How to Date a Geek: Don't Be Yourself and Have No Respect for His Interests

I have more important things to be doing right now, but I simply can't restrain this impending geek rant any longer...

I love it when women write guides to why it's great to date a geek boy. I love it only because I take great pleasure in reading these "guides" and laughing in their face for all the stupid stereotypes they perpetrate and factually wrong things they cite. It's a never ending source of entertainment for me, and a new one seems to blip on my radar every few months. Yeah, one of these days I'll write my own, sure. :P

Today's victim is the "Girl's Guide to Geek Guys" by Mikki Halpin and Victoria Maat. The article opened well enough, and presented as a very sweet, respectful guide to dating geeks. But it didn't take me long to realize this was just another attempt at wit by a person who really doesn't understand geek kind as well as she thinks she does.

She had a list of "Why Geek Dudes Rule". This is one of the sections where the author's blatant stereotyping has gone through a thesaurus and come out far more PC. It's also one of the briefest.

What she says: They are generally available.
What she meant: They are desperate for attention from a real human woman; yes, even you.
The truth: There's no reason why the majority of geeks would be "generally available", unless you have a very limited perception of what it means to be a geek.

What she says: Other women will tend not to steal them.
What she meant: There's a reason they're desperate.
The truth: It's completely untrue, unless you have aforementioned limited perception. Most every geek boy I know gets tons of attention from the ladies, whether they're looking for it or not. And personally, I don't see why anyone would be proud of having a partner others would not desire.

What she says: They can fix things.
What she means: like most primates with opposable thumbs, they can use tools. Since we are talking about geeks here, we'll assume she means "things" of an electronic nature.
The truth: Did you know? Women, even non-geeky ones, also have opposable thumbs. If you break something, learn to fix it your own damn self. Either stop buying shitty products you don't understand or expect to shell out some money to one who can. Don't date a guy just because he will fix shit for you.

What she says: Your parents will love them.
What she means: These are nice respectable boys you can bring home to mother.
The truth: Not all geeks clean up well enough to look at home at your family's Thanksgiving but are super sweet. Other geek boys are total chauvinistic jackasses yet look dashing in a button-up. Think your dear mum would love either?

What she says: They're smart.
What she means: They're educated in areas unfamiliar to you, and that is impressive.
The truth: They're smarter than you, and since you're not a geek you'll probably grow to resent this. I've seen it happen.

Yah, once you take the quaint geeky stereotypes out of it, it's just a list of traits some guys have, geek or no. Way to generalize! She goes on to give this gem of advice:

Try wearing [a t-shirt with the logo of a software company] yourself and see if he strikes up a conversation.

Go ahead, obviously non-geek girl, give this tshirt test a whirl. Within 5 minutes your geek target will have you marked as an uneducated wannabe who obviously doesn't know what she's talking about, and is just wearing that shirt because you thought it was trendy. Protip: Pretending to be something or someone you're not is never going to land you in the perfect relationship.

But now we come to the point where I realized I HAD to write this post, a point that has been stewing in my head since I Stumbled upon this article last night before bed. Just... just read it:

If you're not up on your Star Trek, you can forget about getting or keeping a geek dude. And I'm not just talking vintage-era Captain Kirk and Spock either. You've got to be up on your The Next Generation, your Deep Space Nine, your Babylon 5. Armed with your own knowledge of Federation policies, you can better gauge when and how to act.

WHOA!!! Whoa whoa whoa, wtf, let's back the train up a bit; what did you just fucking say? Did you say, god I can barely type it... did you just say Babylon 5? In a paragraph about Star Trek?! You did! You dumb whore! I can't believe it. I just... no, I just can't talk about this right now. I need to go outside for a minute.

---

Okay I'm back. It's okay, I feel better now. I'm sorry I said such harsh things. But as a geek and an old-skool trekker, mixing that shite in with the entire collection of Star Trek is just blasphemous and so obviously uneducated. If this woman really is dating a geek, he must not love her enough to educate her on the differences. ANYway, where was I? Right, the Trek Factor. Um, honestly anything else I have to say about that paragraph is just geeky nit-picking and recitation of facts. Moving on...

