#WTF: Kevin's Kephalonomancy is Kontagious

Playing Hard To Get/Easy To Lose: Science Isn't A Fan (Part 1 - The Courtship Phase)

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet Kevin. I found him on craigslist, kinda like how I found that half eaten bag of pretzels, and last Friday's booty call. Casual encounters, FTW! He's hilarious, and smart ... and little elves dance in his footprints as he walks. For the record, I've made two of those facts up. </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Kevin Herman

Most of the shit I’ve written about thus far has revolved around psychological findings normally touting one bit of folksy wisdom over another after a very boring, lab-controlled or qualitatively observed grudge match between two hulking, clumsy axiomatic giants (“opposites attract vs. birds of a feather” --- FIGHT!) duking it out in the archives of civilization’s collective wisdom for the title of reigning champion o’ truth.

I didn’t remember until this morning that I’d forgotten a series of studies whose hypotheses didn’t resemble that at all --- no, they were more like if David ambled up to the Goliath - in this case, a widely accepted, undisputed cardinal rule of courtship - loaded a dinky stone into his sling, noticed that he’d brought a proverbial knife to a goddamn Giant fight, and proclaimed “shit” before going to Plan B and just launching a motherfucking cruise missile (of SCIENCE!) from a nearby naval destroyer instead. But once the smoke cleared...well it was a lot like in Independence Day when they tried to nuke the spaceship from the outside: the big bad notion of ‘Playing Hard To Get’ was still just chilling, totally unfazed, shrouded by some sort of direction-sensitive force field that conspicuously resembled back-issues of Cosmo and every romance movie or novel ever made. While a sort of disgusting number of studies have repeatedly debunked the myth that women should play hard to get, that shit seems to be as pernicious and eternal as the herp. Also much like the herp, the majority of women aren’t actually figurative carriers of the strategy, but some still mistakenly swear by it.

It’s sort of understandable, although also kind of disastrous: men and women are cognitively not nearly as different as a no talent, inexperienced hack with a mail order PhD from an unaccredited university who thinks the golden era of gender relations was the 1950’s would have you believe, but boy’s and girl’s minds aren’t exactly carbon copies of one another either. One of the big goals of psych research into interpersonal relationships and attraction is teasing apart the vast similarities from the unexpected differences, and then figuring out just what “different” even entails from quirk to quirk to overcome that nigh troublesome male/female communication barrier. Problem is that most people don’t read scholarly literature or peer-reviewed journals, and a lot of the info is too dry, obtuse, or clashing with conventional wisdom to distill for mass consumption. So instead, we humans tend to deal with unknown or uncertain situations by looking to others for cues or just filling in the blanks with something similar or analogous that we *do* know --- it’s quick and dirty, but most of the time it’s good enough.

Fact: when a GUY plays hard to get, it’s actually pretty effective. It doesn’t seem like a huge stretch, then, for a girl to assume that if it works one way, it’ll work the other. Or maybe she has no idea what to do, but her co-worker Sheila - a self-proclaimed expert on men and devout reader of Cosmo - tells her what will ‘drive a man wild,’ and she’s like well shit, at first glance that sounds pretty reasonable.

The problem with said girl’s ‘just reverse the polarity’ logic is that, as about a few major studies per decade since the 1970’s have pointed out - *this* is one of those crucial differences between men and women’s perception and reaction to certain social stimuli.

Basically - in experiments, when dudes played it uninterested, mysterious, and emotionally unavailable, this had the forbidden fruit effect of actually augmenting a female participant’s interest. In different experiments where the sexes were reversed, chicks were instructed to act either ‘easy to get’, ‘selectively hard to get’, or ‘always hard to get’ (this last condition being the equivalent of the dudes in the aforementioned experiments). As one might expect, the chick that implied she had interest in pretty much every dude ever came in last with 7% of the guys’ thumbs up. So what about the always hard to get chick? A whopping 8%, and was characterized not as ‘mysterious’ or ‘intriguing’ but ‘cold’, ‘aloof’, and I can imagine at least one ‘probz a gay’. O-Oh, Sheila... what hast thou *wrought*. Even the two women who had *no information provided for them whatsoever* came in with 10% and 15% approval rates, which is kind of a slap in the ladyballs for the hard-to-getters. Miss Selectively Hard To Get? 60% ftw.

