Geek Girls Lambast Prejudice in Music Video

[StewShearerOld]

Geek Girls Lambast Prejudice in Music Video


The Doubleclicks' Nothing to Prove plays tribute to the worlds many female nerds.

Despite the classic cliches of intelligence, nerdom still occasionally comes out with some stupid stuff. For instance, we're dumbfounded to tell you how the concept came to be, but somehow a bunch of people under the nerd umbrella decided that one of the pre-requisites for liking geeky things was the possession of a dangly bit between your legs. If you're one of the people who actually believes this, feel free to take a moment to find a blunt object and knock some sense into yourself.

If that fails to do the trick, you can try watching the video to the Nothing to Prove, a song by Adam Savage also appear, among others, to lend their support.

We're not going to harp on the stupidity of this whole thing for much longer. Others have already done <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6535-Fake-Nerd-Girls>exemplary jobs dissecting how and why the whole fake geek girl thing is about dumb as it comes. That said, we can't help but puzzle at why some would even want nerd-ism to be male exclusive. Personally we'd love there to be more women that share our joy of Star Wars and oddly shaped dice. It's just a bit easier to get past our crippling social awkwardness when we have things like the various ways George Lucas butchered the prequel trilogy as conversation starters.

Source: <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Rjy5yW1gQ>YouTube


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[Nickolai77]

I agree with the message behind the video- I would however like to see more debate about why the fake geek girl phenomena exists in the first place because it will shine some much needed light on geek culture itself. I think there's some quite understandable reasons for why geeks can be suspicious of certain girls (or anyone else for that matter who doesn't conform to the stereotypes) of getting into their protected sub-culture. That doesn't make it right, but the reasons for the problem existing is understandable.

 

[Easton Dark]

Uh... I don't think the term 'fake geek girl' means that women can't be geeks. It's about how some would lie about being fans of geeky things to be more popular, right?

So... uh... yeah.

 

[StewShearerOld]

Uh... I don't think the term 'fake geek girl' means that women can't be geeks. It's about how some would lie about being fans of geeky things to be more popular, right?

So... uh... yeah.

You're right to a point.

That said, many women who are genuinely geeks tend to get caught up in the emergent assumption that women who profess a love of nerdy things must be faking it. There exists, for many, an unspoken litmus test that you have to pass to count as a nerd. Being a woman is, for some, seen as a disqualification. In essence, while some are truly (and stupidly) angered by the idea of a woman pretending to be a geek for attention, others act as though women being nerdy at all is something absurd

 

[luvd1]

Awww, that was lovely. So this "fake geek girl" paranoia is real? There are actual men out there that fear women to the point of witch hunt? Really? The mire concept of the fake geek girl is ridiculous to the point of creationism. I don't even know where to start to argue with someone suffering from this thing.

 

[McMindflayer]

"fake geek girls" do exist. They are only found on the internet. It is a person, normally a woman, who is trying to add appeal to whatever they are doing by adding some geek items to it. Generally done through pictures, they will be scantily clad and in some sort of pose, holding a controller or what have you. They will add a tagline about how they are a gamer just like you, and you should totally click on their link or watch their show.

No woman browsing through a game shop or hanging out at a convention, or talking about Star Trek are fake geek girls. Fake geek girls don't have the time, patience or desire to do any of those things.


Side note: In forums, Fake geek girls will talk less about the topic at hand and more try to bring up that they are female, and hot. Geek girls generally don't reveal their gender unless the situation calls for gender to be known. why? because discussing the pros and cons of the 5th doctor is way more important than you knowing you are talking to a girl.(you know, like everyone else)

 

[Grabehn]

Funny enough, over here they do exist, and too damn much. I had to work at an "convention"(not the word I'd use for the size of these) and the amount of girls that approached the stand to talk instead of buying something was kinda hilarious, especially since it was basically reduced to "hey, Ima gamer gurl - what do you play? - f-facebook - suuure". And since the pick up didn't work they would just leave in silence.

Never worked at it again but I have gone to some events and the situation is pretty much the same. Which contrasts those that actually play games, and most are good at it.

 

[StewShearerOld]

"Fake Geek Girl Concept Destroyed by Music Video"

/facepalm.

