Sufficiently geeky for what?
For the taste of the poster making the accusation. If I recall aright, it was something to the effect that I was only pretending to be a geek (perhaps for the sake of a long-term, subtextual mockery of real geeks or the board) because any real geek would have more interest in and knowledge about video game culture than I do. I think it was because someone used a video game term in the context of a Cafe Society thread and I asked what it meant.
ETA: Anyway, my point is that there’s a subset of geeks who set up arbitrary standards to decide who is and is not in their club. That’s not unique to geeks. In the real world, I’ve been accused of being an Oreo (black on the outside, white on the inside) because I don’t care for rap music but love musicals.
If I remember right, I think you were baffled by a Mario reference. You’re geekier than practically anyone I know, but it was kind of jarring to realize you had zero gaming knowledge.
Dammit! First I find out I’m not a ‘geek’ because I don’t have encyclopedic knowledge about any given ‘geek’ topic, but now also no not ‘white’ because I have no interest in musicals! (or rap).
Seriously though, every group does this. ‘Banana’ would be the East Asian equivalent to your ‘oreo’.
When I played Everquest, I read message boards where people insulted players who played on PVE (Player vs Environment) servers instead of PVP (Player vs Player). Apparently people (me) on PVE servers are not hardcode enough and are ‘carebear’ players.
I’ve now also used up my quota of ‘scare quotes’ for today
Ah but it takes a special group to do this towards hot girls.
A ‘special’ group, yes
And how do you know that the beautiful woman wasn’t also harassed in middle school.
I was quite a looker at 23 and 24 when I went to SF Cons. (Well, went…ran, I was pretty involved). And I left because I “wasn’t a geek” Too pretty, too put together, too “corporate” (hey, I worked in a corporate tax department, fitting into a conservative environment was my paycheck). I wasn’t acceptable to the geeks.
When I found a D&D campaign in college, the DM killed off my character until I stopped showing up (having to reroll all the time sucks). Dying for falling off a log crossing a stream! Someone finally leveled with me - I was the only girl at the table, and an attractive girl at the table was something some of the guys just weren’t comfortable with. I found a home with the SCA geeks.
You have no idea what my junior high school years were like. Being “pretty” is not sufficient to be popular in high school - you also have to fit in. And geeks didn’t way back in the dark ages.
Its a huge kick in the teeth to not have a tribe in high school because your interests aren’t mainstream - then to find your tribe and not be accepted because you are good looking, of normal weight, and actually own and use a curling iron and makeup bag.
My friends tell me its changed - I went back a few years ago, and it really hasn’t. There is too much of this - judging women based on how they look and how they dress. My friends who tell me its changed - none of them were ever “too pretty” to fit in, frankly, they don’t know. An extra twenty pounds on me, and maybe I, too, would have fit in.
My daughter is fourteen and pretty (she’ll be drop dead gorgeous when the acne clears up, her hair doesn’t get greasy within a few hours of washing and she fills out a bit more - but by then it will be too late for the high school crowd to notice - and she isn’t willing to dress right and be interested in the right boys). She is also amazingly geeky. She’s been playing D&D since she was ten - with my husband’s friends and I. She’s running a game at a gaming convention. She is obsessed over Doctor Who. She wants a RUBY combat skirt and plans to learn to sew to get it. Someday, in the near future, she’ll be that drop dead beautiful woman doing cosplay at a convention that is written off as “not a geek” - On the plus side, her high school years are better than mine - because geek is no longer a four letter word.
This kind of thing does tend to take the fun out of geeky one-up-manship. Only a silly ass fails to recognize that geekdom is diverse and nobody can win in an unfriendly geekmanship contest of somebody else’s choosing. But that’s okay, because it’s not that personal. Or its not supposed to be.
I’ll tell you why this happened, from the perspective of someone sitting at the other side of a table like that. Your presence was a reminder of what they couldn’t have. A good analogy would be that they were starving and you were a delicious looking piece of food, sitting there just beyond reach.
And before someone blurts out “sexism, women aren’t supposed to be objects, blah blah blah” : it isn’t a conscious level of thinking. All those men’s brains have dedicated sections of circuitry that will constantly harass them with signals that cause these behaviors.
