falsified self, to apologize for behaviors that aren’t their fault, but are the faults of the fans and public? I have heard actors apologizing for stuff they’ve said or done, for something that was incredibly ordinary and banal, unimportant, or obviously a slip of the tongue due to exhaustion, or not having had time to think, even not hearing a question clearly. Yikes! Public viewers and fans of entertainers are often assholes.
Wheaton anxiously apologizes a lot in this book for things he wrote when he was a young man early in the aught years, when the Internet was new, and before 2023 ‘woke� culture. I was there back then, too, and I am not reading anything in his blogs that wasn’t being commonly said by everyone male, liberal, with a version of early ‘woke�, at that time. It wasn’t meant to be mean stuff at all. Like all of us, he has grown and learned in twenty years. ‘Nuff said.
Personal reflections:
When I was thirty years old, I was dealing with the changes which were occurring in secretarial work. I finally went to college because I no longer could get a job as a secretary by the late 1980’s.
Before computers, I was a high-end secretary who worked for district managers of major corporations, and subbed in for secretaries who worked for Presidents and Vice-Presidents when necessary. I knew shorthand, I typed on the ‘new� electric IBM typewriters, I handled faxes and all kinds of copiers and other office equipment. I could throw together everything needed for a major conference of executives - room reservations, xeroxed or arranged for printing of packets of information, food/water refreshments, the usual conference table show-and-tell machines of that era. If banners and posters were needed, I ordered and made sure they were done right. I also had the right ‘look� of an office secretarial ‘gal�. Bobbed hair, suits, sensible heels, slim figure. It all mattered, gentle readers. My salary was higher than normal for secretaries (of course, that’s not saying much, hello, female wage earners received twenty-five to fifty cents for every dollar men earned in jobs with comparable duties). But I definitely was respected, considered high-end, literate, talented.
When my husband got a new job in San Francisco, I had to quit my job in Seattle. Culture shock! In Seattle at this time, there were no word processors, no desk computers, no high-end telecommunications. In San Francisco, the secretaries had to know how to use word processors and computers (primitive by today’s standards). The only jobs I was considered for by San Franciscan employers was that of file clerk or low-end office work. I flunked a secretarial test for job applicants with questions like how to identify the different screwdrivers and how to place a sawhorse usefully. I not only had never done any of that, I had no idea there were different types of screwdrivers (I literally had never held one) or what a sawhorse was.
In my Seattle junior high school, girls were forced to take cooking and sewing in the 1960’s. We were forbidden to sign up for Shop, where the boys learned how to use construction tools. Only boys could do Shop. My dad once said he was going to teach a lesson on our car engine. Both my brother and I went outside, following him. When my dad saw me, he sent me back into the house. He said, “this is men’s work.� After I got married, my husband insisted on doing all of the “men’s work.� He sent me away too. Once, when I asked him to show me how to do the electrical work, which he knew how to do from being an electrician’s mate, or something, in the Navy, he said ok. He stood on a ladder working on a light fixture. He asked me to hand him a light bulb. That turned out to be the extent of what he wanted to teach me. That’s how it was.
I went from being respected and useful, considered well-educated, worthy of at least a livable wage, to someone whom people felt they could openly scorn. My ‘look� was all wrong, too. Too tall, no flashiness, too subdued. Seattle was a place where people wore beige, brown, or black. Even now, Seattle has this “Seattle Freeze� reputation. To look at people in Seattle on the streets or in restaurants was a very rude thing to do. San Francisco was a place where people dressed like tropical birds. San Franciscans looked at everybody in the face, without any subterfuges, everywhere. San Franciscans moved loud, talked loud, laughed loud, in comparison to native Seattleites.
I signed up with a temporary agency. I was grateful for the work, but I was given performance reviews by every employer I was sent to as a possible job placement. My agency rep was kind, but omg, some of those reviews were harsh! I was sweet, nice, but too quiet, without a sense of urgency, always needed someone to tell me what to do. They said I was incompetent, but willing to learn, however they needed someone with competence now. They said I didn’t know San Francisco, where the businesses were or what they did. Or they said I didn’t fit in with the office culture. I basically was thrown down into that deep dark well of metaphorical cold water. When I finally changed my goal, saying I wanted temporary jobs only, that I wasn’t looking for a permanent position, I got a lot of work, but extremely low-end office jobs. The worst parts of this was how people blamed me for my situation. Somehow, this ‘lack of ability and education� was all of my fault. When you are young, this is hard to hear, but very much believed. Later, as an older person, I know it is what the world does: it kicks down to the ground and stomps the loser of the hour, and it sucks up to the winner of the hour. Whether you are the loser or winner actually can depend on many circumstances beyond your control and not your fault at all, although you are judged anyway. You must not take it personally, despite that it can be life and death, determining whether one lives inside four walls or on the streets. Oh well.
So, I have much sympathy for people who suffered disappointments and loss of face in the universe like Wil Wheaton, primarily because he wasn’t given the education or psychological peace to actually function well in anything beyond taking his first baby steps in entertainment, literally, baby steps. I’m glad he has now found his happy place. I wish him well.
I became interested in reading Wheaton’s book because I am an audible.com member and he narrated a book I was interested in. I was like, wait, that name sounds familiar? He was a child actor, acting since the age of seven years old, but his most famous role was that of the character Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: the Next Generation, 1987-1994. I was in college then, in my late thirties, trying to keep up with eighteen-year-olds at this time. I wasn’t watching much TV, but I did catch some of the episodes of TNG. My husband was a big fan of the show! He loved Data best, though.
In reading these celebrity autobiographies, I am shocked by what happened to many of these stars who were child actors. Wheaton did move on from the show, but it clearly was hard. Fans are tough on actors. One minute, an actor is being mobbed by fans out of their minds with lust and love, the next minute the same actor is being mobbed by ex-fans who hate his guts. Actors who are adored live in a gilded cage they often long to escape. But escaping the cage because fans don’t care about them anymore is like being dropped down a deep dark well all alone into murky, sometimes befouled, cold water! Ex-child actors have it exponentially worse than adult actors. They don’t have the mental defenses of adults when they are acting as a child actor. They face the world when ex-child actors without having had normal socialization. Their autobiographies often reveal these deficiencies in their mental/educational development in their or a ghost writer’s writing, sometimes unknowingly by the author/narrator. Often their parents were more interested in the paychecks instead of the child. The studios take their cues from the fans and from how cooperative the parents and the actor is. If a star is no longer a star, the studios don’t just move an actor off of the A-list, they drop kick them down into that cold well the fans dug.
After having read a couple of autobiographies of ex-celebrities who were A or B-listers, I am now wondering how they all do not end up in psychiatric hospitals. The social and professional lives of these famous faces of television and movies is often one involving work requirements which mirror the techniques the CIA and some police interrogators use to break down people psychologically.
This 2022 book is apparently a new rendition of , a 2004 book Wheaton published. I am calling ‘Still Just a Geek� a rendition because he is doing a re-interpretation of his past life and ‘Just a Geek�. As I write this review, he is 50 years old. He has added annotations to the reprinted blog posts. It was cool to touch asterisks in my ebook and bring up the notations he’s added. I am old, ok? I like ebook gimmicks a lot, even those that have been done for years. Cell phones are still a marvel to me.
The original blog entries are those of a young, very stressed-out recently married thirty-year-old, stepfather to two young children. He had been a child star and he evidently got fucked up by the job and his parents, although in this book it is only alluded to. The studios drop kicked him down that dark well of forgotten actors after he left TNG, although he doesn’t say it that way, of course. He had jumped ship, ran away from Star Trek when he turned eighteen, thinking he could do better as an actor in film roles. As it turned out, no one wanted him in any big Hollywood movies. He doesn’t say so, but it appears that in some way he burned bridges when he left. It could have been simply the belief that child actors can’t remain fan favorites when they grow up that caused Wheaton’s fall in studio minds. In any case, he has been on the hustle ever since (my words and opinion). Self-promotion is THE major work of the job of being an entertainer.
Ironically, some of his income in later years, meager as may have been, came from working as an ex-Star Trek entertainer in those various fan conventions where people enjoy themselves by being near some part of the Star Trek universe. He often reiterates his respect for Star Trek fans and the actors on the shows. He did and still does other things, including appearing in a comedy sketch group, doing voice acting, and being in another TV show ‘The Big Bang Theory�.
Excerpted from Wikipedia
Wheaton played Joey Trotta in the action film Toy Soldiers (1991). After leaving Star Trek, he moved to Topeka, Kansas, to work for NewTek, where he helped to develop the Video Toaster 4000 doing product testing and quality control and later used his public profile to serve as a technology evangelist for the product.
Afterward, he returned to Los Angeles, attended acting school for five years, and then re-entered the acting world. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Wheaton appeared in several independent films, including the award-winning The Good Things (2001), in which he portrays a frustrated Kansas tollbooth worker. For his performance in Jane White Is Sick & Twisted (2002) he received the award for Best Actor at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival.