From a collection of summaries, the take home points: First off - this obviously only really works if you’ve actually decided on one dude that stands above all the rest in your mind and you want him specifically. The “selectively hard to get” woman is the one who may be superficially flirty with other suitors but ultimately turns them all away (which is to say plays legit hard to get) while being naturally (read: not clingingly) receptive to the attention and woo-age of Dude Prime --- this has the effect of making it clear that the girl is appealing and in demand, but has opted to grace said guy and said guy alone with the privilege of her affection; the effect this can have on a dude is...intoxicating, very touching, and consistently boosts and/or maintains his interest. Guys like to feel special too; this accomplishes that quite handily. Additionally, women who play selectively hard to get are characterized as having the positive traits of the ‘easy to get woman’ and none of the bullshit of ‘hard to get women,’ -- namely that they come off as “popular, warm and easygoing, but not demanding and difficult.”

When faced with a consummate hard-to-getter, I’ve either just assumed they weren’t interested and taken my business elsewhere - or worse, realized they *did* have some interest and that I was an unwilling participant in a goddamn mind game for the benefit of their self-worth, ego, or powertrip and huffily taken my business elsewhere because fuck them. Maybe I need to just “sack up and play the game, man” but I have neither the time nor the inclination, not to mention I do have a modicum of self-respect (a strange condition many are afflicted with) that prevents me from wanting to play doormat.

But hey - what about that 8% of dudes who loved the hard-to-get chick? What about those guys who routinely rise to the challenge and get off on being endlessly spurned and made to work incredibly hard for their prize? Well, when you use terms like “challenge” and “prize,” it starts to sound a lot like a conquest, which I assume is bad.

Thing is, you’ve met this guy many times or heard your friend crying about him being “only in it for the thrill of the chase.” For these guys, the thrill factor is directly proportional to the challenge, and the hard-to-getters are the goddamn D-Day invasions of courtship. Even worse, sometimes when they *do* stick with a relationship, they can be emotionally abusive, manipulative, and volatile because - oh shit! - they love mind games, much like the one they gleefully played to get the hard-to-getter in the first place. Or maybe he’s not that guy at all - maybe he actually *is* just a masochistic Hollywood-type protagonist that will weather the rebuffs and emotional punishment for his uninterested dream girl, which...in real life comes off as less romantic and more just creepy and/or pitiful.

[Next week: why inducing jealousy or acting aloof even past the courtship stage is a tactic still heavily favored and - due to similar crucial sex differences, doesn’t work out exactly as planned. Which sucks, because *in* a relationship, the stakes are much higher and the consequences can be...brutal.]

#nerdsunite

For more of Kevin’s politically incorrect verbal incontinence, follow him on Twitter or check out his like, completely legitimate astrological operation at Fiehard.

#WTF: Kevin's Kephalonomancy is Kontagious

The Matching Hypothesis: Half-baked Implications for Proverbial Ugly Ducklings and Nerdy Girls.

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet Kevin. I found him on craigslist, kinda like how I found that half eaten bag of pretzels, and last Friday's booty call. Casual encounters, FTW! He's hilarious, and smart ... and little elves dance in his footprints as he walks. For the record, I've made two of those facts up. </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Kevin Herman

I’m pretty sure I angered H’Ttp-U’rl, baleful god of the internet, by warping his time and space with textual clusters so unnecessarily long and dense with syntactic buttfuckery and semi-fictional lexicon for the past few weeks, but...eh, here we go again.

There were a few topics floating around that I considered rambling on about, but given how pretty much all my posts have basically thus far been slipshod psychology lectures thinly veiled by boner jokes and one attempt to get you very drunk...well, not really gonna break the mold with this one.

