Are many of these folks really hygienically challenged, or is this a scurrilous and inaccurate stereotype?
It’s largely accurate, but over blown. In thier normal lives they are like everybody else, but once gaming-mode is switched on things things change. Once you start gaming, time passes really fast, And you don’t want to quit. In a good gaming session you can suddenly look up and realize you have been playing for 24-36 hours. And sitting in the same chair for 36 consecutive hours will cause the ass-sweat effect to build up to really nasty levels, but you don’t notice because it came up so gradually to you. The guy walking by the dorm lounge who suddenly opens the door and is caught off guard by it, deffinatly notices.
Plus there is the normal -con experience. Often 9 or ten guys will come into town and stay in the small apartment of a friend who lives there. The hot-water heater can not hope to compete with the number of peoplefor showers. Plus you get on an intense schedule, You game till 2:00 in the morning, eat, sleep till 6, then just up to run down to make it to your next game, repeat for 3 more days.Objectively speaking us gamers have some really fat people around. and fat people not taking showers isn’t really a good thing olefactotily speaking. It’s a fucking blast, and it’s just understood that the -com rooms will be a bit nasty. But once the -con is over and everybody goes back home they are about the same hygenic level as average non-gamers, but the poor innocent people who unexpectingly encountered the gathering are understandably disgusted by the situation.
As a cleanliness-conscious fan of some sci-fi and RPG I am inclined to submit ‘no’ as a reply.
Although I am only one person. I may be in the minority that consists of well-groomed geeks.
Depends. Walking through Comic-Con, the answer would be “Yes.” The reek can get intense sometimes. Walking through LosCon, the answer would be “No.” Clean, groomed, literate. Like anything else in life, there are gradations. Even the perky little Homecoming Queen is going to be a bit ripe after sweating in that gown all night! 
Maybe the geeks on my campus just suck but as far as I can tell, it has some basis in fact. It seems like their appearance just doesn’t concern them terribly. They wear the same styles of clothes that they wore in grade school, don’t cut their hair, let their acne go crazy and don’t appear to bathe too often. I think that most of them don’t even have any idea how awful they look. Doing dorky junk is clearly more important than such trivial things. 
I was at Carnegie Mellon from '89 to '93. Therefore I had the opportunity to observe every variety of geek in its natural habitat. I would say that this stereotype definitely has some basis in fact.
I’d guess that the majority of RPG and sci-fi types are non-smelly, but boy do you notice the smelly ones! And there were sure a lot of them in the Wean Hall clusters. Yuck!
I’ve been to many RPG and science fiction cons.
It’s an accurate stereotype. It’s not universal (I myself shower daily, for example), but it’s true far too often.
Once, when trying to explain to one of my friends that the gamers-as-sump-hole of humanity was false, we went into this comic book store and walked upstairs to the gaming room. Immediatley, our glasses fogged up and we couldn’t breathe, the smell of Little Cesar’s pizza and Mountain Dew farts overwhelmed us.
Sigh. Never before had a smell been palatable.
I hope like anything you mean “tangible” or some other word… because “palatable” is not what I would use to describe Mountain Dew farts.
“Palpable”?
Psst…Chairman…it’s palpable. Not palatable.
I go to a lot of science fiction conventions. Here I’m going to be speaking of fans over 30, since I don’t know the younger ones that well. They tend to be less concerned with fashionable dress than most people and are often a bit sloppy in their dress. More guys tend to have beards. They are generally more well-off than the average person though and have good jobs. They are sometimes heavy-set, but it’s not clear that it’s more true of them than of the average person. I’ve heard that the real distinction is that fat science fiction fans don’t tend to be ashamed of themselves the way fat non-fans are. Particularly in white-collar non-fan types, fatness is looked at as a disability and fat people are discouraged from being the person out front, so while there isn’t that much difference in average weight between fans and non-fans, you might notice the fat fans more. I think that this is also true of all sorts of natural funny-looking-ness, so that particularly thin, short, tall, disabled, or generally weird fans may also be more noticeable, but aren’t really that much more common. I think that fans are more tolerant of differences. I don’t know any fans who I would characterize as smelly and unhygenic.
I thought he meant something like this.
I, personally, don’t stink, but you can work up a good sweat ick when sitting rolling dice for three days straight.
I once walked into a comic shop and the smell was of mayonaisse way past its expiration date.
My boyfriend, who graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2002, just confirmed this. As a math major, he spent a lot of time at Wean Hall.
boyfriendIMname: as they said about the cs building
boyfriendIMname: at cmu, “what is that smell?”
boyfriendIMname: “oh, it’s always smelled like that”
Yes, he’s a geek - and he showers every day!
I’m a geek and I don’t think I smell, unless I’m coming home from the chem lab and at that point, I shower as soon as I can. Most of the gamers Iknow have reasonably good grooming skills, but a few don’t. The ratio seems similar to normal people.
Hmph. I’m female, a big-time RGPer, and I smell pretty. I shower daily, or at the most I skip one day.
I’ve noticed the problem much more in male-types…the handful of girls who I know participate in these things don’t seem to lose their girly cleanliness.
But you know what? As long as you’re clean, appearance etc., really are trivial. We have two much emphasis on what you look like in this society, your hair has to be cut just so, dress nice, etc., etc. The fact that I dress nice really doesn’t reflect on my personality if I am dressing neat! But you’d never know it.
Oh. You can see how it’s affected my life. The horror, the horror.
I attend both gaming and SF cons, and I’ve found that, sadly, as the amount of gaming goes up, the hygine goes down.
For reference see this
Actually, Redwing, I think this comic is even more appropriate, given the final line.