Geek Girls Lambast Prejudice in Music Video

[ninjaRiv]

No tits! What's the point in this video?!?

An Actual criticism: I couldn't read some of the signs...

Fake geeks do exists, though, it's just not limited to girls. I think geeky guys zone in on the female ones just because they seem the most obvious to them... Or something. But fake geeks are nothing more than people taking advantage of a fad. In fact, I think I've said this before...

I found the song kinda dull and whiney, too. But the message itself seemed fine to me, you really shouldn't bombard people with questions in order to verify their geek creds. If someone likes the Avengers movie but hasn't read any of the comics, don't yell at them; to offer suggestions on what comics to read. I thought geeks were supposed to enjoy doing that. I know I do. "Oh, you say you like Batman but you've only seen Nolan's trilogy?!? Well, I'll tell you something! You should read Year One, it's what Batman Begins was based on. I also recommend Dark Knight RETURNS, City of Crime, No Man's Land and Long Halloween. I think you'll enjoy them." That's how it should go. Kinda seems like a better way to get laid, too...

 

[Gorrath]

People whinging about fake game girls deserve to be roundly, soundly and mercilessly mocked. They deserve no respect whatsoever, and will get none from me. I like my hobbies becoming more inclusive. I like seeing cute girls dressing up like characters, and if they're doing it so that they'll get a thumbs up from me, more power to them.

In fact, I would much rather girls come to geeks and nerds for their attention needs (if they do need the attention) than to go for studs and athletes, who are far more likely to see the girls as nothing but prizes to be won, used up and then traded in for a newer model a few years later. Geeks and nerds are far more likely to actually appreciate girls trying to please us and more likely to try to please the girls in return, and so it is a better environment for them to try to exist in.

What the difference between that painfully shy 18 year old girl who comes to Comic Con or Fan Expo or whatever dressed as Rikku who is trying to get attention from gamers and nerds, and that painfully shy 18 year old girl wearing a micro-bikini top, a mini-skiry and stilleto high heels with the Michigan Wolverines colours, trying to gain attention from jocks, or coming to a rock concert wearing the same general outfit to try to get the attention of the band? Dressing up as Rikku gives the girl a chance to make a deeper connection to the objects of her attention - she can talk to us about Final Fantasy, about Japanese anime, about video games in general. Or we can talk to her about it, get her to understand what it is about the character we like, beyond the cute outfit.

What does the jock or the rock star have to talk about? How nice her tits are? How nice her ass is? How great she is at blowjobs? Maybe she has an appreciation for football and they can connect about football, or about music and they can talk about how much fun it is to play Stairway to Heaven while people around them are trying to tear their ears off. But let's get serious here - it not likely to be much more than a wham-bam-I'm-done-get-lost situation.

As a 'jock' I find most of what you have to say about people who play and enjoy sports to be just as bad a bunch of stereotyping BS as anything related to 'geeks.' As someone who has expressed concern with the damage people lying to emotionally manipulate other people can do, please, feel free to mock and ridicule me. I've probably been doing more 'whining' than anyone else in this thread about the problem, so please mock me as you desire. I would however appreciate it greatly if you could read and respond to the points in my posts as well, if that suits you. If not, have a field day. I can take it I'm sure.

 

[Tono Makt]

Ok, this is a question that people need to start answering before this conversation goes on any longer:

Do you or do you not have a problem with women getting grief because men often wrongfully assume that they don't know what they're talking about?

I absolutely abhor the idea of my peers (gamers and nerds) giving women and girls grief because they think the women and girls don't know what they're talking about.

I absolutely abhor the idea of my peers (gamers and nerds) giving women and girls grief because they find out that the women and girls actually don't know what they're talking about, and are looking for attention.

I absolutely abhor the idea of my peers (gamers and nerds) trying to have some sort of geek and nerd litmus test to try to keep people out of our hobby, regardless of who they apply it to.

Also, if you think that you have to take any of the things I have listed as irrelevant into consideration in order to properly address the question you are dodging the issue.

If you claim that this issue is in no way related to sexism, then you are dodging the issue.

If you feel the need to respond to this post telling me how I'm missing the point, or being inflammatory, or how I'm wrong (even though all I've done is ask a question), then you are seriously dodging the issue.