I talked a lot in the ‘Geek Chic et Moi’ compendium about ‘Similarity’ and its statistical importance to the survival of a relationship - mostly in terms of attitudes (or in the case of my li’l nerds, interests as well) - but it actually goes a little deeper...or I guess shallower, really, than that. Lo, “The Matching Hypothesis”.

To reiterate: yes, birds of a feather seem to flock together in terms of intangibles like attitudes - but study after study after study since 1966 have noted a similar trend in the physical realm as well. Yeah, we all know and/or have seen a short, dog-faced 4 walking hand in hand with a statuesque 8 --- but by and large, self-perceived 7’s are subconsciously predisposed to shacking up with other 7’s, 5’s with 5’s, and *sigh* 10’s with 10’s (give or take a “point” in either direction). And in those major point disparities, there’s usually a good chance someone’s income is making up the difference. The good news - statistically, an immaculate personality can *also* help tip the scales; but unfortunately still not as much as hawtz will for chicas or “resources” will for dudes.

Evolutionarily and just like...generally, it makes sense: You date too far *up* - you’ll develop an actually justified jealousy and paranoia that your partner could (and may) easily do way way better than you that leads to stress and subsequent resentment; you date too far *down* - you may start to feel like you settled, begin harboring resentment as such, and then feel even shittier and stressed when no matter how often or strongly you demonstrate your love, you can’t get your boo to drop the annoying jealous, paranoid, ungrateful little shit act.

Excess stress kills both people and relationships. Evolutionarily that stress came from the thought that either *she* would secretly bone a dude with a bigger club and have you raise his offspring, or that *he’d* decide to shower a much hotter Neanderthal babe’s kids with his resources. It was literally an issue of genetic fitness and survival. Now it’s mostly just steady access to poon, comfort, and companionship that’s at stake.

This isn’t to say we don’t find ourselves consistently attracted to 8’s, 9’s, and 10’s no matter where we fall on the spectrum; I find Olivia Wilde and Yvonne Strahovski to be some of the most attractive women, like, *ever* - but distinguishing between “being attracted to” and “wanting a relationship with” is crucial. According to theory, despite the Destroyer-of-Worlds-class boner these women give me, some part of my brain just KNOWS they are not suitable mates because - shit, even suspending the fucking retardedness of the idea and imagining that one (or both :D) decided to call me theirs (for more than one torrid, amazing night) - I’d live in a state of perpetual crippling anxiety that they’d eventually realize the huge mistake they’d made; knowing this, my brain says “fuck *that* noise,” pre-emptively killing any motivation to even *want* to make that happen.

I mean, it’s a bad example since famous people have delusional (and often unattractive) fans constantly proposing to them from their azalea bushes right before the cops arrive, but the point is that in a non-celebrity scenario, when faced with someone we find stupefyingly attractive, our mind seems to do some quick and dirty math regarding the short AND long-term odds based on our self-perceived attractiveness, fostering or inhibiting the motivation to pursue accordingly.

On its own the hypothesis is pretty nifty, but a question I kept putting to my professors that none really had an answer for was thus: how does a *sudden, drastic shift* in one’s physical attractiveness affect their dating patterns?

Like, let’s say you have a “She’s All That”-esque scenario where dorky, largely ignored girl whose consequent self-perception puts her at a 4 suddenly shoots up to an 8 in the eyes of others. While I’m sure the newfound attention would *eventually* push her self-perception up to an 8ish, realistically there’s gotta be a transition period where she still feels drawn towards other 4’s who now - while finding her incredibly beautiful - won’t feel as viscerally drawn to her. At the same time, she’s receiving attention from the hypothetical Freddie Prinze Jr’s (just...go with it) but it registers as...I mean, almost *alien* to her; and despite her objectively thinking “yes, he is really fucking hot,” and *knows* she should want to date him, her ‘motivator’ hasn’t overcome the mental safeguard against doing so yet. It’s like some lonely, fucked state of quantifiable-attractiveness limbo.