No its not. All you've done is demonstrated that these particular women have some claim to geekdom. You've not demonstrated that fake geek girls don't exist, you've only demonstrated that real geek girls exist.

That's like creationist proving creationism, by trying to disprove evolution. Disproving one positive assertion is not evidence for a competing positive assertion.

The argument isn't that real geek girls don't exist, its that there are girls out there who are faking being geeks: The basics of logic folks. An again i am disappointed in the obvious bias shown by Escapist writers.

In hindsight, I agree that "destroyed" is too strong a wording. I tweaked it to be a bit more subtle.

 

[Abomination]

"Fake Geek Girl Concept Destroyed by Music Video"

/facepalm.

No its not. All you've done is demonstrated that these particular women have some claim to geekdom. You've not demonstrated that fake geek girls don't exist, you've only demonstrated that real geek girls exist.

That's like creationist proving creationism, by trying to disprove evolution. Disproving one positive assertion is not evidence for a competing positive assertion.

The argument isn't that real geek girls don't exist, its that there are girls out there who are faking being geeks: The basics of logic folks. An again i am disappointed in the obvious bias shown by Escapist writers. I get that biased joournalism sells more, but there is a point where ones bias becomes so silly, that you become the gaming version of faux news.

/applause

Beat me to it.

I dislike the video, not because it has girls proving they are geeky but because it has people in it who think they need to prove that they are geeky. It's the mirror opposite of the scumbags that would give "geek girls" pop quiz inquisitions at conventions to prove their "geek cred".

Fake geek girls are annoying and the real geek girls in this video are annoying for the opposite reasons.

 

[PH3NOmenon]

None of these women has their tits out in order to get a buck from a male dominated crowd or whore attention. I'm willing to bet none of them has ever been ousted as a "fake geek girl" and at most they've misconstrued someone asking them questions about a nerdy topic as a "geek check" while it was intended as a (socially awkward) attempt to initiate a conversation. The video is even slightly drifting into misguided feminism, "Girls can belong to this boy club! You can't stop us!" while, in my own experience, they aren't stopped or harassed.

The concept isn't too tricky to grasp is it? These women aren't exploiting the word geek.

"fake geek girls" do exist. They are only found on the internet. It is a person, normally a woman, who is trying to add appeal to whatever they are doing by adding some geek items to it. Generally done through pictures, they will be scantily clad and in some sort of pose, holding a controller or what have you. They will add a tagline about how they are a gamer just like you, and you should totally click on their link or watch their show.

No woman browsing through a game shop or hanging out at a convention, or talking about Star Trek are fake geek girls. Fake geek girls don't have the time, patience or desire to do any of those things.


Side note: In forums, Fake geek girls will talk less about the topic at hand and more try to bring up that they are female, and hot. Geek girls generally don't reveal their gender unless the situation calls for gender to be known. why? because discussing the pros and cons of the 5th doctor is way more important than you knowing you are talking to a girl.(you know, like everyone else)

That just about sums it up neatly.

 

[KeyMaster45]

In all my years of gaming, the fact that someone I'm playing with is a woman has been the most irrelevant thing. In fact, I find women players to be far more reliable than men. When it comes down to it though the thing that really matters is if the person tanking the Lich King in ICC 25 heroic mode has a stable enough connection that day to not d/c on the last 15% of the fight and wipe the raid, or if the the main raid healer is playing from their job at a corporate tech support center and has to go afk for 15-20 minutes at a time.

The only reason why I find myself even the slightest bit upset over the idea of a "fake gamer girl" is because I'm jealous they have found a quick and easy way to popularity, and I think that's the root of this problem. The subset of gamer guys angry over "fake gamer girls" are guys that are jealous they cannot attain that level of popularity with other men. No, that's not some back-handed jab at them possibly being gay[footnote]Though I do suspect they share a demographic with the type of people who shout "NO HOMO" like some kind of protective charm against cooties.[/footnote]; I think they're seriously upset at not being able to command the same kind of attention the "fake gamer girls" can.

 

[Yuuki]

If you're dumbfounded as to how the concept came to be, then don't take a wild (and completely wrong) guess at how the concept came to be. Really.