The real question is, is it a good read? That is a complicated question for me. I was in my 50’s in 2004 when ‘Just a Geek� was published. For almost 70% of the things Wheaton mentions in his short blogs collected in this book I have to do a google search to know what they mean. He is extremely plugged into youth-media culture and the worlds of fandom and I am not. I hate game shows, but he has been on some of them. He also mentions in passing the business side of television/movies - the “screen chemistry� testing of actor personalities, the interviews, the filming retakes, the horrible meat-market (my words) auditions, etc. These particular subjects are interesting to me, but Wheaton does not linger on them much. I suspect he is tailoring his book to a certain audience, one which he cannot afford to alienate. However, he also is surprisingly frank sometimes. I think those are the areas he cannot NOT tell what he wants to say, lines into public-persona illusions he can’t step across out of self-respect.
He also has a somewhat dual personality in his early blog posts. Wil One is a perky teenager, upbeat, hopeful, positive thinking, generous, thoughtful, professionally self-promoting. Wil Two is anxious, constantly worrying, self-involved, incredibly concerned about his image, extremely sensitive to what people say and think, cringing with regrets and fears he has said the wrong thing. This is the Wil many of the reviews I have read whom was called out as whiny.
Omg, no. Just no. Ffs. Whiny? His fears and anxieties are anything but whiny! They are real, and very very scary, as real and scary as a train wreck.
Gentle readers, put yourself in the shoes of any actor or entertainer. Try to think how life must be lived offscreen today as a working actor or entertainer, someone who is in the business of presenting a shinier image of themselves onscreen, or one that fits a stereotyped character actor part. They have to be ‘on� a lot, even sometimes when shopping for hemorrhoid salves in grocery stores. Self-promotion is a requirement, and a very demanding one. Appearances are EVERYTHING. How do actors handle being a rounded personality smarter than their fans in real life, or maybe are as ordinary and ignorant of the world as most of us are, or are maybe mentally ill, and yet also they must be the ‘on� person who is pretending to be bigger better stronger than you or me? Many have much difficulty psychologically over time, from what I can see. The child actors seemingly never complete the ordinary social socialization that the rest of us do (arguably), and appear to be often immature or messed up adults from what I’ve picked up in autobiographies and biographies. But how could they be anything else, given what their lives have been, growing up on movie/tv sets, all of their mistakes being judged by literally EVERYONE around them ALL OF THE TIME. Professional kids are displayed in a metaphorical meat market, being sized up by everyone for their looks, weight, hair, skin, personality, bodies. Kids are not able to hide themselves much from judgmental eyes normally! I can imagine the cruelty of hearing constantly the professional judgements on kids in the entertainment business.
The producers, the studios, the movie/television technocrats are dispassionately cruel about looks and appearances. Actors have often gotten big breaks not because they can act, but because they have the right shade of red hair for a part, or because they have a ‘look� which is becoming popular with fans of other stars. When the technocrats put out an ad or call for actors, they include descriptions of the ‘look� or body type they want to audition. I saw these ads in the LA Times when I lived in North Hollywood for awhile.
Fans are unforgiving of personal opinions they don’t like, but they are also severely critical of weight gains, of face lifts, of aging, of anything less than a shiny shiny appearance. Julia Roberts was severely condemned when pictures of her with unshaven pits came out. Omg. Really? Many actors are caught in unflattering poses, in photos taken secretly. They are mortified - wouldn’t you be? But entertainers must deal with this all of the time in a way to not turn off the public, if they want to earn a living. How can this be done without projecting a falsified self, to apologize for behaviors that aren’t their fault, but are the faults of the fans and public? I have heard actors apologizing for stuff they’ve said or done, for something that was incredibly ordinary and banal, unimportant, or obviously a slip of the tongue due to exhaustion, or not having had time to think, even not hearing a question clearly. Yikes! Public viewers and fans of entertainers are often assholes.
Wheaton anxiously apologizes a lot in this book for things he wrote when he was a young man early in the aught years, when the Internet was new, and before 2023 ‘woke� culture. I was there back then, too, and I am not reading anything in his blogs that wasn’t being commonly said by everyone male, liberal, with a version of early ‘woke�, at that time. It wasn’t meant to be mean stuff at all. Like all of us, he has grown and learned in twenty years. ‘Nuff said.
Personal reflections:
When I was thirty years old, I was dealing with the changes which were occurring in secretarial work. I finally went to college because I no longer could get a job as a secretary by the late 1980’s.
Before computers, I was a high-end secretary who worked for district managers of major corporations, and subbed in for secretaries who worked for Presidents and Vice-Presidents when necessary. I knew shorthand, I typed on the ‘new� electric IBM typewriters, I handled faxes and all kinds of copiers and other office equipment. I could throw together everything needed for a major conference of executives - room reservations, xeroxed or arranged for printing of packets of information, food/water refreshments, the usual conference table show-and-tell machines of that era. If banners and posters were needed, I ordered and made sure they were done right. I also had the right ‘look� of an office secretarial ‘gal�. Bobbed hair, suits, sensible heels, slim figure. It all mattered, gentle readers. My salary was higher than normal for secretaries (of course, that’s not saying much, hello, female wage earners received twenty-five to fifty cents for every dollar men earned in jobs with comparable duties). But I definitely was respected, considered high-end, literate, talented.
When my husband got a new job in San Francisco, I had to quit my job in Seattle. Culture shock! In Seattle at this time, there were no word processors, no desk computers, no high-end telecommunications. In San Francisco, the secretaries had to know how to use word processors and computers (primitive by today’s standards). The only jobs I was considered for by San Franciscan employers was that of file clerk or low-end office work. I flunked a secretarial test for job applicants with questions like how to identify the different screwdrivers and how to place a sawhorse usefully. I not only had never done any of that, I had no idea there were different types of screwdrivers (I literally had never held one) or what a sawhorse was.
In my Seattle junior high school, girls were forced to take cooking and sewing in the 1960’s. We were forbidden to sign up for Shop, where the boys learned how to use construction tools. Only boys could do Shop. My dad once said he was going to teach a lesson on our car engine. Both my brother and I went outside, following him. When my dad saw me, he sent me back into the house. He said, “this is men’s work.� After I got married, my husband insisted on doing all of the “men’s work.� He sent me away too. Once, when I asked him to show me how to do the electrical work, which he knew how to do from being an electrician’s mate, or something, in the Navy, he said ok. He stood on a ladder working on a light fixture. He asked me to hand him a light bulb. That turned out to be the extent of what he wanted to teach me. That’s how it was.
I went from being respected and useful, considered well-educated, worthy of at least a livable wage, to someone whom people felt they could openly scorn. My ‘look� was all wrong, too. Too tall, no flashiness, too subdued. Seattle was a place where people wore beige, brown, or black. Even now, Seattle has this “Seattle Freeze� reputation. To look at people in Seattle on the streets or in restaurants was a very rude thing to do. San Francisco was a place where people dressed like tropical birds. San Franciscans looked at everybody in the face, without any subterfuges, everywhere. San Franciscans moved loud, talked loud, laughed loud, in comparison to native Seattleites.
I signed up with a temporary agency. I was grateful for the work, but I was given performance reviews by every employer I was sent to as a possible job placement. My agency rep was kind, but omg, some of those reviews were harsh! I was sweet, nice, but too quiet, without a sense of urgency, always needed someone to tell me what to do. They said I was incompetent, but willing to learn, however they needed someone with competence now. They said I didn’t know San Francisco, where the businesses were or what they did. Or they said I didn’t fit in with the office culture. I basically was thrown down into that deep dark well of metaphorical cold water. When I finally changed my goal, saying I wanted temporary jobs only, that I wasn’t looking for a permanent position, I got a lot of work, but extremely low-end office jobs. The worst parts of this was how people blamed me for my situation. Somehow, this ‘lack of ability and education� was all of my fault. When you are young, this is hard to hear, but very much believed. Later, as an older person, I know it is what the world does: it kicks down to the ground and stomps the loser of the hour, and it sucks up to the winner of the hour. Whether you are the loser or winner actually can depend on many circumstances beyond your control and not your fault at all, although you are judged anyway. You must not take it personally, despite that it can be life and death, determining whether one lives inside four walls or on the streets. Oh well.
So, I have much sympathy for people who suffered disappointments and loss of face in the universe like Wil Wheaton, primarily because he wasn’t given the education or psychological peace to actually function well in anything beyond taking his first baby steps in entertainment, literally, baby steps. I’m glad he has now found his happy place. I wish him well.
May 12, 2022
As an academic and a writer, I understand all too well Wheaton's lifelong wrestling match with imposter syndrome. He bares his soul in this memoir--get the audiobook, it's so, so well narrated--and what I love is that he is deeply aware of his own imperfections. Unlike most celebrities who want to present only the best versions of themselves, Wheaton looks back on the writings of his younger self, fleshing out his own stories from a more mature perspective. I do have to take off a star for some of the cringe-y, redundant "mea culpas" for the insensitivity of his past self (the "fast forward 30 seconds" button on Audible was very helpful for that), but overall I was immersed in his story. I even got a little teary at a few points, such as the story about leaving his great aunt's house for the last time (anyone who's lost an elderly relative will be affected by that one). His story of child abuse on a film set later in the book broke my heart—it was tough to hear the raw, unfiltered pain in his voice. No other audiobook narrator I know of has taken such a risk. Overall, his life story can seem quite tragic--the memories of someone who spent their 20’s attempting to recapture something they lost before they knew what they had. But it's high time someone spoke out about the trauma of being a child star, and the long-lasting impact that makes on a person's life. I liked him as Wesley Crusher, I liked him as a blogger, and I continue to like him now.