If you feel that the question I am asking isn't what this whole thing is about, then you are completely missing the issue and should go and do some research as to why people keep bringing this up in the first place.

Eh, I disagree slightly on some of these points. What you've listed as irrelevant may have some relevance to the issue at hand, though focusing on those points exclusively does miss the overall issue. It's like debating how many leaves are on each stem of a branch of a tree while we're discussing how the Emerald Ash Borer is destroying a forest full of Ash tree's. The number of leaves on each stem of a branch has some relevance (as a way of identifying tree's, for example) but the overall issue is the forest being destroyed.

Regarding sexism, I think we focus too much on the sexism aspect of it. It's there and it's a strong part of it, but I think the issue goes much deeper than Boys vs Girls. It's a part of the issue, sure, but I think it has more to do with the insecurities of the male gamers and nerds, seeing women who normally are attracted to the Alpha Male/Jocks/Rockers/"Cool Guys" coming and asking for acceptance with the Omega Males/Nerds/Geeks/"Losers" and thinking that they're being condescending. In some ways it could be like how many of us felt in school when a Cool Kid came to talk to us in math class and it ended up they were flattering us so we'd do their homework for them. That annoyed us to no end, regardless of the gender of the cool kid.

This question is NOT about the following topics:
Do 'fake' geek girls really exist?
Are 'fake' geeks girls annoying?
Are 'fakes' of any kind annoying?
Do people care about the issue?
Have you ever actually seen or heard of this happening to anyone?
Have you ever wrongfully given someone (of either gender) trouble for being a 'fake' in any context?
Anything to do with 'booth babes', 'cam whores', or women using their sexuality to get attention.
Any comparison to anything that happens to guys too.
Anything to do with the quality of the video.

Each of these questions can have some relevance to the topic at hand. They're all tree's in the forest, so to speak, so you can't look at the forest as a whole without looking at the tree's. Still, for the issue they should be PART of the discussion, not the discussion on the whole.

 

[Mister Chippy]

-snip-

Your question is simple and the answer is simple. No it is not okay to assume someone doesn't know something out of prejudice. Out of curiosity, since I've not seen anyone here claim that it is okay, what do you hope to gain by asking the question? As for the other topics you mentioned, they are irrelevant to answering your question, but they most certainly are not irrelevant to the causes of the issue and are worth discussing and analyzing in that context. There are other issues, problems and prejudices that are related to the fake gamer girl stuff and there is nothing at all wrong with talking about them.

The reason I ask the question is because while there are few people actively denying that the treatment female geeks get is a problem, there are plenty of people whose first response to any mention of it seems to be "But..." followed by some mention of many of the things I deemed irrelevant to answering the original question.

Yes, it's true that to fully discuss a problem people need to talk about all the little pieces that go into making it a problem in the first place. However the main issue of this problem is not the real 'fakes' and all that other stuff, but sexism, and that is something that just doesn't seem to get addressed as much as any of the other topics. Sure, people all say "sexism is bad" but because the problem exists in the first place (and I doubt that anyone actually thinks of themselves as sexist) we need to actually bother figuring out where the behavior comes from, and it's not from boob-tubers or boot-babes. That might be where the attitudes that perpetuate this behavior originated from, but that isn't where the behavior itself comes from.

The discussion currently seems centered around "This is what caused these attitudes in the first place" and while that might be useful to start discussing after the fact, right now it's a red herring. These attitudes are already here, and learning how they got here (and honestly I think it's more due to the response men give to so called 'attention whore' than the actual people themselves) isn't really doing much good if we don't bother looking at where those attitudes are currently coming from.

Frankly, the way the current discussion seems focused on why people dislike 'fake' geek girls is just plain old counterproductive, even if the attitude is "Well we're only talking about the REAL 'fakes', not the real geek girls." That just totally misses the point that it's REAL geek girls who are getting branded as 'fakes' and being given shit. Honestly, while I generally try my hardest to like people, I agree that people who pretend to know something they don't can be annoying, even if I try my hardest to educate them whenever I meet them. Thing is, focusing on the 'real fakes' just detracts attention from the issue at hand, which is that REAL geek girls are being treated with disdain because of these attitudes.

