I am finally finishing the latest script that I have been avoiding like the plague. Your Productivity with posts and Tweets have inspired me. Thank you, Slackmistress! -
Also, Just noticed you hail from Glen Ellyn. I was just there a week ago - Visiting Family back there. I knew there was something " Midwest" about you . :)
I'm not hating on the Nerd Girls - I think education is a fabulous thing. I hate the idea that the thing that's supposedly amazing is that they like lipstick and high heels and things that "typical" girls like. Which may be more a function of how the Newsweek writers wrote them (and I think I even say this in my post) rather than who they are.
The whole idea of the NERD GIRLS arose because of a lack of females in the engineering community. The founder is a female professor who felt that she had to overcome to reach the same levels of success that she saw her male counterparts encounter with less [whatever] - typical story in any field.
The point then, that you can extrapolate, is that the NERD GIRLS are meant to be an outreach program. The image of the NERD GIRLS you see has little to do with the actual program, an image created by studios and photographers to sell an image to the bright lights and flashy colors media machine.
The NERD GIRLS are meant to show that girls who tend to shy away from science at a young age because of the stigmas attached to the 'Nerd/Geek/Whatha veyou' community which dictate that you cannot be both 'wanted/beautifuf ul/recognized/pop ular' and also study hard and use your brain for something other than color matching and body painting.
The NERD GIRLS are a good thing. Did they sell out the name a little by doing a super upbeat photoshoot/video shoot, sure. Will there be any negative side-effect as many of you have suggested, absolutely not. This will not cause girls to forget that they are smart. This will not cause girls who are smart to long for beauty any more than every magazine and tv show you've ever heard of already does. Hating (if i may use a colloquialism) on the NERD GIRLS seems to be nit-picking minor aspects of how you 'wouldn't have done this or that' and much less about constructively criticizing a group that is seeking to promote the value of education. So you're against education? Now I understand your point of view...
Love the site! That was the best smack in the jewels since "Man hit by Football in Groin" won an Academy Award. I enjoyed the science lesson as "pain receptors" let the body know to elevate pulse heart rate, etc... Maybe next time they'll show us how the amazing human body will shut down to protect itself when hit repeatedly in the head with a shovel. Sport truly is a sweet science.
Will and I stumble through a crowd that's equal parts open call for ANTM and a meetup for Hot Chicks with Douchebags. A goatee'd guy in his carefully constructed casual best hands me a card.
Before I can edit myself, I blurt out oh dear god, no.
As a blonde goddess nearly stumbles over her stilettos to grab the proffered passes, I start thinking about what nerds (like me!) do on a Saturday night...
I've never thought the bar/club scene was easy for nerds. But maybe it's just this nerd (please feel free to weigh in below!) I always felt equal parts awkward and angry when my parcel of female friends would drag me out to a club to "meet guys." Be approachable! Talk to people! they would cheerfully exclaim but I'd look around and realize that there didn't appear to be a single person that I had the slightest interest in getting to know further.
Said friends would then berate me for being elitist, so I'd plaster on a smile and try to initiate conversation with the closest available male. Usually they were responsive. If responsive equals staring at my chest for the entire conversation and then trying to 'surreptitiously' rub their groin on me on the dance floor. Generally, I like to know a guy for longer than an hour before I can if he's circumcised or not. But I'm crazy that way.
The only time I was approached respectfully was in Trader Vics, when a group of foreign businessmen bought a friend and I a round of drinks. They were exceedingly polite - up until the moment they laid $7,000 on the bar and asked us if that was enough to buy us both for the evening.
We respectfully declined.
Thankfully, I started Internet Dating in 1997 so my bar scenes (and my friends!) evolved into pre-arranged meetings with significantly less douchbaggery and surreptitious groin-rubbing. Outings were relieved of the pressure of meeting random dateable people and now I could just be awkward on my own merits with one person who I knew via email instead of club full of strangers.
Every Vegas bar we passed last weekend was full. I always see lines pouring out of LA hotspots on the weekends. I hear the lament of nerd friends who have the same complaints that I did when I was pounding the bar pavement: I'm too shy. I'm too uncomfortable. It's too awkward.I hate people! And I still see the stigma of spending Saturday night on the Internet = loser.
By 11, small groups had perched themselves all around me on wooden benches chatting about their lives, jobs and families. A group of three pretty ladies gossiped vehemently about their film industry jobs. I sat nearby in my frilly dress eavesdropping. After an hour of enjoying the warm weather, and having not made any new acquaintances, I made my way to sit at the bar. Again, no luck.