April 18, 2024
Normally I'd give this 4 stars, but upping to 5 for reasons! (Might explain at a later point.)
Wil Wheaton wurde einem breiteren Publikum erstmals durch den sehr erfolgreichen Film „Stand By Me� bekannt, den er im Alter von 14 Jahren drehte, weitaus berühmter ist er jedoch für seine Rolle als Sohn der Schiffsärztin in Star Trek � The Next Generation. Was man damals nicht wusste: Dieser Junge wollte kein Schauspieler sein, sondern wurde von seiner ehrgeizigen Mutter dazu genötigt. Er „musste� ein Star sein, war jedoch sehr unglücklich damit.
Das vorliegende Buch ist im Grunde kein eigenständiges Werk, sondern eine ausführlich kommentierte Fassung seiner früheren Autobiografie „Just a Geek�. Das stellt für die Hörbuchversion eine gewisse Herausforderung dar, denn es ist nicht immer ganz einfach, nachzuvollziehen, wann der jüngere und wann der ältere Wil spricht. Im Großen und Ganzen gelingt ihm das jedoch recht gut. Eine weitere Besonderheit des Buches ist, dass es sich größtenteils um Posts aus seinem Blog handelt, den er in den frühen 2000ern ins Leben rief und der sich großer Beliebtheit erfreut. Warum braucht es die kommentierte Fassung? Einerseits hatte Wil damals noch nicht seine Therapie durchlaufen und Mental Health-Diagnosen erhalten. Er hatte sich noch nicht von seinen Eltern distanziert, die ihm so viel angetan haben. Und sein Verhältnis zu Star Trek war noch nicht überwiegend positiv, wie heute. Andererseits entschuldigt er sich an vielen Stellen für seine damalige Ignoranz bezüglich homophober, misogyner und ableistischer Sprache. Tatsächlich entschuldigt er sich so oft und so repetitiv, dass ich irgendwann nur noch dachte, ja, Wil, ist gut, wir glauben dir! ;-)
Ich habe das Buch sehr gerne gehört, mit Wil gelacht, aber auch mit Wil geweint, denn an einigen Stellen wird es sehr emotional und bricht auch Wils Stimme. Was seine Eltern Wil zugemutet haben, wie sie ihn ausgenutzt und ausgebeutet haben, ist unfassbar. Ich möchte aber betonen, dass es sich nicht um eine Art „Jammerbuch� handelt, Wils Einstellung und Situation sind positiv und er hat seinen Frieden mit seiner Vergangenheit, Star Trek und seiner etwas verkorksten Schauspielerkarriere gemacht. Wenn auch nicht mit seinen Eltern, die aber auch uneinsichtig sind und es wohl auch nicht verdient hätten. Stattdessen hört man ganz viel Liebe für seine Ehefrau, seine (Stief-)Söhne und seine Star Trek-Familie heraus. Und natürlich gibt es auch viele Anekdoten und Eindrücke aus seiner ganzen Reise im Star Trek-Universum.
Wil Wheaton wurde einem breiteren Publikum erstmals durch den sehr erfolgreichen Film „Stand By Me� bekannt, den er im Alter von 14 Jahren drehte, weitaus berühmter ist er jedoch für seine Rolle als Sohn der Schiffsärztin in Star Trek � The Next Generation. Was man damals nicht wusste: Dieser Junge wollte kein Schauspieler sein, sondern wurde von seiner ehrgeizigen Mutter dazu genötigt. Er „musste� ein Star sein, war jedoch sehr unglücklich damit.
Das vorliegende Buch ist im Grunde kein eigenständiges Werk, sondern eine ausführlich kommentierte Fassung seiner früheren Autobiografie „Just a Geek�. Das stellt für die Hörbuchversion eine gewisse Herausforderung dar, denn es ist nicht immer ganz einfach, nachzuvollziehen, wann der jüngere und wann der ältere Wil spricht. Im Großen und Ganzen gelingt ihm das jedoch recht gut. Eine weitere Besonderheit des Buches ist, dass es sich größtenteils um Posts aus seinem Blog handelt, den er in den frühen 2000ern ins Leben rief und der sich großer Beliebtheit erfreut. Warum braucht es die kommentierte Fassung? Einerseits hatte Wil damals noch nicht seine Therapie durchlaufen und Mental Health-Diagnosen erhalten. Er hatte sich noch nicht von seinen Eltern distanziert, die ihm so viel angetan haben. Und sein Verhältnis zu Star Trek war noch nicht überwiegend positiv, wie heute. Andererseits entschuldigt er sich an vielen Stellen für seine damalige Ignoranz bezüglich homophober, misogyner und ableistischer Sprache. Tatsächlich entschuldigt er sich so oft und so repetitiv, dass ich irgendwann nur noch dachte, ja, Wil, ist gut, wir glauben dir! ;-)
Ich habe das Buch sehr gerne gehört, mit Wil gelacht, aber auch mit Wil geweint, denn an einigen Stellen wird es sehr emotional und bricht auch Wils Stimme. Was seine Eltern Wil zugemutet haben, wie sie ihn ausgenutzt und ausgebeutet haben, ist unfassbar. Ich möchte aber betonen, dass es sich nicht um eine Art „Jammerbuch� handelt, Wils Einstellung und Situation sind positiv und er hat seinen Frieden mit seiner Vergangenheit, Star Trek und seiner etwas verkorksten Schauspielerkarriere gemacht. Wenn auch nicht mit seinen Eltern, die aber auch uneinsichtig sind und es wohl auch nicht verdient hätten. Stattdessen hört man ganz viel Liebe für seine Ehefrau, seine (Stief-)Söhne und seine Star Trek-Familie heraus. Und natürlich gibt es auch viele Anekdoten und Eindrücke aus seiner ganzen Reise im Star Trek-Universum.
January 7, 2024
I don’t know how to rate this! Wil clearly put a lot of effort into this, and you feel like you really know him by the end.
The first half of the book is Wil’s annotation of his 2004 memoir, which consists of blog posts going back to 2000. The second half is additional blog posts. Most are about show business, mental health, family life, and general geeking out. There are so many footnotes, and he added a few to the audiobook. It wasn’t always clear if something was a footnote, and whether it was an original footnote or a new one or a footnote of a footnote. Some of it was repetitive, by nature, and some of it was really interesting.
Wil is three years older than me, and I thought he was very cute when I was young. I love Wil’s audiobook narrations, so I wanted to know how he got into that and how he met John Scalzi, but that was never mentioned.
Many of the footnotes are Wil apologizing for not being woke enough in 2001, where he used language identical to everyone else at the time. It sounded like a Maoist struggle session. It’s OKAY. While he apologizes over and over for offending certain groups, it’s clear that it’s still okay to disparage other groups. This is what happens when you’re in a Southern California bubble your whole life.
I disagree that ‘lame� is ableist. I think the word has evolved from its original meaning and no longer has a connection to a disability. The words ‘suck(s)� and ‘cool� have no connection to their literal meanings, either. That’s just me. And ‘guys� is gender-neutral in California. Maybe it’s not in the East, but that’s their problem.
Could I be friends with him? I think we would have a great time discussing Firefly, Doctor Who, Magic: The Gathering and many, many other things but probably could not discuss religion and politics. And that’s just fine.
And CONGRATULATIONS, Wil, for having a Hollywood marriage that lasted (still going) longer than six months.
Language: Frequent strong language
Sexual Content: Some lewd references
Violence/Gore: Mild
Harm to Animals:
Harm to Children:
Other (Triggers):
The first half of the book is Wil’s annotation of his 2004 memoir, which consists of blog posts going back to 2000. The second half is additional blog posts. Most are about show business, mental health, family life, and general geeking out. There are so many footnotes, and he added a few to the audiobook. It wasn’t always clear if something was a footnote, and whether it was an original footnote or a new one or a footnote of a footnote. Some of it was repetitive, by nature, and some of it was really interesting.
Wil is three years older than me, and I thought he was very cute when I was young. I love Wil’s audiobook narrations, so I wanted to know how he got into that and how he met John Scalzi, but that was never mentioned.
Many of the footnotes are Wil apologizing for not being woke enough in 2001, where he used language identical to everyone else at the time. It sounded like a Maoist struggle session. It’s OKAY. While he apologizes over and over for offending certain groups, it’s clear that it’s still okay to disparage other groups. This is what happens when you’re in a Southern California bubble your whole life.
I disagree that ‘lame� is ableist. I think the word has evolved from its original meaning and no longer has a connection to a disability. The words ‘suck(s)� and ‘cool� have no connection to their literal meanings, either. That’s just me. And ‘guys� is gender-neutral in California. Maybe it’s not in the East, but that’s their problem.