It’s just something I was wondering because, hell, I feel like it happens more often in real life than one might think, and doesn’t even require the ugly-duckling/beautiful-swan transformation. I know plenty o’ young beautiful yet nerdy women who just kind of sat idly on the romantic sidelines until that weird time either late or post-high school when the guys suddenly realized “oh, shit, yeah we totally *do* like smart chicks now,” at which point those girls (much to their confusion) spontaneously found themselves super in demand, seemed sort of overwhelmed by the attention, and were kind of unsure how to react to it.

For many it was a turbulent transition; thrust as it were, fresh-faced and well behind the learning curve into the middle of a battle between the sexes that had been raging amongst their peers since long before they arrived, with hardened veterans - calloused by experience and versed in social nuance - already filling the ranks on both sides.  Some hit the ground running and performed admirably while learning - with curiosity, responsibility, and strength in equal measure; a few simply hid and removed themselves from the equation entirely; and others...lost both themselves and sight of who they were, abandoning caution and foresight, giving themselves over totally to the conflict and becoming an unrecognizable mess devoid of dignity in the process.

It’s a hell of a thing. It ain’t easy being nerdy.

#nerdsunite

For more of Kevin’s politically incorrect verbal incontinence, follow him on Twitter or check out his like, completely legitimate astrological operation at Fiehard.

#WTF: Kevin's Kephalonomancy is Kontagious

Geek Chic et Moi (Part III-2 - THE DARKEREST SIDE): KEVIN HERMAN AND THE BREASTLY SHALLOWS - THE (I PROMISE) FINAL BATTLE.

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet Kevin. I found him on craigslist, kinda like how I found that half eaten bag of pretzels, and last Friday's booty call. Casual encounters, FTW! He's hilarious, and smart ... and little elves dance in his footprints as he walks. For the record, I've made two of those facts up. </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Kevin Herman

[Part I; Part II]
[continued from Part III-I]

I’m far from being a thundering ocean of self-confidence; if anything I’m more akin to a sippy-cup covered in errant chunks of infant vomit. Consistently ballsed up attempts at woo-age didn’t help that. The tendency to ‘settle’ seemed, then, to be the cornerstone of my real life dating strategy - one dictated far more by necessity than lax standards. But given how effortless it had been to grab the attention of some fucking badass chicks online and so *quickly* at that, a switch flipped and I found myself sitting with a shit eating grin on the opposite end of the spectrum, intoxicated with over-inflated confidence and likewise deluded about the extent of my ‘new found powers’  and thus the tool used to expedite and facilitate the dating process for young, busy folk became instead a search engine for ‘the one’ whose profile I was *sure* lurked just around the corner and that by golly, I had the strong jaw and verbal leverage to win her over.

By this mentality, I’d be remiss to go for these girls (who in real life were still *way* above my normal threshold) and settle for anything less than “perfection.” Obviously, this was a very wrong and wholly unjustified attitude to have, what with chasing the proverbial dragon - but there were more subtle processes in play that contributed to the stagnation and ultimate abandonment of my online adventure.

Ironically, several of the same classes mentioned in part III-1 also cited a watershed study published in 2000 (commonly referred to as ‘The Jam Study’) by a management professor at Columbia and a psychology professor at Stanford that basically confirmed the commonsense view that ‘less is more’ with regards to choice. There were a lot of different trials and conditions, but the biggie that most people tout as “the point” is that when presented with either 6 jams or 24 jams to purchase from, people in the 24-jam condition were *ten times less likely* to make a decision at all, and even if they did *they were consistently less satisfied with their choice than those who’d picked from the 6 jams*. Furthermore, the indecision/dissatisfaction only continued to get worse with each additional choice tacked on.

So yeah - imagine a dating site like OKC as...I mean, really the most literal manifestation of ‘the dating market.’ Also assume you have plenty of what we’ll call “buying power” or “social currency” or something, and attractive prospects are the analogous jam. Aaaand in this particular type of market, you’re not dealing with 6, or 24, or even 30 jams --- there are potentially *hundreds* of jams sitting on the shelves, with new jams “signing up” and blinking into existence at a jarring (ZIIIIING!) rate.