The whole anger against "fake geek girls" started when overly beautiful/makeup-wearing video blogging females who got most of their views thanks to what they put on display (often reffered to as "cam whores") started putting on glasses and claiming to be geeks. They brag about how much they own at CoD/Halo even though they've never even held a fucking controller, throw around technical terms which they have no clue about. All because being a geek has become fashionable over recent years, it's no longer something the cool kids get to shun and sneer at.

That's why females who were genuine geeks started getting hit by criticism, thanks to truly-fake "cam-whore" geek girls who are only doing it to draw attention. The pretend-geek females have hurt the faith/trust that geeks had in each other, directly hurting real-geek females.Yes it's unfair, yes it's stupid, yes it needs to end, but now you know why it came to be.

Nobody decided that being a geek required you to be male, geek girls have always existed and will always exist.

The bottom line is that nothing angers a geek more than someone who pretends to be a geek, or someone who throws around half-baked misinformation claiming to be correct. Gender is largely irrelevant to geek culture, it's more about elitism than anything else. It's cam-whore pretend-geeks who are to blame for the "fake geek girl" stigma.

 

[Jandau]

Meh, I've been shunned as not geeky enough by geeks and too geeky by everyone else my whole life. It's not just about male/female, it's about elitism in general.

 

[Easton Dark]

Uh... I don't think the term 'fake geek girl' means that women can't be geeks. It's about how some would lie about being fans of geeky things to be more popular, right?

So... uh... yeah.

You're right to a point.

That said, many women who are genuinely geeks tend to get caught up in the emergent assumption that women who profess a love of nerdy things must be faking it. There exists, for many, an unspoken litmus test that you have to pass to count as a nerd. Being a woman is, for some, seen as a disqualification. In essence, while some are truly (and stupidly) angered by the idea of a woman pretending to be a geek for attention, others act as though women being nerdy at all is something absurd

It's not stupid to be offended by someone lying to you to get something. I think that's the reasonable part.

I don't get why it's a big deal for people with girls though.

I met a girl at college, claimed she'd left her Xbox 360 at home because she'd have been playing it all the time instead of studying. I asked her what she does now, then. She said she plays things on PC like Minecraft and what was then called The War Z. I didn't feel like I needed to question her about anything. I was like "that kind of defeats the purpose of leaving your system home, then", and not like "Oh I'm so sure you left your 360 at home, poser". Just feel how douchey that sounds.

 

[rbstewart7263]

"Fake Geek Girl Concept Destroyed by Music Video"

/facepalm.

No its not. All you've done is demonstrated that these particular women have some claim to geekdom. You've not demonstrated that fake geek girls don't exist, you've only demonstrated that real geek girls exist.

That's like creationist proving creationism, by trying to disprove evolution. Disproving one positive assertion is not evidence for a competing positive assertion.

The argument isn't that real geek girls don't exist, its that there are girls out there who are faking being geeks: The basics of logic folks. An again i am disappointed in the obvious bias shown by Escapist writers. I get that biased joournalism sells more, but there is a point where ones bias becomes so silly, that you become the gaming version of faux news.

/applause

Beat me to it.

I dislike the video, not because it has girls proving they are geeky but because it has people in it who think they need to prove that they are geeky. It's the mirror opposite of the scumbags that would give "geek girls" pop quiz inquisitions at conventions to prove their "geek cred".

Fake geek girls are annoying and the real geek girls in this video are annoying for the opposite reasons.

ironically nothing to prove is in the title? lol very terribly ironic too. There are fakers in every subculture its just how it is. I dont think such a person needs to be ridiculed but welcomed into whatever the interest and encouraged to be themselves. then Ill bet that they still enjoy whatever hobby they were trying too hard to fit in with whether it be games or punk or sports or whatever.

 

[Something Amyss]

The gaming community then told them to shut up and make them a sammich, because gamers are classy like that.

Uh... I don't think the term 'fake geek girl' means that women can't be geeks. It's about how some would lie about being fans of geeky things to be more popular, right?

So... uh... yeah.

It's applied broadly, though, and really is a double standard pushing against a lot of women who really don't deserve it. The message therefore becomes "girls can't be geeks," or at least "girls who don't fit very narrow stereotypes can't be geeks."

This is the problem with taking things at face value, when clearly there's more to the picture than just the words themselves. It's sort of like a nation that was founded by people who dictated "all men are created equal," but were okay with owning one group of "men" based on their skin colour and origin and actively abused another to the point of near-genocide. And then, even later, they threw in abuse of yet another group based on skin colour and origin.

