GunsmithKitten said:
The point is that, lately, I've been having my card checked soley on the basis of being female, NOT whether or not I prefer 4.0 over 3.5, not over which MST3k host I prefer, not which religious parallel's were made in the first Silent Hill, ect...
Yeah, this is a problem. If a guy is faulted for something not-real-gamer-ish (liking 4.0 over 3.5 or actually enjoying Battlefield 4), they just get at most a passing slight on their taste, and possibly intelligence. There's never any cries of being "fake" or the like.
HOWEVER
(here's where I try not to sound like a sexist douche while still disagreeing)
The issue here isn't really faking interest. It's how you act about it. From personal experience, I've known two different girls who were only into gaming for the attention they could get from it. How much they actually enjoyed the games themselves is actually entirely irrelevant to the discussion. They knew that these socially awkward nerd boys would fawn all over the girl in their midst, and they just loved the attention. This often included soliciting gifts and random favors from the "losers" who were apparently just grateful for a halfway-attractive girl deigning to notice they existed.
This is not being a gamer, this is emotional manipulation. Whether they're a "fake" gamer or not is entirely irrelevant to the manipulation aspect.
Now, to be fair, this highlights a problem with the MALES in the culture, as well. They needed to grow up and not be acting that way in the first place. These girls were just happy to exploit their lack of social ability.
TL/DR
Judge gamer girls by how they act, just like anyone else; not by how much you think/don't-think they know about a subject matter.
Edit: Protip, if they're licking an Xbox controller provocatively for anything other than total mocking irony, there might be something worth questioning...
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Edit2: I should clarify before I get strung up. Making some assumption of being "fake" just because an attractive girl happens to claim to like games, without any other evidence, is wrong and assholeish. And hell, even the best of us enjoy attention. I am ONLY speaking of the rare occurance when someone is intentionally manipulating others and exploiting their lack of social interaction. Especially in a culture
very heavy in light mental/social disorders that exacerbate inherent social ineptness. And this is not something you can judge on sight, it's something observed over time.
The reason this is a gender issue is that there's no situation that I am aware of where this can happen with guys. Unless there's some culture out there heavily populated by socially-awkward girls where the occasional guy can show inter-
Nevermind. It's gender-swapped high school art class. o.o (Incidentally, those guys were jackasses too, so I stand by my dislike of girls who do this sort of thing)