Unless you have Jen’s brass-balled resolve and übermenschlich energy to systematically go through and actually give a staggeringly high proportion a shot, there’s a *really good* chance your decisional abilities will just freeze and you’ll pick none. And even should you finally settle on one of a bajillion sexy jams to go on a date or two with, again, there’s a good chance that the “what if?” aspect of every other prospective jam may knock your sense of satisfaction down a few pegs, and in turn the lower satisfaction may be mistaken for *confirmation* that someone “more satisfying” is out there among the other choices, causing you to abandon your current pursuit --- it’s a ridiculously vicious, self-sabotaging cycle.

I mentioned before that no one “jumped out at me” or gave me the impetus to move forward with them, and there are a few theories that make me go lightbulb about why. One that I found really intriguing was put forth about experiential vs. search goods to explain why online dating can be unsatisfying for many (I’m not going to explain it, just check out the link/video if you’re physically dying of curiosity) - but there’s a more recent study that I think handily deals with that disappointing lack of romantic ‘oomph’ in both my online excursion as well as my dating life at large. And it all boils down to expectations.

Whenever I’m put in a situation where the ‘pursuit of romance’ is the express and active purpose - like a blind date, first date, or accosting someone online for a date - said ‘pursuit’ seems to fizzle out after a few dates assuming it doesn’t just hit a brick wall on Date #1. The few times something *has* evolved into an actual relationship has been totally accidental and with no initial romantic intentions; relationships that happened only in the absence of thought about relationships. This sounds familiar, I’m sure - people fucking love the cliché that you’ll find love when you’re least expecting it - and oddly, there seems to actually be some scientific weight behind it.

It’s pretty simple: if you do something with the lofty expectation and purpose that it *will* foster happiness (through love for instance), not feeling immediately as elated or awesome as you’d hoped can almost always make you feel *even worse* than before. Basically, dating prodigious numbers of people with manic gusto is totally kosher as long as you’re saying ‘que sera, sera’ (and congrats - you are far more courageous and fun-loving than I); but if you’re in a place where you’re *seriously banking on it* bringing you love and consequently happiness - there’s a decent chance you’ve already cognitively fucked yourself out of that being the outcome. (← Ahhh, this sounds much more my speed.)

Strongly anticipating happiness from something is ironically one of the best ways to prevent it from providing just that. Happiness does its own autonomous thang, yo; last time I was all, “Hey Happiness, I’m gonna do this thing and you’re gonna meet me right after, kay?” it just walked up, put a cigarette out on my forehead, and walked away.

In the end, after three weeks of obsessively OKCing and becoming more and more single minded about what I wanted to get out of it (aka - a soul-mate wife co-captain harbinger of happiness person) I shut the whole operation down. For a lot of people, a dating site like OKC can only help, but I realized that for someone like me, it just hyperfocused my relationship-sabotaging neuroses into a single outlet. Since project’s end I’ve just kind of drifted along, dabbling casually in things of a romantic nature without me saddling them with what I now know are self-destructive emphases and expectations. Just having fun, enjoying myself, and feeling a billion times better and more comfortable. If something comes about, so be it, and if not - *shrugs* - meh. Knowing what I know now, maybe I’ll even give OKCupid another shot in the future and do it “right.”

Or maybe I’ll just succumb to cholesterol from my latest phase of foodie-adventures revolving around the best burgers I can find in Los Angeles and die in a greasy ball of delicious glory.

Either way, in the words of Hank Moody:

“The sun is chirping, the birds are shining, the water's wet. Life is good, sweetheart. Life is good.”

#nerdsunite

For more of Kevin’s politically incorrect verbal incontinence, follow him on Twitter or check out his like, completely legitimate astrological operation at Fiehard.

#WTF: Kevin's Kephalonomancy is Kontagious

Geek Chic et Moi (Part III-1 - THE DARKEREST SIDE): The THRILLING(ly Tepid) ALMOST-CONCLUSION (or) Neurotic Fun With Online Dating!