"Fake geek/gamer girl" only applies to girls pretending to be geeks/gamers" the way "******" is ONLY used to describe homosexuals.

I'm willing to bet none of them has ever been ousted as a "fake geek girl" and at most they've misconstrued someone asking them questions about a nerdy topic as a "geek check" while it was intended as a (socially awkward) attempt to initiate a conversation.

I'm willing to bet you're wrong.

Even that isn't accurate. If you want an accurate title it would be "Geek girls make big deal about there own gender. internet continues not to give a shit."

If you think that's accurate, you don't understand the concept of "not giving a shit." The internet is vdery obviously continuing TO give a shit. This topic kind of proves that, one way or another.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Oh, the new title is so much better. Round of applause. -_-

I'm kidding, it's still ridiculous. Then again, I don't think I'm the target audience. Maybe there are people who consider girls as not allowed. I just don't know any. But saying 'lambast prejudice' just validates the prejudice and makes an adversarial atmosphere, forcing these theoretical people (in the same way fake geek girls are theoretical to me) to stick to their guns.

 

[sethisjimmy]

"Fake Geek Girl Concept Destroyed by Music Video"

/facepalm.

No its not. All you've done is demonstrated that these particular women have some claim to geekdom. You've not demonstrated that fake geek girls don't exist, you've only demonstrated that real geek girls exist.

That's like creationist proving creationism, by trying to disprove evolution. Disproving one positive assertion is not evidence for a competing positive assertion.

The argument isn't that real geek girls don't exist, its that there are girls out there who are faking being geeks: The basics of logic folks. An again i am disappointed in the obvious bias shown by Escapist writers.

In hindsight, I agree that "destroyed" is too strong a wording. I tweaked it to be a bit more subtle.

Even that isn't accurate. If you want an accurate title it would be "Geek girls make big deal about there own gender. internet continues not to give a shit."

Please take the following in the most constructive way possible, because i can find no way to sugar coat what i'm about to say (possibly because sugar coating it would invalidate the message)

Here's an idea for an article... Its an article about a female in a geeky position, doing something geeky, in which neither the geeky thing, nor the article are about gender or femaleness: Thats something i'd be interested in reading. You know, an article that actually says something, about a thing that happened, an article that actually reports news, rather then than another one of these PC puff pieces, about some one screaming GIRL POWER RA-RA, while actually not contributing anything note worthy but more empty of content internet noise.

- How about an actual interview with some female creators about their job, how they got there job & how anyone wanting to follow her into that kind of posiiton could get that job.

- How about a profile on up and coming comic book artist regardless of gender, or game developers, or game artists, novelists, writers, etc etc.

But please, no more of this trash, because to be brutally honest, its this crappy kind of journalism that is leading people to hate female geeks... Because we are all sick of hearing about them: its just devolved into so much uniuntelligable noise, empty of content. But i don't expect you to take my word for it, go to google & type in the words Geek, girl & see how many search pages you need to go through before you can find an article or page in which isn't about gender. Because i can do the same with geek & guy and the first results are of use.

Doesn't that kind of tell us something.

Guys genders aren't brought up because it's automatically assumed that geeks are guys by default. But when a girl claims to be a geek, she's often attacked by the community, and has to jump through hoops to try and prove she's really a geek, which is ridiculous.

People aren't coming up with this topic out of thin air. Every day women are accosted and attacked online and off for being a part of a community full of boys club mentality misogynists.

You can try and ignore the issue and pretend it doesn't exist as you suggest, or you can report on talking points, and get people consciously making an effort to be decent human beings.

The goal shouldn't be to eliminate all notion of gender, that's unrealistic. We should simply aim to get people more accepting of differences in gender. As males, it looks like females are making a big deal out of something that shouldn't be a big deal in gaming. That's because males are by default accepted and left alone in the community. You're blinded by your own gender perspective. If you're a female, even if you try and hide your gender as best you can (which you really shouldn't have to), you're likely going to be called out on it and accused of being an attention whore or a fake geek. To put it simply, girls will stop making a big deal about there gender right after guys do. And that's just not going to happen unless more people become aware of the issue, and start talking about it.

You see it as an empty, cyclical conversation, I see it as working towards progress.