She continues:
Since the days of the singles bar, meeting people socially has gone virtual in the form of various Internet dating and networking sites...Perhaps Craigslist is more convenient than the days of singles bars, as it allows one to sift through various pictures, desires and hobbies until a match is made. And besides, many have found apartments and jobs through the site, so why not love or friendship?
One of the big rules of meeting new people - friends or lovers - is getting out there. But you can still put yourself "out there" and stay in your comfort zone. Do you hang out online on a Saturday night? Where?
Don't forget I'm still looking for your Coming Out Geek! stories. Entries are due by midnight (PST), Tuesday, May 27th! I'll select the top stories and let you vote on the winner!
I never had problems going to bars, mostly because my first few experiences in them were because of LARPing. Our local Vampire games were usually played at bars, right underneath patrons' noses. The owners were always aware of what was going on, so as long as we never got too obnoxious and spent money they never said a word.
In fact, the bar we always went to for the New Orleans games was bought by a couple of said LARPers a few years after the game died, and it became a watering hole for most of the gamers in the area. If I ever felt like going out by myself, I could always head out there on a Saturday night and see tons of people I knew. The bar's gone now, so I usually head out to local watering holes to meet friends now.
Recent Saturday nights - this past weekend I was perched in the courtyard at a sci-fi con in Mobile, Alabama, chatting with assorted friends from across the Gulf South. Next weekend I'll be seeing Kids In The Hall in Atlanta.
I usually go out to dinner with the bf and then stay home and watch movies but every now and then we head on down to the local hick bar. There aren't really any clubs here out in the country and we aren't really club people anyway. Of course when I do go to any bar/club other than the redneck bar, I feel old. I don't like feeling old.
I don't have a problem at bars and clubs, though I certainly frequent them less than I did 5 years ago. My problem is, well maybe I am a bit elitist. I don't really care for strangers location not withstanding. Even at bars or clubs I spent the evening talking to the people I'm already acquainted with. UNLESS tequila is involved. Thank god that only happens once in a blue moon.
Actually I have never had a problem going to a bar alone and meeting people at least to talk to for a minute and share a drink. then again i only go to bars that i know 90% of the waitstaff personally. so if nothing else i will end up talking to the bartender for awhile. i dont really go anymore since i am coupled but occasionally i will drop by my local watering hole and have a drink after work. it could be the smaller area i live in that makes this possible. the smaller area here made internet dating impossible however, because by the time you go through signing up for match or eharmony you realize the only guys on it in the area have already tried hitting on you for free on myspace and you've already rejected them. ha ha.
Alas, you've got my number once more, Slack. I don't go out to social situations that often since last year because everyone I know don't live by me anymore, and we don't see each other till holidays. I find my problem is meeting new people in social situations that present themselves to me (i.e. the college). The prospect of having to meet a whole different group of people is frightening, so I just don't do it...
I try not to leave my house at all on weekends. I hate trying to grocery shop with 11 million other people, I hate crowded movie theatres, packed bars, traffic and anything that reeks of humanity. If I go out drinking, I go to one of the bars that I work for, at 2 pm, on a Wednesday. Happy hour snacks, happy hour prices, and staff discount. I am a cheap antisocial person. Plus I get home at seven o'clock! When I was a nanny, I used to get pulled to the clubs every weekend, until I finally got an editing job that I used as an excuse to not have some stranger grope me under a blacklight. If I am not working, Saturday nights find me on the couch with the boyband, him watching tv, and me surfing the internet --wondering if I am the only loser in the world in internet land on a Saturday night.
My guilty secret is OKCupid. I haven't met anyone in person through there that I didn't already know in meatspace, but it's about as out there as I'm likely to find in the rural northern Plains. Besides, the quizzes and questions are far more amusing than buying severely overpriced drinks for uninterested women. ;)
And if you can find a likeminded group, why not? There's no reason to feel like a "loser" for finding people to connect to over a screen compared to people smooshed together in a sweaty club.
I generally just have people over to watch movies, or sit with the roommates. I despise the bars and clubs, in Atlanta, ever since The Chamber went under. there are maybe one or two clubs/club nights at which i can count on not being annoyed by the music AND the people.
Plus i was never one for the feeling like I might need to beat someone to death while vomiting, which is induced in me by the judgmental, catty, shallow nature of the club scene, as a whole. The false-friendship, the *kiss-kiss* to your face and "OhmigawdwhataretheyWEARING/DOING/THINKING" to your back. It's all too fake...
Too honest? One of those places where I have trouble scaling it back.
Remember when the Internet was a safe haven for the socially awkward? Antisocial Networking is a little bit of Nerdvana: a place to ask questions and wax poetic about the politics of dating and relating in a social networking world with your host and Nerd Yenta, the slackmistress & along with the Geek Girls Advisory Board.
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