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet Kevin. I found him on craigslist, kinda like how I found that half eaten bag of pretzels, and last Friday's booty call. Casual encounters, FTW! He's hilarious, and smart ... and little elves dance in his footprints as he walks. For the record, I've made two of those facts up. </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Kevin Herman

[Part Un; Part Deux]
[Note: Pulling a Deathly Hallows on this shit as Part III is currently pushing 2300+ words, so...here’s Part III-1, to be followed soonish by Part III-2]

I first breathed life, prose, and deceptively flattering photos into the annals of OKCupid hot on the heels of five or six unsuccessful forays into the world of dating and romance in as many months. I’d originally settled on a time-out, a period of unadulterated “me” time to seriously reevaluate my approach when it came to selection and courtship, when my bffl casually suggested I give OKC a shot.

Her reasoning was that when approaching women in a bar or other public space, my tendency to get nervous, stammer, and ultimately give way to shrieking like a rabid howler monkey in wide-eyed terror (frothing uncontrollably and soiling myself in the worst case scenario) could be unsettling to women, and even if they were impressed/terrified by my animalistic displays of dominance and lack of medication enough to give me their number, I *definitely* did not possess the skills or confidence to coax that thread into even the infant stages of dating. A lot of this stemmed from my being really wary of dumping what was for me an INSANE amount of effort and energy into puttin’ the proverbial moves on someone I wasn’t even sure I would be compatible (see part 1) with to start.

I’m deathly allergic to uncertainty and ambiguity - two things that I’m sure you’re all aware are the basic flora and fauna of the dating world. My bffl pointed out the obvious - online dating eliminates a *lot* of this. Yes, people may add an inch (heh), shave a year, or pad their income a bit, but contrary to the popular wisdom that every other hot chick is a bald 40 year old dude covered in a fine layer of cheeto dust and dry semen, studies have shown that the comfortable anonymity afforded by the degree of separation actually causes folks to be more honest and forthright about the important shit.

I probably would’ve written the idea off entirely, but the suggestion happened to coincide with the death throes of my undergrad career, a time in which an oddly high proportion of my classes happened to be discussing the mainstream acceptance of online dating and research done to date, as well as the completion of my senior thesis - a 42 page qualitative study on romantic behaviors and beliefs of bar and coffee shop patrons; it was long and convoluted, but for our purposes, the take home point was that should your social or work circles fail to provide a sacrificial lamb for your emotional antagonism, the online market is your best bet.

Sooo...yeah, my life had basically become a living Match.com ad complete with statistics and testimonials. Combine all that with the fact that - let’s face it: you may have noticed that I’m a retardedly verbose motherfucker, and being charming in *digestible* sound bytes seems like an important ability in making a good first impression on a hot stranger. It’s like verbal hot potato - the “moment” gets exponentially more awkward with each additional second you continue speaking, and I am supreme allied commander of letting the awkward grenade go off in my hand.

But online, that’s not necessarily the case. Online, that enormous liability can actually be levied as a geeky honey pot to those you want to attract and terrifying textual minefield to those you don’t. My lexophilia borders on the pathological; it uncomfortably toes the line of being a fetish. I wasn’t entirely kidding on my profile when I wrote “it’s a short jump between wordplay and foreplay for me.” Actually I was mostly kidding - but I do find wit to be crazy sexy, and the ability to turn a phrase to denote wit, so...er...okay, maybe not kidding. If a girl doesn’t place a premium on literacy and the wherewithal to string cogent sentences together (in a guy), she’s probably not for me and conversely, I’m probz not for her.

Point is - my novella length profile was a pretty accurate presentation of who I am, what I like, and how I typically express both those things: with lots of words and haphazard metaphors. At its most basic, sure - it was a laundry list of basic info and interests - but more importantly it was written so that in theory someone who digs wordplay, reading, and my *specific* geeky interests as much as I do would hopefully enjoy it and respond in kind with some arousingly witty banter and ideally an offer for pre-coital Mario Kart or Borderlands. All that compatibility, uncertainty, and wasted effort bullshit I was so worried about? Boom. OKC obviated the *shit* out of it.