Could I be friends with him? I think we would have a great time discussing Firefly, Doctor Who, Magic: The Gathering and many, many other things but probably could not discuss religion and politics. And that’s just fine.
And CONGRATULATIONS, Wil, for having a Hollywood marriage that lasted (still going) longer than six months.
Language: Frequent strong language
Sexual Content: Some lewd references
Violence/Gore: Mild
Harm to Animals:
Harm to Children:
Other (Triggers):
July 14, 2022
Rec. by: Version 1.0
Rec. for: Works in progress
There are some celebrity autobiographies that were obviously written by someone else—sanitized, ersatz works, "as told to" the real writer.
This is not that.
's annotated, updated memoir is raw and open—even more so than its beta release. This is not a bad thing, not at all. Wheaton also, still, has a lot of work to do on his issues (as he acknowledges in the Afterword to this iteration).
This is not a bad thing either.
What follows is my original review of from 2011—just annotated. The new stuff, like the above, is in italics.
, who seems to pop up all over the place these days, says in his Introduction (page xiii) to this autobiographical work, "In an era of people blogging as pseudo-celebrities, this is the story of a celebrity blogging as a person."
This is precisely correct. stands out among former child stars and other Hollywood types: he's grown up, not just grown older.
This remains as true in 2022 as it was in 2004. If anything, Wheaton's even more mature and forthcoming in ... he acknowledges and apologizes—sincerely, I believe—for faults ranging from his misuse (and overuse) of the word "lame" as a pejorative to the many times he tried to placate his parents in print, despite what really does come across as their systematic gaslighting and emotional abuse.
For those who may think of him only as the character Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, or as one of the principals not named Corey in the film Stand By Me, let me tell you that he's developed into much more than that. Witty, honest, passionate and articulate, this transcription of entries from Wheaton's weblog in the early 2000s shows a man with a wife and a family, whose triumphs and crises of confidence could be anyone's.
I like his taste in music, too. As soon as Wheaton started the first chapter with a quote from a Pixies song I was just listening to, and then name-checked Portland, Oregon and Powell's Technical Bookstore on the very next page... I knew I was gonna like this book.
He still has pretty good taste in tunes, by the way...
Turns out I was right. I burned through in just a few hours, in fact, eager to see what Wheaton would talk about next. And although the book ends before Wheaton's more recent career resurgence in series like , it's easy to see the roots of that newfound success in his straightforward self-assessment here.
It took me a lot longer to get through . The footnotes are tagged with tiny symbols that I often found hard to locate, and there are a lot of 'em. And, on the plus side, it's a much longer book, and a significant improvement on its predecessor.
's blogging continues at (up through 2006) and then at (which is currently current, as I type this)... that latter link, at least, should probably be on your blogroll, too...
Ahem. Those older links are still resolving as of the date of this review, but they're not the most current way to meet your Wheaton needs. As of 2022, you can find Wil's current blog at . Things change fast and often, online.
I will note that if Wheaton does revisit this project in another 20 years or so, as he mentions wanting to do, I think the ideal title for his next update would have to be:
Rec. for: Works in progress
"I never should have knocked."
—Lucas Sinclair, Stranger Things, S4E9.
There are some celebrity autobiographies that were obviously written by someone else—sanitized, ersatz works, "as told to" the real writer.
This is not that.
's annotated, updated memoir is raw and open—even more so than its beta release. This is not a bad thing, not at all. Wheaton also, still, has a lot of work to do on his issues (as he acknowledges in the Afterword to this iteration).
This is not a bad thing either.
What follows is my original review of from 2011—just annotated. The new stuff, like the above, is in italics.
, who seems to pop up all over the place these days, says in his Introduction (page xiii) to this autobiographical work, "In an era of people blogging as pseudo-celebrities, this is the story of a celebrity blogging as a person."
This is precisely correct. stands out among former child stars and other Hollywood types: he's grown up, not just grown older.
This remains as true in 2022 as it was in 2004. If anything, Wheaton's even more mature and forthcoming in ... he acknowledges and apologizes—sincerely, I believe—for faults ranging from his misuse (and overuse) of the word "lame" as a pejorative to the many times he tried to placate his parents in print, despite what really does come across as their systematic gaslighting and emotional abuse.
For those who may think of him only as the character Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, or as one of the principals not named Corey in the film Stand By Me, let me tell you that he's developed into much more than that. Witty, honest, passionate and articulate, this transcription of entries from Wheaton's weblog in the early 2000s shows a man with a wife and a family, whose triumphs and crises of confidence could be anyone's.
I like his taste in music, too. As soon as Wheaton started the first chapter with a quote from a Pixies song I was just listening to, and then name-checked Portland, Oregon and Powell's Technical Bookstore on the very next page... I knew I was gonna like this book.
He still has pretty good taste in tunes, by the way...
Turns out I was right. I burned through in just a few hours, in fact, eager to see what Wheaton would talk about next. And although the book ends before Wheaton's more recent career resurgence in series like , it's easy to see the roots of that newfound success in his straightforward self-assessment here.
It took me a lot longer to get through . The footnotes are tagged with tiny symbols that I often found hard to locate, and there are a lot of 'em. And, on the plus side, it's a much longer book, and a significant improvement on its predecessor.
's blogging continues at (up through 2006) and then at (which is currently current, as I type this)... that latter link, at least, should probably be on your blogroll, too...
Ahem. Those older links are still resolving as of the date of this review, but they're not the most current way to meet your Wheaton needs. As of 2022, you can find Wil's current blog at . Things change fast and often, online.
I will note that if Wheaton does revisit this project in another 20 years or so, as he mentions wanting to do, I think the ideal title for his next update would have to be:
Stil Wil
April 13, 2022
4/13/2022 Full review tk (maybe even later today!) at .
4/13/2022 I make it a habit of avoiding memoirs published by men in their 30s, so never got around to reading Wil Wheaton's Just A Geek, despite it seeming squarely in my wheelhouse. Reading this annotated version drove home to me how wise that policy continues to be, despite the many interests the author and I share, including but not limited to Star Trek, sci-fi, acting, blogging, tabletop games and parenting.
The trouble with the vast, vast majority of autobiographies written by men in their 30s is that the authors cannot properly view the trauma they've undergone -- which is what largely compels men like these to write these books at this stage in their lives -- without managing to sound both trite and obliviously self-important. The luckiest of these authors at least have an inkling of how much therapy they still need, but almost none of them realize that time (at the very least, and even without the benefit of actively working on your spiritual/emotional well-being) almost always grants a very necessary perspective. Mr Wheaton was, unfortunately, no different. I can absolutely see why Entertainment Weekly succinctly if harshly called the original book whiny. There's a lot of unprocessed trauma on display and a lot of attempts at edginess that just come off as douchebaggery.
So it's a fascinating enterprise to see Mr Wheaton tackle his book once more almost two decades later. His annotations are almost all correct, both in exploring the deeper truth behind what he said at the very turn of the 21st century and in apologizing for unfortunate language and narrative choices, with one caveat: I do think that he's actually a little too hard on his younger self, particularly in his adoption of projected optimism as a coping mechanism. Sure, he says now that the confident pronouncements that he made back then were in service to placating the "Prove Everyone Wrong" voice in his head, but there's still value in making positive affirmations about yourself and your goals, and it seems weird to kick his younger self over what was essentially a helpful, if not outright necessary, way to deal with life's disappointments.
That said, wow, it's so much better reading this book from the perspective of a dude who's about to turn fifty. I mean, the covers alone evoke the wildly differing atmospheres: the original was incredibly emo while the present version is far more self-deprecating and self-aware. Which isn't at all to say that Mr Wheaton was a bad person when he was younger, or that the angry, self-absorbed essays he wrote at that time have no worth. As a historical snapshot, they're actually a really great look into that era of celebrity and the Internet; as reading material tho, they are 100% Not My Thing. And that's fine: not every book is for everybody. I'm just glad that I came to this version at this age, so I can gain a newfound appreciation for Mr Wheaton instead of being all "JFC, this is what happened to the guy who played Wesley?"
Because the Wil Wheaton of recent years can see past the anger and assumptions of his younger self to the scared, sad kid behind the words. He and I don't necessarily have the same perspectives on everything, but I very much valued his present-day thoughts on abuse and mental health and the importance of education and kindness (and greatly appreciate his commitment to good parenting throughout.) The only thing that really stuck out to me was the fact that no one seems to have pointed out to him that his Dad's bullying likely stemmed from an insecurity at no longer being the family's main breadwinner. Which doesn't excuse Dad's really shitty behavior, but definitely makes his abuse and his clear preference for the younger brother seem less inexplicable, IMO.
Overall, this was the kind of chronicle that rarely makes its way out of nonfiction: honest and thoughtful, if occasionally uncomfortable for everyone involved. There were parts reading the older version that I thoroughly understood the popularity of the "shut up, Wesley" catchphrase, but I do think that Mr Wheaton has grown to be the kind of good, genuine person that he always thought of himself as being (and hopefully continues to work on being.) It was also really nice to learn that the main cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation get along so well, both then and now. As fun and salacious as it can be to read about backstabbing primi, it's really so much more affirming to read of nurturing and warmth in action.