The fact that almost all the discussion on this issue circles back to 'real fakes' seems to show that we're not yet at a stage where discussing that actually makes sense. We need to actually confront the issue at hand instead of going around looking for causes, arguing about what makes someone a 'real' nerd or not, and bickering with one another.

 

[Gorrath]

The reason I ask the question is because while there are few people actively denying that the treatment female geeks get is a problem, there are plenty of people whose first response to any mention of it seems to be "But..." followed by some mention of many of the things I deemed irrelevant to answering the original question.

Yes, it's true that to fully discuss a problem people need to talk about all the little pieces that go into making it a problem in the first place. However the main issue of this problem is not the real 'fakes' and all that other stuff, but sexism, and that is something that just doesn't seem to get addressed as much as any of the other topics. Sure, people all say "sexism is bad" but because the problem exists in the first place (and I doubt that anyone actually thinks of themselves as sexist) we need to actually bother figuring out where the behavior comes from, and it's not from boob-tubers or boot-babes. That might be where the attitudes that perpetuate this behavior originated from, but that isn't where the behavior itself comes from.

The discussion currently seems centered around "This is what caused these attitudes in the first place" and while that might be useful to start discussing after the fact, right now it's a red herring. These attitudes are already here, and learning how they got here (and honestly I think it's more due to the response men give to so called 'attention whore' than the actual people themselves) isn't really doing much good if we don't bother looking at where those attitudes are currently coming from.

Frankly, the way the current discussion seems focused on why people dislike 'fake' geek girls is just plain old counterproductive, even if the attitude is "Well we're only talking about the REAL 'fakes', not the real geek girls." That just totally misses the point that it's REAL geek girls who are getting branded as 'fakes' and being given shit. Honestly, while I generally try my hardest to like people, I agree that people who pretend to know something they don't can be annoying, even if I try my hardest to educate them whenever I meet them. Thing is, focusing on the 'real fakes' just detracts attention from the issue at hand, which is that REAL geek girls are being treated with disdain because of these attitudes.

The fact that almost all the discussion on this issue circles back to 'real fakes' seems to show that we're not yet at a stage where discussing that actually makes sense. We need to actually confront the issue at hand instead of going around looking for causes, arguing about what makes someone a 'real' nerd or not, and bickering with one another.

I appreciate your through response, thank you. If I may though I'm confused by a seeming contradiction in one of your paragraphs.

You say " 'This is what caused these attitudes in the first place' and while that might be useful to start discussing after the fact, right now it's a red herring. These attitudes are already here, and learning how they got here (and honestly I think it's more due to the response men give to so called 'attention whore' than the actual people themselves) isn't really doing much good if we don't bother looking at where those attitudes are currently coming from."

Isn't looking at where these attitudes are currently coming from the same as finding out what caused these attitudes in the first place?

Also, I think the reason people are discussing the other stuff as opposed to the prejudicial treatment itself is because, by and large, everyone agrees it is wrong and a problem. With that established, what there seems to be disagreement on is the rest of the stuff. It is hard to have a lengthy conversation about something everyone agrees is an issue and that people should stop doing, it is much easier to have a lengthy discussion about causes and effects that people do not agree on. It's not that we are attempting to obfuscate the issue, we agree on the issue, it is the other issues where there are things to be ironed out.

Now I would disagree with you on one point, and that is the issue of sex. People, even on The Escapist here, call out all sorts of people for being fake. How many times do you see people mention 'CoD Dudebros' and the like? The fake gamer girl thing is related to all the other attempts to ostracize people that don;t fit the preconceived mold and there is a lot of crossover that has nothing to do with gender. Of course there is no one cause of the fake gamer girl thing either, and some of it is based in gender, some of it is based on exclusion, some of it is based on fear and suspiscion and probably a number of other things as well. What I'm saying is, is that gender is only a part of the issue and the reasons for the gender part of it don't all stem from out and out sexism either.

 

[major_chaos]

For all the complaining about it I see on this site, I have never actually seen a female be harassed as a "fake geek", not on the net and not in real life. Only time I have ever seen anyone called that it was the exact kind of people McMindflayer was talking about on the first page, and those are the kind of people who do very much come across as fake.