Aaand after two days nothing happened.

The bffl recommended that maybe I try a picture that was more “smiley” and less “hollow psychopath,” which I hesitantly did, and *sweet rabbit balls*: It was like opening the proverbial floodgates, and really quickly I had more messages/responses from h0t n3rd grrlz waxing eloquently geeky with suggestive undertones than I knew what to do with. I’d gone from “real life” where I’d be lucky to come across the geeky/attractive/interested-in-me combo once in the span of a year at best to entering this...like...Bonertopia Per Nerdium in googly eyed wonder. And really, from that point on, the utopia parallel applied quite nicely.

“Hi, my name is Kevin, I’m 24, and I enjoy laughter & yoga!” Except it was more like the Bioshock “Rapture” kind of utopia in which, unfettered by societal constraints and granted the opportunity to demonstrate its previously suppressed greatness, man’s true nature instead kind of skullfucked the pooch and twisted the noble idea into something amorally twisted and dark. The entire timeline of which I managed to condense emotionally into a 3 week period from the innocent-kid-in-a-candy-store vibe to the figurative writhing mass of murder, insanity and decay.

I mean, in reality it’s slightly less fucked up than it sounds. In the right hands and right attitude, OKC has enormous power as a tool to find like-minded young folk you may otherwise never cross paths with. I think I went into it with the right stuff, but the relative ease with which options just up and availed themselves...uh...awoke something in me. Something *dark*. The people that had gotten in touch were almost all very cool, many of whom were also very definitely attractive. Still, none quite...*jumped* out at me - and this is how something snapped and I went from plainly grateful that the community was so receptive to going full goddamn J.S. Steinman.

To be continued...

#nerdsunite

For more of Kevin’s politically incorrect verbal incontinence, follow him on Twitter or check out his like, completely legitimate astrological operation at Fiehard.

#WTF: Kevin's Kephalonomancy is Kontagious

Geek Chic et Moi (Part II - THE DARK SIDE): DAS GEEKLUST! (Or) Sweeping Generalizations Based on Anecdotal Evidence!

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet Kevin. I found him on craigslist, kinda like how I found that half eaten bag of pretzels, and last Friday's booty call. Casual encounters, FTW! He's hilarious, and smart ... and little elves dance in his footprints as he walks. For the record, I've made two of those facts up. </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Kevin Herman

Last week I did how I thusly do, gettin’ all pensive and theoretical and shit about Geek Chic, some potential sources of its appeal, and why for ein male übergeeken such as myself, the female geek’s existence is not only awesome, but potentially vital.

I mentioned before how the idea of a woman with a supermodel physique and JPL physicist’s brain (and Lego collection) cropped up in the media in the 90’s, making the quick hop from plausibility to full blown acceptance within the space of a few years. With the exception of a few cable networks that pride themselves on glorifying the rich and stupid as well as the asinine minutiae of their daily lives, beautiful women who are strong, smart, and even silly are prominently represented across all mediums of entertainment.

Ubiquitous as they may be, however, the novelty still has yet to wear off - for geeky women, this isn’t bad news; in fact, it literally means that the awesomeness with which male geeks in particular regard their female counterparts can *still* be likened to that of a pulse rifle that ejects donuts in lieu of spent shells with each shot and repeatedly tells you how good looking and socially competent you are.

But said awesomeness and novelty is not without consequence - in the face of something as masturbatorially epic as an ego-stroking genocidal donut gun, people who are as prone to obsession and worship as geeks are tend to promptly lose their shit, forgoing all reason and discount any peripheral information; in this example the mind is blown and just fixates on the concept of the fucking sweet weapon, not immediately processing the fact that it is in one of the seven scaly, gnarled hands of NonConsensualon, the Violator from the Nerd Rape VII system.