The "Geek Lifestyle" section is again filled with advice not to better yourself as a person so that you are a better partner, but to just pretend to be whatever it is you think your geek boy wants, to just smile and nod your way through conversations that you could care less about. Seriously people, I cannot stress enough that that is no way to treat any partner, geek or no! If you can't show honest enthusiasm for your partner's interests, then you're just setting yourself up for a life of loneliness. Also, the author citing that her partner likes to unwind by playing Myst explains a lot about this article (e.g. it is old as fuck).

This is from the "Geek Buddies" paragraph:

The greatest thing about your geek's buddies is that you can feel secure in setting them up with your girlfriends. They may feel awkward around females at first, so don't overwhelm them. In time they will come out of their shell and realize that you are into the same things they are.

GOD, it just doesn't stop!! /cry Please, stupid non-geek girls, don't awkwardly force your equally vacuous friends on your geek partner's unwitting geek friends. You aren't in to the same things they're in to at all; that's why you just recommended using the smile and nod technique, isn't it? That's why you keep saying that to date a geek, a girl must at least know the lingo if she doesn't actually know what she's talking about? Geeks KNOW when you have no clue about what they're saying. They may date your friends, but only because it's easy sex.

Now, the Post-It Note. This jumps back into the Trek territory, but I promise it is nothing so painful as last time. No, this is about a simple exchange between husband and wife.

[S]he asked her husband which one he thought she was more like, Deanna or Beverly. Howard, the devil, immediately replied that he had always thought Victoria was actually most like Ensign Ro Laren, a cute character with a slight authority problem who is always had trouble.

Aww, that's sweet. Isn't that sweet? He thinks his wife is a troubled brat. But this is an obvious example of the sort of conversation you'll get between a geek and a non-geek. First, she limited him to only two choices, who were both some of the most stereotypically sexist characters in the series. After reading this paragraph, Makal chimed in with his own thoughts, completely without my prompting. This is what happens when you pair a modern trekkie geek with an old-skool trekker geek.

him: "I would be most inclined to compare you to Judzia Dax..."
me: "Awesome! I love Judzia, she was one of my favourite characters. *pause* If I died as Judzia Dax, and Dax came back in a man's body, would you go gay for me?"
him: "No."
me: "Really? Even if we just have butt sex?"
him: "Yeah I really don't like guy butt enough for even that."
me: "Awww. Well hey, why am I complaining? I have a cock now! We can go bang chicks together! Sweeeeeet. "
him: "Haha, yes, I'd Eiffel tower with you as a male Dax."

How could a geek girl complain when her partner compares her to a tattooed hottie with the consciousness of seven generations before her yet is still badass enough to weild a bat'leth? She just can't.

In case you need more reason that geek boys should stear clear of girls who can't hold their own on the geek level, I present this video, which Makal linked to me today. It is... very painful. I suggest you brace yourself.



SO MUCH WRONG. Does she really think that destroying the prize of his collection would encourage him to buy her a ring? WTF. I doubt he ever really wanted to marry her to begin with; it was probably just a casual conversation about marriage wherein she projected her own wants over whatever it was he was really saying, and he decided to just go along with it since he wanted to keep having sex. This video, my friends, is why a serious geek should never, ever date a non-geek. I hope he made her pay him full collector's value for that figure after he broke up with her.

For the curious: I did some research to see just how much money that figure was worth. There are some smaller, very similar versions you can buy on sites like eBay for ~$10 if you're savvy. But the size and flexibility of the piece made me think it was pretty damn special. Indeed; those bitches took bats to a 1:4 scale Speeder Bike and Scout Trooper figure produced by Sideshow Collectibles, one of a limited 1500. The figure she so nonchalantly quoted at "probably like a hundred bucks or something" cost $800 at the time of release; I wouldn't be surprised to see a serious collector paying upwards of $2000 for it now. Wouldn't that have bought a pretty ring?

Way to prove how much more mature you are, and how good you are for your lame geek boyfriend...

Geeks, please don't lower yourselves to such base standards. You deserve SO much better!