 

[Tono Makt]

People whinging about fake game girls deserve to be roundly, soundly and mercilessly mocked. They deserve no respect whatsoever, and will get none from me. I like my hobbies becoming more inclusive. I like seeing cute girls dressing up like characters, and if they're doing it so that they'll get a thumbs up from me, more power to them.

In fact, I would much rather girls come to geeks and nerds for their attention needs (if they do need the attention) than to go for studs and athletes, who are far more likely to see the girls as nothing but prizes to be won, used up and then traded in for a newer model a few years later. Geeks and nerds are far more likely to actually appreciate girls trying to please us and more likely to try to please the girls in return, and so it is a better environment for them to try to exist in.

What the difference between that painfully shy 18 year old girl who comes to Comic Con or Fan Expo or whatever dressed as Rikku who is trying to get attention from gamers and nerds, and that painfully shy 18 year old girl wearing a micro-bikini top, a mini-skiry and stilleto high heels with the Michigan Wolverines colours, trying to gain attention from jocks, or coming to a rock concert wearing the same general outfit to try to get the attention of the band? Dressing up as Rikku gives the girl a chance to make a deeper connection to the objects of her attention - she can talk to us about Final Fantasy, about Japanese anime, about video games in general. Or we can talk to her about it, get her to understand what it is about the character we like, beyond the cute outfit.

What does the jock or the rock star have to talk about? How nice her tits are? How nice her ass is? How great she is at blowjobs? Maybe she has an appreciation for football and they can connect about football, or about music and they can talk about how much fun it is to play Stairway to Heaven while people around them are trying to tear their ears off. But let's get serious here - it not likely to be much more than a wham-bam-I'm-done-get-lost situation.

As a 'jock' I find most of what you have to say about people who play and enjoy sports to be just as bad a bunch of stereotyping BS as anything related to 'geeks.' As someone who has expressed concern with the damage people lying to emotionally manipulate other people can do, please, feel free to mock and ridicule me. I've probably been doing more 'whining' than anyone else in this thread about the problem, so please mock me as you desire. I would however appreciate it greatly if you could read and respond to the points in my posts as well, if that suits you. If not, have a field day. I can take it I'm sure.

I probably will respond in a mocking manner to many of your points, once I get around to reading them. And I'm not to concerned that you're upset that I'm describing jocks in that manner as I was part of the jock culture in my high school, being part of football, soccer and hockey teams to the point where my fourth year of high school I got away with missing more than half of my classes because I was on the hockey team, we were a champion team and the school was quite proud of us. (I may have been a third line grinder and penalty killer in hockey, and a special teams player in football, but I was still on the teams) And at the same time, I was a gamer, a Star Trek nerd, a comics fan and a geek who got pretty good marks in the geeky subjects. Heck, I was even in the school band for 4 years and was one of the founding members of a high school jazz band. (I probably fit in so well with all three groups because everyone knew that the day I graduated from high school, I was leaving my home town and never going back, and that I didn't care to make either friends or enemies of anyone.)

So yeah. I've seen the way jocks treated the girls who swooned over them. I've watched as star high school hockey players have juggled two or three girlfriends at the same time. I've watched football players break up with girlfriends because suddenly a new girl has shown attention to them and they want to see if she's as good at giving blow jobs as the first girl. I've watched as girls who weren't suitably awed by the football team were chased out of parties by one group of players while another group called up other girls they knew because there were always more girls out there. I've listened to the locker room talk about which girls are easy, which ones aren't, which ones you can lead around with a smile and a few nice words and which girls to just not bother with. I've cringed as girls tried to ingratiate themselves to the jocks when it was painfully obvious that they had no idea what they were talking about. ("It was so awesome when you got that touchdown last night! The goalie was so faked out!" "... sure. Awesome, uh, to score that touchdown in last night's hockey game to win the game.") And cringed even more when the jock they were talking to was painfully condescending to her in return but he was paying attention to her so it was all right.

I'm pretty confident in my assertion of how jocks generally see women. Sure there are exceptions - me, for example. Though I'm not a positive exception because I didn't give a damn about anyone in high school, male or female. I wanted no ties and I have no ties. (You might argue that I was at least as bad as the jocks who saw women as disposable since I saw what was going on and didn't even try to put a stop to it. I don't think I could reasonably argue against that particular point.)