In a more...identifiable scenario, male geek encounters an attractive girl who does something that betrays her identity as a geek/nerd - uses a ten dollar word, alludes to a video game, implies graphic novel readership, or whatever - and from that point forward she could talk about her dissociative identity disorder, kleptomania, dangerously unstable temperament, or *all of them combined*, but since the aforementioned nerd-alert trigger temporarily overwhelmed the poor guy and rendered his train of thought into a broken “HOTGEEKBOOBSAWESOME” [HGBA] loop, it’s like raining punches on a Vicodin-addled person in a vibrating recliner - assuming they even register the blows, they may just think you’re contributing to the massage and give you a drooly smile. The seemingly hypnotic power that implying you’re a geek can have on the male populace and bending them to your nerdy will seems...well, IS kind of badass, but guys’ proneness to “blind geeklust” can *sometimes* have two repercussions that are kinda unfair for you. Geek ladies, you may be the victims of your own excellence:

1) “HE NEVER LOVED ME, HE ONLY LOVED MY GEEKINESS!!!”
We all know at least a few geeky dudes that excitedly jumped into relationships that they knew on some level would be bad for them or for which they were emotionally ill-equipped (in many cases with the girl expressly and honestly spelling out the potential pitfalls and personal issues upfront) later admitting that yeah, they knew what was up but had a lapse in judgment due to the big shiny *GEEK* in the pros column, figuring anything else was a reasonable price to pay. In light of the honesty and balls it may take a girl to be genuine and not conceal that kind of shit in the hopes that the guy will accept them for who they are, making the decision to shoulder the good and insufficiently-considered bad while blinded by geeklust is just very stupid of the guy and horribly unfair to the girl. On the flip side, sometimes it isn’t an issue of turning a blind eye to the caveats, but the formation of unwarranted expectations, such as when there is a failure to...

2) Define “Geek”
Everyone, except apparently the producers of the Big Bang Theory, seem to recognize that the term “Geek” is pretty amorphous and doesn’t really mean anything without context - most people these days won’t assume that because someone reads graphic novels, they must also play World of Warcraft or are virgins, or that someone really into sci-fi is automatically a Japanophile. Geeks can get pretty cranky when someone does stereotypically reason that “If Geek, then a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, etc.” Yet when faced with the nigh legendary hot female geek, some geeky guys will do just that --- in our defense, though, it’s not out of a desire to deride or be malicious, but out of geeklust induced excitement.

You say ‘nerd,’ his eyes glaze over as his mind slips into the HGBA cycle, and suddenly his unrealistic expectation (“earnest hope,” really) is that you *do* automatically love all things geek - or at least specifically all things geek that *he* loves. If so, you're now unfairly saddled with expectations you either can't or have no desire to live up to, regardless of your immediately elaborating on your particular geekdom that is objectively pretty fucking far removed from his own or not (remember, the HGBA cycle has disabled the processing of any further information you provide). In the geekverse, saying “we’re both geeks” is like saying “we’re both from Los Angeles,” and ensures about the same level of platonic or romantic compatibility. When male geeks deal with other male geeks, this seems obvious and they don’t just assume they’ll be best buds --- but when confronted with a hot female geek, logic goes out the window and that otherwise useless, very broad, loosely defined term can suddenly become his raison d'être for why you in fact *belong* together... Until he realizes much later that you don't actually share his undying passion for Yu-Gi-Oh! cards -- even though you never, ever said you did -- and withers from disappointment, I mean.

******
I’m guilty of having done #2 (heh), and know more than a few dudes who have done both and continue to do so. It’s not a common problem, though (I don’t think) - mostly just one for geeks of the highest order whose concepts of ‘like interests’ and ‘chemistry’ hover close enough to each other to be easily confused.

In an attempt to circumvent the problems of geeky regret or disillusionment, I myself engaged in a short, ill-fated excursion on OKCupid a while back. On one hand, it was awesome - on the other, it was *too* awesome and opened up an entirely different can of worms.

To be ensconced in a swath of bastardized behavioral economics and social psychology theories in Part III...

#nerdsunite

For more of Kevin’s politically incorrect verbal incontinence, follow him on Twitter or check out his like, completely legitimate astrological operation at Fiehard.