I do recommend getting this book in physical format tho. I'm sure the digital versions will be properly formatted, but I was forced to read this as a sideways pdf on my phone, which had me absolutely seething. Extra irony points for Mr Wheaton being a champion of digital liberty -- not that the formatting was in any way his fault. Sometimes, profit-focused goons screw all us creatives over.
Still Just A Geek: An Annotated Collection Of Musings by Wil Wheaton was published April 12 2022 by William Morrow & Company and is available from all good booksellers, including .
4/13/2022 I make it a habit of avoiding memoirs published by men in their 30s, so never got around to reading Wil Wheaton's Just A Geek, despite it seeming squarely in my wheelhouse. Reading this annotated version drove home to me how wise that policy continues to be, despite the many interests the author and I share, including but not limited to Star Trek, sci-fi, acting, blogging, tabletop games and parenting.
The trouble with the vast, vast majority of autobiographies written by men in their 30s is that the authors cannot properly view the trauma they've undergone -- which is what largely compels men like these to write these books at this stage in their lives -- without managing to sound both trite and obliviously self-important. The luckiest of these authors at least have an inkling of how much therapy they still need, but almost none of them realize that time (at the very least, and even without the benefit of actively working on your spiritual/emotional well-being) almost always grants a very necessary perspective. Mr Wheaton was, unfortunately, no different. I can absolutely see why Entertainment Weekly succinctly if harshly called the original book whiny. There's a lot of unprocessed trauma on display and a lot of attempts at edginess that just come off as douchebaggery.
So it's a fascinating enterprise to see Mr Wheaton tackle his book once more almost two decades later. His annotations are almost all correct, both in exploring the deeper truth behind what he said at the very turn of the 21st century and in apologizing for unfortunate language and narrative choices, with one caveat: I do think that he's actually a little too hard on his younger self, particularly in his adoption of projected optimism as a coping mechanism. Sure, he says now that the confident pronouncements that he made back then were in service to placating the "Prove Everyone Wrong" voice in his head, but there's still value in making positive affirmations about yourself and your goals, and it seems weird to kick his younger self over what was essentially a helpful, if not outright necessary, way to deal with life's disappointments.
That said, wow, it's so much better reading this book from the perspective of a dude who's about to turn fifty. I mean, the covers alone evoke the wildly differing atmospheres: the original was incredibly emo while the present version is far more self-deprecating and self-aware. Which isn't at all to say that Mr Wheaton was a bad person when he was younger, or that the angry, self-absorbed essays he wrote at that time have no worth. As a historical snapshot, they're actually a really great look into that era of celebrity and the Internet; as reading material tho, they are 100% Not My Thing. And that's fine: not every book is for everybody. I'm just glad that I came to this version at this age, so I can gain a newfound appreciation for Mr Wheaton instead of being all "JFC, this is what happened to the guy who played Wesley?"
Because the Wil Wheaton of recent years can see past the anger and assumptions of his younger self to the scared, sad kid behind the words. He and I don't necessarily have the same perspectives on everything, but I very much valued his present-day thoughts on abuse and mental health and the importance of education and kindness (and greatly appreciate his commitment to good parenting throughout.) The only thing that really stuck out to me was the fact that no one seems to have pointed out to him that his Dad's bullying likely stemmed from an insecurity at no longer being the family's main breadwinner. Which doesn't excuse Dad's really shitty behavior, but definitely makes his abuse and his clear preference for the younger brother seem less inexplicable, IMO.
Overall, this was the kind of chronicle that rarely makes its way out of nonfiction: honest and thoughtful, if occasionally uncomfortable for everyone involved. There were parts reading the older version that I thoroughly understood the popularity of the "shut up, Wesley" catchphrase, but I do think that Mr Wheaton has grown to be the kind of good, genuine person that he always thought of himself as being (and hopefully continues to work on being.) It was also really nice to learn that the main cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation get along so well, both then and now. As fun and salacious as it can be to read about backstabbing primi, it's really so much more affirming to read of nurturing and warmth in action.
I do recommend getting this book in physical format tho. I'm sure the digital versions will be properly formatted, but I was forced to read this as a sideways pdf on my phone, which had me absolutely seething. Extra irony points for Mr Wheaton being a champion of digital liberty -- not that the formatting was in any way his fault. Sometimes, profit-focused goons screw all us creatives over.
Still Just A Geek: An Annotated Collection Of Musings by Wil Wheaton was published April 12 2022 by William Morrow & Company and is available from all good booksellers, including .
May 14, 2022
I would not recommend this book. It is an overly footnooted vanity piece.
Evidently, some decades ago he published "Just a Geek," which was a story of mostly his struggles as an actor after leaving Star Trek: the Next Generation. He complains that people called this whiny, but it is. He has gone back and excessively footnoted this book, which makes up half of this book. It was an embarrassment to read. Rather than annotate it (many times a page in most cases) to show how he has matured, he should have just let it sink into well-deserved oblivion.
I watched St:NG when it was new. I didn't care for his character on the show. That wasn't his fault, it was the writers. I did enjoy his appearances on Big Bang Theory, playing a fictionalized version of himself. (He served as nemesis to Sheldon, one of the main characters.) I also like his narrations on John Scalzi's audio books. He's a good voice actor. I don't think he's a good writer.
I can't imagine why they published this. Many of the annotations are repetitious exchanges with his editor who objects to Wheaton's constant use of the word, "cool."
If you do read this, I would recommend skipping the whole "Just a Geek" and starting in the second part with the essay about his wife's medical emergency. Even the later sections have far too many unnecessary footnotes. They became really, really annoying, disrupting the text and making it feel choppier than necessary. I finally stopped reading the footnotes and it was a much smoother read.
I would also skip the speeches, which cover things he had spoken of previously. And the appendices which are also embarrassing.
I would like my money back. Don't waste yours.
Evidently, some decades ago he published "Just a Geek," which was a story of mostly his struggles as an actor after leaving Star Trek: the Next Generation. He complains that people called this whiny, but it is. He has gone back and excessively footnoted this book, which makes up half of this book. It was an embarrassment to read. Rather than annotate it (many times a page in most cases) to show how he has matured, he should have just let it sink into well-deserved oblivion.
I watched St:NG when it was new. I didn't care for his character on the show. That wasn't his fault, it was the writers. I did enjoy his appearances on Big Bang Theory, playing a fictionalized version of himself. (He served as nemesis to Sheldon, one of the main characters.) I also like his narrations on John Scalzi's audio books. He's a good voice actor. I don't think he's a good writer.
I can't imagine why they published this. Many of the annotations are repetitious exchanges with his editor who objects to Wheaton's constant use of the word, "cool."
If you do read this, I would recommend skipping the whole "Just a Geek" and starting in the second part with the essay about his wife's medical emergency. Even the later sections have far too many unnecessary footnotes. They became really, really annoying, disrupting the text and making it feel choppier than necessary. I finally stopped reading the footnotes and it was a much smoother read.
I would also skip the speeches, which cover things he had spoken of previously. And the appendices which are also embarrassing.
I would like my money back. Don't waste yours.
May 17, 2022
I wanted to give this four stars, because much of this was interesting and entertaining. And I especially enjoy listening to celebrity memoirs read by the celebrity. I should probably mention that I'm not a Wil Wheaton fan. Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against him, but I never saw his Star Trek show, and I didn't know much about him.
He was interesting, in that recovering-child-actor sort of way, but there were more than a few things I had problems with. The annotation of a previously published memoir format was super confusing in audio. Wait! Was this part written in 1992, 2002, or 2022? I frequently had no idea without something really concrete to anchor the text. The subtle variations of how he pitched his voice just didn't cut it.
Throughout the book, Wheaton goes on at length about how much he loves to write, and how it's really his primary job now. If so, why not write something fresh, rather than recycle the same content from a decades old blog, to a decades old book, to an updated book?
The non-linear format did nothing to help the storytelling. And there were some truly unfortunate redundancies. This would be a lot more forgivable were the book not so long! The average audiobook is about 9 or 10 hours long. This one clocks in at a whopping 24 hours! Less is more, Wil, less is more! That said, there is definitely new content from the old version of Just a Geek. So, if you just can't get enough Wil Wheaton, today is your lucky day!
He was interesting, in that recovering-child-actor sort of way, but there were more than a few things I had problems with. The annotation of a previously published memoir format was super confusing in audio. Wait! Was this part written in 1992, 2002, or 2022? I frequently had no idea without something really concrete to anchor the text. The subtle variations of how he pitched his voice just didn't cut it.
Throughout the book, Wheaton goes on at length about how much he loves to write, and how it's really his primary job now. If so, why not write something fresh, rather than recycle the same content from a decades old blog, to a decades old book, to an updated book?
The non-linear format did nothing to help the storytelling. And there were some truly unfortunate redundancies. This would be a lot more forgivable were the book not so long! The average audiobook is about 9 or 10 hours long. This one clocks in at a whopping 24 hours! Less is more, Wil, less is more! That said, there is definitely new content from the old version of Just a Geek. So, if you just can't get enough Wil Wheaton, today is your lucky day!