 

[Phrozenflame500]

As with before, I'd say innocent before proven guilty is probably the important thing here.

There's nothing wrong with chastising somebody for being an asshole, but assume he/she isn't an asshole until he/she proves otherwise so that way we don't have this problem.

 

[Mister Chippy]

-snip-

I appreciate your through response, thank you. If I may though I'm confused by a seeming contradiction in one of your paragraphs.

You say " 'This is what caused these attitudes in the first place' and while that might be useful to start discussing after the fact, right now it's a red herring. These attitudes are already here, and learning how they got here (and honestly I think it's more due to the response men give to so called 'attention whore' than the actual people themselves) isn't really doing much good if we don't bother looking at where those attitudes are currently coming from."

Isn't looking at where these attitudes are currently coming from the same as finding out what caused these attitudes in the first place?

Also, I think the reason people are discussing the other stuff as opposed to the prejudicial treatment itself is because, by and large, everyone agrees it is wrong and a problem. With that established, what there seems to be disagreement on is the rest of the stuff. It is hard to have a lengthy conversation about something everyone agrees is an issue and that people should stop doing, it is much easier to have a lengthy discussion about causes and effects that people do not agree on. It's not that we are attempting to obfuscate the issue, we agree on the issue, it is the other issues where there are things to be ironed out.

Now I would disagree with you on one point, and that is the issue of sex. People, even on The Escapist here, call out all sorts of people for being fake. How many times do you see people mention 'CoD Dudebros' and the like? The fake gamer girl thing is related to all the other attempts to ostracize people that don;t fit the preconceived mold and there is a lot of crossover that has nothing to do with gender. Of course there is no one cause of the fake gamer girl thing either, and some of it is based in gender, some of it is based on exclusion, some of it is based on fear and suspiscion and probably a number of other things as well. What I'm saying is, is that gender is only a part of the issue and the reasons for the gender part of it don't all stem from out and out sexism either.

Firstly, let me apologize for the confusion. That was poor wording on my part. "Where the attitudes are coming from now" was my poorly worded attempt to say "The current source of all this shit." Meaning where all the current sexism is coming from.

And yes, I will admit that this is not wholly a problem for women either. Instead it's a mix of the sexism and elitism so common in nerd culture. However, I feel that focusing on the sexism aspect is a good place to start, because as you said everyone agrees that sexism is a problem. However, quite a few people don't believe elitism is a problem, and if we try to tackle the elitist side of the issue first I think it's likely that people will just run into a brick wall, because after all saying elitism is bad sound a lot like saying "You aren't as special as you think you are." to some people.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

If anything, this makes me think that the ever-reviled Fake Geek Girl is a bit of an odd beast, a formless concept we profess to find at cons or in our own families or workplaces, but that's actually really difficult to properly define.

Oh, snap! A girl with a nice bod and Finn's hat and she doesn't play games and only is a dedicated Adventure Time fan? BURN THE HEATHEN! Oh, wow! A Trekkie woman whose only sin is to be unable to remember the exact events of Voyager's "Hope and Fear" episode? SHE'S A WITCH! BURN THE WITCH!

We're stuck with the crazy notion that anyone who identifies as a geek will wear sedate or self-conscious clothing, or will never dare to appear in appealing clothes or in suggestive ones, either. We've assumed that there's a certain BMI and morphology type behind true hardcore fans, and it's all something we've done subconsciously, after deluding ourselves into thinking geekdom was a boy's club. Most of us know things change or we've always embraced the female element of our group - but there's always one or two commenters out there that make me cringe.

Take the Tom Hiddleston appearance at SDCC. The on-site comments were generally favorable, but hit YouTube and you'll find nuggets like "God, all those screaming vaginas... Plz shut up." and that just -

It gets my goat. It really does. I came pretty close to replying to that comment with something along the lines of "Nice going, you've officially disclosed to the entire Internet that you're insecure around the fairer sex. Have fun trying to be considered mature!"

As this is really the meat of this issue. Insecurity, that is. Some of us are senior geeks who have kids and freaking *grandkids*, and we still feel obliged to build up little forts made up of throw pillows and chairs.