Now, we do live in a civilized world. Those men didn’t assault you or even say anything out loud. But, subconsciously, it was unpleasant for them with you around.
Good grief, dude, stop digging.
Stipulate that you’re right. You know what? Some of us men manage not to be total assholes to pretty women. You know what you call those men? I don’t know either, but it sure ain’t “virgin.”
These guys, they looked at a woman who they were attracted to, and their response was to attack her via the most pathetically passive-aggressive mechanism I’ve ever heard of: they told their DM to kill off her imaginary character. Yes, I’ll blurt out sexism, because that’s sexist and moreover incredibly pitiful.
“Immature sexist douchebag” conveys pretty much the same information, in a lot fewer words.
Such a vicious cycle. Shunned because they don’t interact with girls in a healthy manner. Don’t interact with girls in a healthy manner because they’re shunned.
Project much? In the first place, why would they assume they “couldn’t have” her? (if by “have,” you mean, “actually have a shot at going out with her,” not “jumping her bones”–that’s an entirely different situation). I’d say that’s more their problem than hers.
Okay, she’s attractive, and attractive girls/women aren’t that common hanging out among gamer geeks. But if one does hang out with them, maybe that means that she (gasp) enjoys the games, and isn’t the shallow beauty/bitch that they might think she is? That maybe she might actually enjoy being with a geek guy, assuming he, you know, washes and treats her like a human being instead of a “female”?
It is possible that a pretty woman who gives a damn about her appearance might also actually possess a brain and a love for geeky pastimes (and geeky guys). It happens. Admittedly it’s not super common, but it happens. And some of them even realize that geek guys have a lot going for them (smart, usually loyal, good job prospects, likely to actually give a damn about what their partners want). If that makes a guy playing games with her uncomfortable (assuming she hasn’t done anything overt to encourage this feeling) then I’d say it’s his problem, and his own insecurity thinking he’s “not good enough” for her and turning that into “she’s making me uncomfortable, so I must shun her!”
I’m just telling you how it actually is. You can make up whatever bullshit you want. It’s kinda obvious why evolution would build male brains to work this way.
Evolution builds male brains so they’ll be dicks to and outright shun attractive women that they don’t think they can “have”?
You can’t argue with science.
Habeed, you appear to have rolled a natural 1 on your argument check. At this point I would suggest you withdraw, avoiding attacks of opprotunity.
You’re telling me that evolution has built male brains to, when confronted with a female with whom reproduction would be advantageous, act in ways to drive the female away?
No, actually, that’s not obvious.
What’s obvious is that some dudes are able to access the part of their brain that evolution equipped them with to deal socially with other members of the species. Our incredibly fine social skills are a big part of what separates our species from every other species out there, especially our Theory of Mind, that part of our brain that allows us to recognize other folks as individuals much like ourselves. What’s obvious is that some dudes can do that even when they’re sexually attracted to another member of our species.
And what’s obvious is that some dudes are so fucked up with self-pity and a case of “The world owes me” that, when they’re sexually attracted to another member of their species, they turn into raging assholes.
Weirdly, those dudes tend not to reproduce so much. They’re something of an evolutionary dead end.
Also:
awesome!
Which is why people like me have a responsibility to realize we’re terrible people. I don’t think I have social skills, which makes it a grievous sin to be around people in general. Nobody deserves to be subjected to me. This is why I have to take care to only shop at places with self checkouts for instance, once I didn’t eat for 3-4 days because my local supermarket got rid of them and I had to find a different one so that I didn’t have to burden a cashier with my presence. It’s also why I purposefully told all my friends I couldn’t be their friend anymore, because I’m bad and toxic and harmful. When I do talk to people in real life I make sure to hurt myself when I get home to make up for the pain I likely caused the person I talked to just by interacting with them.
But for me, it’s not just pretty women or whatever, it’s everyone, it’s what terrible people like me have to do.
Some humans just don’t have social skills, and interacting with someone entails inflicting harm on them. And it’s up to people like me to take responsibility for that and politely withdraw from society so we don’t harm others.