Awesome special FX Jim.
That said, after I got done laughing I decided I'd toss out something similar to my usual comments about the overall point of this episode.
Like it or not there are differences between guys and girls as far as perception and manipulation goes. In general dudes can be manipulated through media by an attractive girl, or the belief they are dealing with one, far more easily than girls can be manipulated by hot guys. This is why you see so many companies using spokesmodels, filling events with party girls (or booth babes), or in the case of Japan doing things like getting female voice operators to talk in higher pitched tones of voice (attractive for the culture apparently).
The reaction to female gamers is what it is because of how saturated the market has become with women trying to manipulate guys, to the point where it's become expected. This goes so far as to get girls who pretend to hang out at social events, cons, etc... to create a scene and to also lead guys in specific directions. You even see it at Renfaires and such where the people running booths will hire the cutest girls they can get to walk the grounds showing off whatever they are selling, and pretending to be other tourists. When you go to conventions, and not just gaming ones, you see the same exact thing going on. That's not paranoia either, I've met a good number of women who have done this kind of thing. As a matter of public record companies like Ubisoft formed things like the "Frag Dolls" as a
promotional gimmick to sell their products, which is a variation on this.
On a more personal level a lot of girls, especially young girls, learn at an early age to manipulate guys. Whether it's football or video games, a lot of girls feign interest in whatever guys like to get things out of them. This can be anything from a "Camwhore" trying to get guys to buy her things off her Amazon gift list, to a girl trying to get you to do her homework or be her personal free taxi service.
Geeks, by being social outcasts who really wish they could have hot girlfriends, become prime targets for manipulation. Once you get burned a bunch of times, paranoia of a sort sets in, and it's a fairly justified paranoia.
One thing I will point out that rarely enters into these discussion is that the less attractive and/or more freaky a girl is, the more likely she is to be accepted as a gamer or within the geek culture. As a general rule, if a girl could be hanging off the arm of some Jock or successful/socially apt dude, the more suspicious a geek is likely to be of her ultimate motives.
Obscure gaming questions tend to be "touring questions" in cases like this. Sort of like what a real lesbian might do to root out guys pretending to be lesbians online (lol). It's less about there being a correct answer, or an actual test of knowledge, but rather a matter of reaction. To give an example, if someone comes up to a real geek and asks a question about some obscure Japanese video game, he might not know the answer but the way he inquires about it, and mentions ones that he has plays is what is going to make him genuine. When it comes to some geek girl being asked say "what is your favorite Shadow Hearts transformation?" (if such came up) it's less about her having to have played that game to be real, but more about whether she becomes defensive. A "proper" answer for someone that was ignorant would be to say "I haven't played that is it similar to [insert other RPG where you combine and transform characters, like say Soul Fusions in Persona or Demon Combining in other SMT games or whatever)" or something similar that fits
into the conversation.
To be honest one of the reasons so many people (including me) laugh at pics with geek girls making snappy comebacks "Oh I haven't read the entire run of Batman, but neither have you" is that they miss the point in the course of trying to defend the trend. If you like Batman you might not know every bloody obscure thing he's ever done (like say using a Bat-Monster truck loaded with fully automatic tranquilizer guns) but if your a serious fan you can turn something you didn't know into quite a conversation and that's kind of the point.
Ah well, I doubt many people read this far, and very few will agree with me, but that's my two cents.
When it comes to the acceptance of geek girls of all stripes and physical apperance into the "community" (such as it is) it's not something that can be forced. It will happen over time, but understand that the social intertia of decades upon decades of geeks being manipulated by cute girls is not something that is going to disappear comparatively overnight because more girls are gaming and discovering/getting involved in fandom for real.