"SUPER SECRE TBOYZ CLUB - NO GURLZ ALLOWD."

Yeah, great. Awesome. I don't need to stick around idiots who shame the rest of us geeks by acting like petulant children.

 

[Schadrach]

Yes, but that it doesn't exist for men, too, is why it's worrying. Or is there "fake geek men" we have to watch out for, too? And if there are - why don't people gun for them, too? It's probably cos most of the people shouting out against "fake geek girls" are insecure little straight fellas, eh.

There are, and they do (they are a little bit more uncommon because there's less to gain, but otherwise yes, they are totally a thing that happens). It's a pretty common response in these threads to talk about them, which then gets described in two different ways, depending on who is talking about it. Either "You're only bringing them up now to pretend this isn't really about sexism" or "The difference is that no one bats an eye about it when it's directed at dudebros."

You've got a point. I'm a 30 year old woman and I still bristle a bit at really good looking women saying they are gamers. That has to do with me being a girl, though, and insecure. Not about 'geek-cred' or whatever. Though, honestly, I would believe the less attractive person more than the attractive one.

But I'm also a judgemental asshole, and now that I'm grown up, I resent the popular girls from high school just as much as I did when I was 17... just now I know exactly why. And I'm still in that mindset of anyone prettier than me must be a ***** and other things and not as true a fan as I am... but that's just me having issues and never having gotten closure from all the bullying I got growing up in the 80's and 90's as a really geeky girl.

Like I said in a previous thread -- geeky subcultures were ultimately built by, for, and around the kinds of people who obsess about and delve deep into escapism, and those sorts of people are rarely undamaged. There's a reason that said subcultures have tended to be pretty insular in the past, and whatever is left will go back to being that way again once it stops being trendy.

What gets me is that if a guy attended female dominated hobby events with the specific purpose of targeting emotionally vulnerable women to exploit them for sex and money, I doubt people would be so charitable to him or claim that it wasn't happening or blame women taken advantage of in such a way for being suspicious and hurt.

Ironically, the response would likely be support for events in that hobby from which men were explicitly excluded, because there is nothing wrong with doing that. Like that Girl's Meetup that is arranged during each PAX East and PAX Prime since 2010, that no one bats an eye at.

 

[Gorrath]

I'm pretty confident in my assertion of how jocks generally see women. Sure there are exceptions - me, for example. Though I'm not a positive exception because I didn't give a damn about anyone in high school, male or female. I wanted no ties and I have no ties. (You might argue that I was at least as bad as the jocks who saw women as disposable since I saw what was going on and didn't even try to put a stop to it. I don't think I could reasonably argue against that particular point.)

What you are doing is generalizing based on your personal experiences, which is a component of prejudice. It may even be true that 'most' jocks act in a certain way, but I certainly didn't see it that way. For as many times as I saw 'jocks' manipulating girls, I saw girls doing the exact same thing. We are, all of us, colored by our experiences and so what you saw as the norm for jocks I saw as the norm for high school, except where it wasn't true. I had a friend who juggled girls like crazy and he was part of the 'out' crowd, a gamer and such though 'goth' was his own identifier. I also had a friend who was a quarterback, got his heart broken by a girl who was two-timing him.

So, while your observations are what they are, your generalizations are still not justified. I don't even mean this as a condemnation, just as a point of academics. I would warn that such generalizations can be very harmful though, and, perhaps with some irony, part of the cause of the fake gamer girl problem itself.

 

[Tono Makt]

People whinging about fake game girls deserve to be roundly, soundly and mercilessly mocked. They deserve no respect whatsoever, and will get none from me.

I would however appreciate it greatly if you could read and respond to the points in my posts as well, if that suits you. If not, have a field day. I can take it I'm sure.

After reading your responses to this thread, I'm pretty sure you're not talking about fake gamer girls - you're talking about predators. You are talking about the extreme end of the spectrum of the idea of fake gamer girls. And it's not a good example to use in this discussion. It would be like me pointing to the Stuebenville rape case where the high school football players raped a drunk and unconscious girl, and applying that to the case of high school jocks being terrible people. It's not a fair example to use because the vast majority of high school jocks AREN'T rapists. They aren't feminists by any stretch of the imagination, and a large number of them can quite accurately be described as sexist pigs, but dumping a girl because you want a blowjob from another girl instead isn't in the same continent as rape.