February 9, 2023
In a follow up to his memoir, Just a Geek, Wheaton takes what was already unreadable drivel, and recreates it into a manual for the PC police. While his candor about mental health and the challenges he has faced in life is refreshing, the overt, in-your-face "woke-ness" of the text gives credence to one of his *several* introductions in which he whines about reviewers complaining about his whininess.
That said, to his credit, Wheaton demonstrates tremendous self-awareness, particularly as he describes his search for identity. His chronicles about his family dynamics, relationship with abusive parents, and relationship with his brother makes him immediately relatable to so many of us and exposes the person of Wil Wheaton when all we largely know of him is the characters he played.
The audiobook is a mostly passable but frequently cringy performance by Wheaton himself. The fake laughing and crying are constant reminders of his low ceiling as an actor, though his voice talents are occasionally notable. Part memoir, part self-help guide, part woke-manifesto, the book overall fails to find a central purpose, but offers the occasional good tid-bit.
That said, to his credit, Wheaton demonstrates tremendous self-awareness, particularly as he describes his search for identity. His chronicles about his family dynamics, relationship with abusive parents, and relationship with his brother makes him immediately relatable to so many of us and exposes the person of Wil Wheaton when all we largely know of him is the characters he played.
The audiobook is a mostly passable but frequently cringy performance by Wheaton himself. The fake laughing and crying are constant reminders of his low ceiling as an actor, though his voice talents are occasionally notable. Part memoir, part self-help guide, part woke-manifesto, the book overall fails to find a central purpose, but offers the occasional good tid-bit.
July 14, 2022
Contender for favorite book of the year.
In my lifetime I’ve read a lot of memoirs and a lot of mental health books and I believe this is one of the most unique approaches to both I’ve ever read. I loved that Wheaton took his original memoir and annotated and added to it. I appreciated the insights about inappropriate behavior and gaslighting. I loved the transparency about mental health and childhood trauma. And I connected so much with the authenticity and growth.
As a kid, I watched Star Trek, largely at first because of Wheaton and LeVar Burton. It gave me a place to escape when my world wasn’t so great and it wasn’t something I shared with anyone because none of my friends watched it.
As an adult, I’m even more thankful for that show because without it and The Big Bang Theory’s Wil Wheaton, I don’t know if I’d have picked up this book. And I’m so glad I did. From the stories like the one about women’s access to health care to the William Shatner anecdote, this book is an absolute must read (or must listen in my case).
In my lifetime I’ve read a lot of memoirs and a lot of mental health books and I believe this is one of the most unique approaches to both I’ve ever read. I loved that Wheaton took his original memoir and annotated and added to it. I appreciated the insights about inappropriate behavior and gaslighting. I loved the transparency about mental health and childhood trauma. And I connected so much with the authenticity and growth.
As a kid, I watched Star Trek, largely at first because of Wheaton and LeVar Burton. It gave me a place to escape when my world wasn’t so great and it wasn’t something I shared with anyone because none of my friends watched it.
As an adult, I’m even more thankful for that show because without it and The Big Bang Theory’s Wil Wheaton, I don’t know if I’d have picked up this book. And I’m so glad I did. From the stories like the one about women’s access to health care to the William Shatner anecdote, this book is an absolute must read (or must listen in my case).
April 22, 2022
I’ve been a fan of Wil Wheaton since I first saw him as Gordie Lachance and Wesley Crusher. When I first got Twitter in 2011, I started following him and began to follow his blog. It was cool to see some of those blog entries in this book. I hadn’t read the original Just a Geek before, but I like the idea of this book being an annotated version of that book. I’ve seen a few people say they thought him holding himself accountable for his cringe writing to be long-winded, but I went the audiobook route on this one and it worked for me. Hearing about the abuse he endured was so upsetting, it’s not cool how people are exploited like that at such a young age.
Also, love the fuck you to JK Rowling he throws in this book!
Also, love the fuck you to JK Rowling he throws in this book!
July 22, 2022
I thought Will Smith had the biggest ego I had ever seen in a celebrity memoir, until I encountered this mess of a "book" that's really a footnoted edition of an 18-year-old autobiography that was made up of blog articles Wheaton had previously written, speeches he had given, and magazine pieces. So not only is this not an original book, but it's a bizarrely footnoted edition of something that wasn't an original memoir to start with!
Not sure why William Morrow would publish this instead of a whole new memoir. The original 2004 book is on the page here in small print, then footnotes are added like it's the Holy Bible. Anything they couldn't get permission for is redacted, blacked out. Along the way Wheaton tells a few stories, contradicts himself often, brags a whole lot, but mostly he complains, as he did in the original autobiography. When Entertainment Weekly reviewed his 2004 book they titled it "Whiner of the Week" for good reason--this is just an egotistical Hollywood child star who throws tantrums about his career or family and becomes an adult jerk.
While he tries to make himself look better in this annotated edition, what he actually does is magnify his giant insecurities and inabilities to write well. No matter how hard he tries to tell us he's a good writer (and he tries hard) he's simply not. Unless you think instruction manuals written by tech geeks are great prose.
This is a mess that shouldn't have been published in this form and needed a good ghost co-writer to turn it into something worth reading. Not sure who would pay to read 434 pages of rehashed navel-gazing and self-justification regarding comments made almost two decades ago, but I got it at the library and would recommend you not paying a cent for it.
Not sure why William Morrow would publish this instead of a whole new memoir. The original 2004 book is on the page here in small print, then footnotes are added like it's the Holy Bible. Anything they couldn't get permission for is redacted, blacked out. Along the way Wheaton tells a few stories, contradicts himself often, brags a whole lot, but mostly he complains, as he did in the original autobiography. When Entertainment Weekly reviewed his 2004 book they titled it "Whiner of the Week" for good reason--this is just an egotistical Hollywood child star who throws tantrums about his career or family and becomes an adult jerk.
While he tries to make himself look better in this annotated edition, what he actually does is magnify his giant insecurities and inabilities to write well. No matter how hard he tries to tell us he's a good writer (and he tries hard) he's simply not. Unless you think instruction manuals written by tech geeks are great prose.
This is a mess that shouldn't have been published in this form and needed a good ghost co-writer to turn it into something worth reading. Not sure who would pay to read 434 pages of rehashed navel-gazing and self-justification regarding comments made almost two decades ago, but I got it at the library and would recommend you not paying a cent for it.
March 10, 2024
I sooo wanted to like this book. I started listening to the audiobook and realized I simply couldn't do it. Every footnote was read and it got repetitive. And it's long - 24.5 hours long. I appreciated Wil's honesty and he's an excellent writer but the constant apologies got to be a bit much. I switched to an ebook via my library hoping it would get better. Nope. The essays at the end could have (should have?) been a separate book or scaled down. I basically skimmed the last 150 pages because I was tired of reading this long memoir. Also, in some, not all, but some of the essays - it was the same message. Again, could have been scaled down. The book did have some good points and being a fan, again, appreciated his honesty. Overall, this book just didn''t do it for me.
April 18, 2022
Wil Wheaton proves he is much more than Wesley Crusher in 'Just a Geek' and although this updated and annotated edition may appear to be a retread of a book written at the turn of the century, the notes add insight and clarity on events which were still raw or hidden at the time of initial publication.
If readers have already bought 'Just a Geek', the notes themselves are worth the price. If this is the first encounter, buy 'Still Just a Geek'. It's not necessary to buy both titles, unless you want to reward Wheaton twice.
If readers have already bought 'Just a Geek', the notes themselves are worth the price. If this is the first encounter, buy 'Still Just a Geek'. It's not necessary to buy both titles, unless you want to reward Wheaton twice.
April 23, 2022
It took me a few day to process this book before I could write my review. I have been a fan of WW since ST:TNG. Call it a middle school crush. He kinda fell out of my radar for several years until I started Following Jenny Lawson- The Bloggess. She wanted a picture of some other celebrity doing some task, but ended up with a picture of WW collating paper! It was genius and had me scouring the internet for more on WW. Then he showed up on Big Bang Theory, and my favorite SciFy network shows, then he had his own SciFy network show�..I was in geek girl heaven!
I knew from his blogging that he was thrown into acting by his parents. I knew he was a HUGE advocate for mental health awareness. I knew, from Facebook he was also an advocate for rescue animals.
But this book� oh wow. It gave me a little anxiety. The depths of his sadness and fear and self-doubt were palpable. The fact that he has been overcoming all his traumatic experiences and healing himself is inspiring. The love he has for his chosen family is beautiful. The relationship with his TNG family which he welcomed back into his life is beautiful. The ferocity with which he discusses the de-stigmatization of mental health issues is admirable.
He may not have had the fame and celebrity of some of his peers, but he did not allow the horrible fates of some of his other peers to happen to him. He seems to be in a very genuinely happy, balanced place.
And that’s exactly what you would want for an “old friend.�
I knew from his blogging that he was thrown into acting by his parents. I knew he was a HUGE advocate for mental health awareness. I knew, from Facebook he was also an advocate for rescue animals.
