When exactly did geeky become sexy?

[trashcanman]

You know, I never saw any of this kind of stuff when I was in high school so this has got to be a fairly new thing. In my day it was always "nerd!", "fag!", "loser" if you were into RPG's and Lord of the Rings or anime or superheroes or any of the shit everybody suddenly loves. Then you get pictures like these.





...and just like that, the virgin and gay jokes come to a halt and normal jockish dudes at work are asking me about Iron Man comics and Halo or debating the merits of the Star Wars prequels in between the usual stories about how drunk they were last week while I'm loaning out Death Note DVD's to the local cougar. Fuck, was I born a decade too early or what? At this rate, I would have been scoring two chicks at a time in the high school restroom instead of sitting by myself hoping nobody throws another orange soda on me when I walk back to school after lunch. Anyways, share thoughts, feelings, and sexy-ass pics.

[theothernewestone]

In fairness, I think really geeky people are still the object of ridicule. I can quote/reference a movie/show, whatever as easily as I breathe. It's sort of like sci-fi: there's the mainstream stuff like Star Wars and whatnot everyone knows about, but I've never heard a jock talk about Firefly/Serenity and stuff like that. Just like there are hardcore gamers who play through games a hundred times and love them and there's this sort of subculture or whatever, there are the people who play Halo just for kicks, and have all their Madden games to just fuck around with, who aren't exactly video game nerds, because they're just not that invested in them. Although, personally, I'd love to date a video gamer girl. It's a huge part of my life and one of the main things I do for fun, and being able to share it with my girlfriend/partner/whatever, would be awesome.

[The Curmudgeon]

Christ, that Supergirl picture nearly gave me a seizure. DAMN.

I'm with The Other on this one. Sure, I've seen pics of these hotties at conventions, but I've never actually MET one. Met plenty of nerdy guys, but anyone who is/was considered "cool" was never a hardcore gamer or into Anime or anything like that. Skimmed the surface with Call of Duty etc, but never a fully fledged fan.

Anyway, if we're looking for pics of these hot nerds, there's a new WWE girl called AJ who prides herself on her love of videogames and movies. She's also a lifelong WWE fan (many of the new female wrestlers are pretty much models, and that's it), so she sounds pretty much like my ideal woman. Oh, and..



Nom.

[theothernewestone]

I've met a couple of pretty cute gamer girls. Unfortunately, they're REALLY into god.

[theothernewestone]

Oh, and let's not forget Felicia Day.

[trashcanman]

Halo girls be hot. I can tell you that. A lot of girls game, but they aren't always open about it. Most of them don't use their mics online because there are so many loser assholes who instantly turn into douches the second they hear a feminine voice. A particularly awesome game of Left 4 Dead with a great team once devolved into a team-killing mess that ended with two members getting kicked because this one dude wouldn't stop making sexist remarks and the girl's friend took offense and started shooting him. I friended the girl afterword since she was a great teammate, but I was still really bummed that that game didn't last longer. We were having a lot of fun before that.

Gaming is such a solitary thing for me these days. To many RPG's I suppose. I'm honestly not sure if I'd want to share with a significant other. Awesome for multiplayer, but fighting over Mass Effect or Fallout would suck.

I think the subculture may have grown to become a full-fledged culture. I know a guy from work who has all these stories about scoring with cosplay girls at these cons. He says that's pretty much standard procedure at these thing. Just a bunch of party animals hooking up. Not the image that's been associated with this scene in the past, I'll tell you that.

[theothernewestone]

If they react every time they hear a feminine voice, they probably accidentally flirt with a lot of 10 year old boys. Just sayin'. There are a lot of those on Call Of Duty.

[trashcanman]

Been a while since I had a little kid bother me on Halo. They used to be really, really bad and I was wondering where the hell they all went. Maybe they all took up COD instead. Anyways, while I find that there's a lot more social acceptance of nerdery, fake science and the media haven't been so kind.

www.gamespy.com/articles/113/1136797p1.html

Gotta love that "study" that had a bunch of gamers play The Simpsons game and others play GTA and then had them fill out a survey about unsafe sex and drugs. Turns out a few hours of GTA can make you think that drugs and casual bareback sex are a good idea. Or maybe the heavy satirical bend of the GTA-niverse makes people realize how fucking stupid the premise of the study is and deliberately fuck with the surveyors. And measuring adrenaline levels to prove that gamers prefer sex to games? Adrenaline is a fight-or-flight response. Of COURSE gaming gives you more adrenaline than lovemaking. These people are supposed to be scientists?! I seriously wonder if the stat about 30-something percent of British men preferring gaming to sex is true. I love gaming more than most, but I've never played a game THAT good.

[Ben]

All the 10 year olds did take up COD but they're well past that now. They went old school and play Battlefield 1942 now. No lie, one kid even said as much the other day:

"My mom groundded me frm mu xbox nad COD so Im playing this."

I can rarely play that game anymore due to how frustrating it is to find good teams. The only people older than 14 are mods. Or douches. But I suppose it's my own fault for being too poor to afford an xbox.

I totally agree about the gaming studies, Trashcanman. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you're right about people fucking with the results on purpose. I've had to take a bunch of random studies for one of my classes and it's not usually very hard to figure out what's going on and fuck with the results.

[trashcanman]

Using the FBI's own statistics there is actually a direct correlation between the rise of violent games and the diminishing of youth violence. Not necessarily a cause and effect, but it shows how perceptions are shaped by the media. Youth violence is way down now from where it was pre-Doom and it was out of control in the "apple pie" 50's if you take the FBI's word for it. The difference is that now whenever there is youth violence, it is perpetually harped upon and sensationalized by a 24/7 media. In the old days, you simply didn't talk about such things. Now it's all anyone wants to talk about. There was this other study my sister (who is a child psychologist) was telling me about that she insisted proved that games create violence. They lined up a ton of kids and had some of them play games while other played hopscotch or some shit and the ones who played games were persistently rowdier after their sessions. No shit. The same thing happens at concerts and sporting events. When the adrenaline starts pumping, people get crazier. Common sense needs to be applied to these studies as well. Apparently today's scientists lack that.

[Ben]

Sure sounds like it. By that logic, I'm more prone to violence after I drive my car down the highway.