Most high speed trains are safe, the recent tragedy in Spain is an outlier. Most air travel is safe, the recent crash in San Francisco is an outlier. Most rescue workers save lives, the tragedy in San Francisco where a survivor was potentially hit by a rescue vehicle and killed was an outlier. The majority of what we call fake gamer girls are benign, the example of your friend being preyed upon by two predators is similarly an outlier. It's the 4+ Standard Deviations from the norm. It's the once-in-a-thousand-years-storm, like the one that flooded the entire town of High River, Alberta this summer, and most of Calgary. The shark attack off of Florida, the getting a black widow spider in a bunch of grapes. It happens - but it's not an indication of the overall issue.

They could have chosen to go after an elderly victim. Or a recent immigrant. They might have tried to take advantage of lonely Christians, or someone else they thought of as a potential victim. They happened to choose geeks - and though you haven't mentioned if they took advantage of more than one geek, I'm be surprised if their only victim was your friend. I'd imagine that they had several aliases on multiple sites, and had at least a handful of victims being victimized at the same time.

 

[Lilani]

Like I said in a previous thread -- geeky subcultures were ultimately built by, for, and around the kinds of people who obsess about and delve deep into escapism, and those sorts of people are rarely undamaged. There's a reason that said subcultures have tended to be pretty insular in the past, and whatever is left will go back to being that way again once it stops being trendy.

But that is still NO EXCUSE for being an asshole to anybody. Everybody has pain in the past, everybody has been made fun of for SOMETHING. But that doesn't mean we're allowed to harbor these feelings as adults and continue to release them at those who resemble those who hurt us in the past. And nor is that some sort of "tradition" we should keep and value within our culture. It doesn't matter if you were made fun of for liking video games, or for having glasses, or for reading lots of books, or for being black, or being gay, or for a twitch in your eye or anything. That is never an excuse for being an asshole to an entire group of people. That is part of becoming a well-adjusted adult--dealing with your past and not letting it affect your behavior.

If your past is so painful that you compulsively resent complete strangers for it, then you should be seeing a therapist. Not going to conventions and ragging on millennials who resemble the kids who picked on you when you were in gradeschool.

 

[Tono Makt]

I'm pretty confident in my assertion of how jocks generally see women. Sure there are exceptions - me, for example. Though I'm not a positive exception because I didn't give a damn about anyone in high school, male or female. I wanted no ties and I have no ties. (You might argue that I was at least as bad as the jocks who saw women as disposable since I saw what was going on and didn't even try to put a stop to it. I don't think I could reasonably argue against that particular point.)

What you are doing is generalizing based on your personal experiences, which is a component of prejudice. It may even be true that 'most' jocks act in a certain way, but I certainly didn't see it that way. For as many times as I saw 'jocks' manipulating girls, I saw girls doing the exact same thing. We are, all of us, colored by our experiences and so what you saw as the norm for jocks I saw as the norm for high school, except where it wasn't true. I had a friend who juggled girls like crazy and he was part of the 'out' crowd, a gamer and such though 'goth' was his own identifier. I also had a friend who was a quarterback, got his heart broken by a girl who was two-timing him.

So, while your observations are what they are, your generalizations are still not justified. I don't even mean this as a condemnation, just as a point of academics. I would warn that such generalizations can be very harmful though, and, perhaps with some irony, part of the cause of the fake gamer girl problem itself.

Dude... do you see the irony of your own statements here? You're warning ME about my generalizations being harmful while you are pushing an outlier and applying it as a generalization to fake gamer girls? You're talking a pair of predators and applying what they've done to your friend and using it as a way of describing fake gamer girls in general?

I'd say you're doing far more harm than I am, pushing your outlier the way you are.

 

[Harry Mason]

I am constantly bewildered by people, in in this VERY THREAD, whining about the "fake geek girl" phenomenon. It's precisely the same mindset as people who don't believe in marriage equality because of some twisted hatred of gay people, which they disguise in a bizarre claim that other people enjoying the things that they do "improperly" is somehow going to ruin their own enjoyment of it. You know who else talked about keeping certain groups "pure?"