But this book� oh wow. It gave me a little anxiety. The depths of his sadness and fear and self-doubt were palpable. The fact that he has been overcoming all his traumatic experiences and healing himself is inspiring. The love he has for his chosen family is beautiful. The relationship with his TNG family which he welcomed back into his life is beautiful. The ferocity with which he discusses the de-stigmatization of mental health issues is admirable.
He may not have had the fame and celebrity of some of his peers, but he did not allow the horrible fates of some of his other peers to happen to him. He seems to be in a very genuinely happy, balanced place.
And that’s exactly what you would want for an “old friend.�
November 2, 2022
This has been such a profound and meaningful read. I threw my head back and laughed at his nerdy references, I've cried with him over trauma, I even suffered a few minor panic attacks as he's described his anxiety and depression. It's been a wild ride. I know I don't know him, but I'm still so proud of him. I'm proud that people like Wil Wheaton are out there, thriving despite many hardships and making the world a better place.
April 30, 2022
I really like Wil Wheaton (starting with that is probably not a good thing). I listened to the audio book. It is over 20 hours long! This first half of the book is Wil annotating his book “Just a Geek�. The second half he annotated a bunch of stuff he has written since.
I am 67 years old. If I was to annotate my diary I did not write when I was 29 years old in 1984, I sure I would be horrified. It is not surprising that Wil was horrified by what he wrote when he was 29. So, he says so. Alot. And repeatedly. Too much. My problem here is not that he apologized for being a jerk at age 29 (I think he could have given himself a break), his unforgivable sin was that he kept repeating his horror and disgust over, over, and over. The other thing is he has some serious issues with his parents, which he talks about alot. For good reasons, he is seriously pissed off. This is just me, but I didn't really want to hear how angry he is at his parents, again, and again, and again. I really struggled with whether to stop reading or not. I didn’t have read this stuff, but the other stuff was really good.
The second half of the 20 hours book (20 hours, really?) was much better, less horror at himself and less ranting about his parents. Except, the section about the movie “The Curse�, trigger warning about child abuse, that section is really rough. In the audio book, his unrestrained emotional response to this section is hard to take. It is good, but hard to listen to.
He does do some really fun stuff, like his pretend argument with his editor. I suspect his foot notes on his footnotes on his footnotes will really annoy people, but I liked it. In the audio book he takes it to another level by adding audio only footnotes to the footnotes on the footnotes. He says that reading the book helped him deal with his issues. You hear that happen, as he read for 20 hours. Twenty hours!
The best part of the book is to witness him learning to stop worrying and come to love Star Trek.
In the end, I really struggled with this book. Was the good stuff worth his endless self-recriminations? Was the good stuff worth watching the horrible train wreck that is his relationship with his mom and dad? I don’t know, but I finished the book.
I am 67 years old. If I was to annotate my diary I did not write when I was 29 years old in 1984, I sure I would be horrified. It is not surprising that Wil was horrified by what he wrote when he was 29. So, he says so. Alot. And repeatedly. Too much. My problem here is not that he apologized for being a jerk at age 29 (I think he could have given himself a break), his unforgivable sin was that he kept repeating his horror and disgust over, over, and over. The other thing is he has some serious issues with his parents, which he talks about alot. For good reasons, he is seriously pissed off. This is just me, but I didn't really want to hear how angry he is at his parents, again, and again, and again. I really struggled with whether to stop reading or not. I didn’t have read this stuff, but the other stuff was really good.
The second half of the 20 hours book (20 hours, really?) was much better, less horror at himself and less ranting about his parents. Except, the section about the movie “The Curse�, trigger warning about child abuse, that section is really rough. In the audio book, his unrestrained emotional response to this section is hard to take. It is good, but hard to listen to.
He does do some really fun stuff, like his pretend argument with his editor. I suspect his foot notes on his footnotes on his footnotes will really annoy people, but I liked it. In the audio book he takes it to another level by adding audio only footnotes to the footnotes on the footnotes. He says that reading the book helped him deal with his issues. You hear that happen, as he read for 20 hours. Twenty hours!
The best part of the book is to witness him learning to stop worrying and come to love Star Trek.
In the end, I really struggled with this book. Was the good stuff worth his endless self-recriminations? Was the good stuff worth watching the horrible train wreck that is his relationship with his mom and dad? I don’t know, but I finished the book.
March 2, 2023
Reading "Still Just a Geek" was one of the most complicated experiences I've ever had with a nonfiction tome.
On one hand, Will Wheaton has a compelling story of childhood abuse, mental illness, and reckoning with being a nationally-hated (for a time, seemingly) child actor on one of the most popular series--Star Trek: The Next Generation--of all time. "Shut up, Wesley!" and all that. I had heard some podcast interviews by Wheaton previously that were truly moving and led me to read this book.
On the other hand, "Still Just A Geek" is a very difficult read and struggles to convey Wheaton's story in a number of avenues:
-The proliferation of annotations--though of course sort of the point here--makes reading a slog, as you are constantly jumping around visually and watching for the various annotation marks. It took me twice as long to finish this 400-pager than something of a more traditional layout.
-There is little structure to "Still Just a Geek", forcing the reader to sort of slog through until the very end to get the entire gist of the message. There is no nice arc or theme here. The information you take from it is more based on sheer attrition than anything overly narrative.
-Wheaton strongly espouses his personal/political beliefs in a way that may have been acceptable or even endearing during a Trump administration or pandemic but will not age well--I don't think--going forward. While expressing a desire to write the perceived wrongs of the original "Just A Geek" book, Wheaton is wildly inconsistent in that task.
Like I said, I truly do believe that Wheaton has an inspiring story to tell. Sadly, "Still Just a Geek" isn't up to the task. I'd give it 2.5 stars if able, but have to round down for the reasons given above.
On one hand, Will Wheaton has a compelling story of childhood abuse, mental illness, and reckoning with being a nationally-hated (for a time, seemingly) child actor on one of the most popular series--Star Trek: The Next Generation--of all time. "Shut up, Wesley!" and all that. I had heard some podcast interviews by Wheaton previously that were truly moving and led me to read this book.
On the other hand, "Still Just A Geek" is a very difficult read and struggles to convey Wheaton's story in a number of avenues:
-The proliferation of annotations--though of course sort of the point here--makes reading a slog, as you are constantly jumping around visually and watching for the various annotation marks. It took me twice as long to finish this 400-pager than something of a more traditional layout.
-There is little structure to "Still Just a Geek", forcing the reader to sort of slog through until the very end to get the entire gist of the message. There is no nice arc or theme here. The information you take from it is more based on sheer attrition than anything overly narrative.
-Wheaton strongly espouses his personal/political beliefs in a way that may have been acceptable or even endearing during a Trump administration or pandemic but will not age well--I don't think--going forward. While expressing a desire to write the perceived wrongs of the original "Just A Geek" book, Wheaton is wildly inconsistent in that task.
Like I said, I truly do believe that Wheaton has an inspiring story to tell. Sadly, "Still Just a Geek" isn't up to the task. I'd give it 2.5 stars if able, but have to round down for the reasons given above.
May 22, 2023
This is Wil Wheaton's attempt at apologising for some of the now-regarded-as-un-PC things he wrote in his blog which was collected in his memoir Just A Geek. I never read that book so I don't feel cheated reading this one as it rehashes the original memoir but this time with footnotes. LOTS of footnotes that contain lots of apologies from today's Wil Wheaton for the words used by his younger self. Nothing controversial, in my opinion, but today's easily offended cancel culture may disagree. Most of it regarding the use of 'gay' to stand in for 'lame' or 'dumb' and also the objectification of women.
I never knew he was exploited by his own parents. They took his money from his Star Trek and and other jobs and spent it on themselves. He had to beg to them for money which they loaned to him with interest! Child actors cheated by their own parents are nothing new in Hollywood but it's still shocking to find out. Good for Wil for turning out just fine (not without a few bumps on the way)
The 2-star rating is because this book is not that interesting even though I've never read the original memoir and therefore this is all new to me. Sure there are chock full of anecdotes but they are mostly written in the footnotes which I found annoying (the tiny font didn't help). After a while he sounds like a broken record; apologising for everything he wrote more than 20 years ago.
A kind of book that you browse through while waiting for the dentist to see you.
I never knew he was exploited by his own parents. They took his money from his Star Trek and and other jobs and spent it on themselves. He had to beg to them for money which they loaned to him with interest! Child actors cheated by their own parents are nothing new in Hollywood but it's still shocking to find out. Good for Wil for turning out just fine (not without a few bumps on the way)
The 2-star rating is because this book is not that interesting even though I've never read the original memoir and therefore this is all new to me. Sure there are chock full of anecdotes but they are mostly written in the footnotes which I found annoying (the tiny font didn't help). After a while he sounds like a broken record; apologising for everything he wrote more than 20 years ago.
A kind of book that you browse through while waiting for the dentist to see you.
August 30, 2022
Wil Wheaton revisits his book "Just a Geek" and annotates it and adds content to create "Still Just a Geek." If this type of memoir became a whole subgenre, I'd be all in. It was fascinating to listen to someone basically speaking to himself from 20 years ago and acknowledging how he's changed, learned, and challenged his own beliefs.