Even if fake geek girls do exist, wouldn't you rather people be pretending to be (and therefor admiring) a part of geek culture than say, sports culture or, I don't know, literally ANYTHING ELSE!? If you are a real geek, why the hell would you have a problem with anyone else acting geeky? REAL geeks embrace geekiness in whatever form. It's the total rejection of geekdom that is the enemy. If you have to have an enemy for some reason, that's it right there.

Did someone trick you? That means you're stupid and you need to improve yourself, not that you need to start a witch hunt.

I will never understand the boys club mentality. Why the hell wouldn't you want to be surrounded by as many women as possible? Are you gay? STILL NOT AN EXCUSE. Gay men love women! They have common ground! This has been proven by science!

In fact, the only person who I've met who I considered deceitful in their authenticity as a geek was a dude. And I can't even really judge him, because who the fuck am I to place judgement on another person?

*grumble grumble assholes grumble grumble*

On a less ranty note, ERMAGERD WIL WERTEN! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

 

[Mr.Pandah]

This is a problem because people allow it to be one. They allow it to bother them. It's also a problem because they think it's a problem. I've yet to encounter a situation where someone has accused a girl to be a "fake geek girl". And even if I did...who gives a shit? Don't talk to them, don't associate with them, don't bother with them. Seems pretty damn simple.

 

[Gorrath]

I'm pretty confident in my assertion of how jocks generally see women. Sure there are exceptions - me, for example. Though I'm not a positive exception because I didn't give a damn about anyone in high school, male or female. I wanted no ties and I have no ties. (You might argue that I was at least as bad as the jocks who saw women as disposable since I saw what was going on and didn't even try to put a stop to it. I don't think I could reasonably argue against that particular point.)

What you are doing is generalizing based on your personal experiences, which is a component of prejudice. It may even be true that 'most' jocks act in a certain way, but I certainly didn't see it that way. For as many times as I saw 'jocks' manipulating girls, I saw girls doing the exact same thing. We are, all of us, colored by our experiences and so what you saw as the norm for jocks I saw as the norm for high school, except where it wasn't true. I had a friend who juggled girls like crazy and he was part of the 'out' crowd, a gamer and such though 'goth' was his own identifier. I also had a friend who was a quarterback, got his heart broken by a girl who was two-timing him.

So, while your observations are what they are, your generalizations are still not justified. I don't even mean this as a condemnation, just as a point of academics. I would warn that such generalizations can be very harmful though, and, perhaps with some irony, part of the cause of the fake gamer girl problem itself.

Dude... do you see the irony of your own statements here? You're warning ME about my generalizations being harmful while you are pushing an outlier and applying it as a generalization to fake gamer girls? You're talking a pair of predators and applying what they've done to your friend and using it as a way of describing fake gamer girls in general?

I'd say you're doing far more harm than I am, pushing your outlier the way you are.

Except I am in no way saying that all fake gamer girls are predators or using predatory ones as some kind of standard either. There are various shades of this that goes on, from mere teasing for favors to out and out lying in relationships. My responses are tuned to the arguments that there are NO fake gamer girls or that fake gamer girls can do NO harm. The context of my responses is very important to interpreting them and at no point did I say that this represented a norm. What I did say in many of my responses is that girls who attend cons and such who don't have a great interest in the material are explicitly not a problem, but just because there are fake gamer girls that are not an issue does not mean that they either don't exist at all or that there is no harm associated with the lying and manipulation that does occur.

How, exactly, am I doing harm by rebutting the claim that A) Fake Gamer Girls do not exist or B) Lying and manipulation in this form are not a problem that helps to feed the larger issue?

 

[Gorrath]

Did someone trick you? That means you're stupid and you need to improve yourself, not that you need to start a witch hunt.

I've responded already in other posts to much of what you said here, but I wanted to quote this part specifically. This is exactly the victim blaming mentality that would not fly under any other circumstance. It is exactly the sort of thing that would take someone who has already been tricked and manipulated and do nothing at all to convince them that taking it out on every other gamer girl is wrong. Would you tell a woman who got abused in a time of emotional weakness that she was stupid and needed to improve herself?