Wheaton reads the audiobook, so it's a visceral experience. He laughs, cries, and adds a bunch of audio-specific asides.
Wheaton reads the audiobook, so it's a visceral experience. He laughs, cries, and adds a bunch of audio-specific asides.
October 22, 2022
DNF... I just... don't care
July 11, 2022
I have never seen Star Trek the Next Generation. I did force myself to watch the first season of the original Star Trek series. It was OK, but I am by no definition of the word a Trekkie. I first encountered Wil Wheaton on Slashdot many years ago. I knew he was known for acting in Star Trek, but he was just a geek back then who was on the website Slashdot where I got most of my tech news. He later popped up again on the Big Bang Theory. I thought his character on that show was pretty funny. He is also one of the kids in Stand by Me, which is a film based on the Steven King book The Body. I explain this to set the context for why I read this book in the first place.
This is not an amazing light hearted book about geeks. Although Wheaton is actually a very witty author. He continually tosses light hearted inside jokes to the computer geeks and board game geeks out there. The first part of the book is an apology for his original book. He published a bunch of his blog entries quite a few years ago under the title "Just a Geek". He had some incredibly insulting and misogynistic takes back then. He clearly has grown up quite a bit (haven't we all). He takes the brave move to not remove any of the really insulting thing that he wrote in the original book. He owns them and sincerely apologizes that he ever felt that way or said those things. It doesn't make up for having said them, but it is the best he can do after he learned to be better.
Honestly, parts of this book are difficult to read. He talks about how his parents exploited him and his sister and how they basically spent all of the money he earned as a child actor and made him take loans from them on the money that he earned. His mother and father exploited and abused him over the course of his life. He has now severed ties completely with them. It sounds like he is in a happier place now, but it hurts to see any human go through that sort of thing.
There are times when reading this book that you wish you could just give him a hug and assure him that there are other people out there that will love you and take care of you. He is very open about his mental health struggles, and he has been a positive voice for mental health advocacy.
I liked this book. If you have ever compiled your own kernel, or if you used to get your news from Slashdot, then this book might be worth it for the nostalgia trip. There is a decent amount of foul language in this book. If that is not your thing definitely pass on this one.
This is not an amazing light hearted book about geeks. Although Wheaton is actually a very witty author. He continually tosses light hearted inside jokes to the computer geeks and board game geeks out there. The first part of the book is an apology for his original book. He published a bunch of his blog entries quite a few years ago under the title "Just a Geek". He had some incredibly insulting and misogynistic takes back then. He clearly has grown up quite a bit (haven't we all). He takes the brave move to not remove any of the really insulting thing that he wrote in the original book. He owns them and sincerely apologizes that he ever felt that way or said those things. It doesn't make up for having said them, but it is the best he can do after he learned to be better.
Honestly, parts of this book are difficult to read. He talks about how his parents exploited him and his sister and how they basically spent all of the money he earned as a child actor and made him take loans from them on the money that he earned. His mother and father exploited and abused him over the course of his life. He has now severed ties completely with them. It sounds like he is in a happier place now, but it hurts to see any human go through that sort of thing.
There are times when reading this book that you wish you could just give him a hug and assure him that there are other people out there that will love you and take care of you. He is very open about his mental health struggles, and he has been a positive voice for mental health advocacy.
I liked this book. If you have ever compiled your own kernel, or if you used to get your news from Slashdot, then this book might be worth it for the nostalgia trip. There is a decent amount of foul language in this book. If that is not your thing definitely pass on this one.
March 15, 2024
Holy Shit! Can I give this six stars? I really wanna give it six stars. I'm giving it six stars!
Yeah, this was an amazing read. Far far better than I ever expected it to be when I picked it up. I really didn't know a lot about Wil outside of his famous roles. I've never been to his website. Never knew about his writing, or any of the cool stuff he's done in more recent years outside some audiobook narration. And I certainly didn't know much about his personal life. That last one is probably the thing that makes this a great book. Well that, and listening to him take the time to own up to what he wrote over 20 years ago.
This is a book all about personal growth, and it is raw and emotional and it just makes me want to give him a huge hug. Sure, there are good times too. Lots of laughs and heartwarming stories are in here as well. You can really tell that he has led a very messed up life at times though, and listening to this can be really hard sometimes. I'm really glad he took the time to do this, and that I took the time to read it though.
I think that might be the best thing about this book. Reading it has opened my eyes to some things in my own life that I really should address that I never really noticed, or wrote off as other things, or ignored, or whatever else I would tell myself these issues are when they crop up, and I'm glad he did that. He is an advocate for mental health awareness and treatment, and he says a few times in the book how he hopes that writing this will help others. Well, it did, and I am so thankful for that. I think I'm finally ready to admit I have something that needs addressing and make a phone call I've feared for a long time.
So yeah, he probably will never see this review, but still, thank you so much, Mr. Wheaton. You've given me the confidence I've needed for a long time to seek the help I probably need.
Yeah, this was an amazing read. Far far better than I ever expected it to be when I picked it up. I really didn't know a lot about Wil outside of his famous roles. I've never been to his website. Never knew about his writing, or any of the cool stuff he's done in more recent years outside some audiobook narration. And I certainly didn't know much about his personal life. That last one is probably the thing that makes this a great book. Well that, and listening to him take the time to own up to what he wrote over 20 years ago.
This is a book all about personal growth, and it is raw and emotional and it just makes me want to give him a huge hug. Sure, there are good times too. Lots of laughs and heartwarming stories are in here as well. You can really tell that he has led a very messed up life at times though, and listening to this can be really hard sometimes. I'm really glad he took the time to do this, and that I took the time to read it though.
I think that might be the best thing about this book. Reading it has opened my eyes to some things in my own life that I really should address that I never really noticed, or wrote off as other things, or ignored, or whatever else I would tell myself these issues are when they crop up, and I'm glad he did that. He is an advocate for mental health awareness and treatment, and he says a few times in the book how he hopes that writing this will help others. Well, it did, and I am so thankful for that. I think I'm finally ready to admit I have something that needs addressing and make a phone call I've feared for a long time.
So yeah, he probably will never see this review, but still, thank you so much, Mr. Wheaton. You've given me the confidence I've needed for a long time to seek the help I probably need.
September 11, 2023
I've always held a deep appreciation for Wil Wheaton the actor, which is where my fandom truly lies. Venturing into the realm of literature, specifically with this memoir, was a new side of him that I was eager to explore. While the narration undoubtedly showcased his journey with an overwhelming tone of remorse, it diverged from the persona I had grown to admire on screen. While it's undoubtedly commendable for anyone to reflect on their past actions and genuinely acknowledge mistakes, the continuous apologies, especially concerning the use of particular terms, felt a tad excessive. It almost seemed as though he was addressing weightier wrongs. There were moments in the narrative when he would spontaneously laugh, making myself feel slightly disconnected. The content, which predominantly felt like an extended apology tour, could have been streamlined. That said, his heartfelt sincerity and profound self-reflection were palpable, underlining the depth of his character beyond his acting roles.
November 11, 2023
I really appreciate getting Wil's insights into himself from 20 years ago, sometimes it felt a little like seeing into his therapy sessions, but for anything that you relate to, it's really cool* to see how he dealt with it before healing, and how he deals with things now, after doing the work.
A little bit seems like patting himself on the back, but you know, it's really hard to recognize your own trauma, and the bad coping mechanisms you had, and then changing them!
On another note, as a Star Trek fan, and media production nerd, I really enjoyed all the stories about the cast, production teams, and other behind-the-scenes stuff.
*cool is appropriate, though apparently there were a lot of discussions with the editors about over usage of "cool."
A little bit seems like patting himself on the back, but you know, it's really hard to recognize your own trauma, and the bad coping mechanisms you had, and then changing them!
On another note, as a Star Trek fan, and media production nerd, I really enjoyed all the stories about the cast, production teams, and other behind-the-scenes stuff.
*cool is appropriate, though apparently there were a lot of discussions with the editors about over usage of "cool."
November 27, 2022
All I can say is that it was an absolute privilege to read this book; to be given a glimpse inside Wil's head. This is an annotated and expanded edition of his original book (*Just a Geek*), and it is so refreshing to see someone, celebrity or otherwise, take ownership of the horrible things they said or wrote, to apologize for them, and to strive to be better. Finally, I believe this book is a triumph in the goal to destigmatize mental illness (and he says it *is* an illness, because illnesses are not our fault) and promote ways to lead your best possible life, despite battling these inner demons every day. (He also adds trigger warnings where appropriate.) He doesn't sugar coat it. It's real and it hurts and parts of it were tough to read because I wanted to reach through the pages and tell him it was going to be okay. But it was *honest* and *real*.
Despite not knowing him personally, having read this book, I am so proud of the man he's become. He's been through so much - he *continues* to battle his brain every day - and yet he says he's happy and living the life he wants. I really hope that whoever ends up reading this finds it as inspiring as I did.
Despite not knowing him personally, having read this book, I am so proud of the man he's become. He's been through so much - he *continues* to battle his brain every day - and yet he says he's happy and living the life he wants. I really hope that whoever ends up reading this finds it as inspiring as I did.
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