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Washington State LUG to Hold "Nerd Auction"
elrous0 writes "As part of a PR stunt, a Washington Linux user group is holding a "Nerd Auction" and appealing to local sororities to exchange dates and makeover advice for their computer skills and homework assistance. 'The problem is that we're all still nerds. Let's face it, guys. If anyone's going to bid on us, we'll need some spicing up,' writes Washington State Linux Users Group president Ben Ford on the group's website. 'And who better to help with that than sorority girls who like nothing better than a makeover?' So far there has been no comment on how a Linux user group is going to help sorority girls with their Windows machines."
The sorority girls probably aren't going to bite. They know they can get nerds like us to work on their computer and homework assignments and have to give nothing in return. They just have to be... girls. This is sort of like people boycotting gasoline... it just won't work. They can hold out indefinitely since they have other sources of income (read: non-nerds sexing them up) where as we will sit there demanding cheaper gas (read: any sexing up).
Yeah, and the superior stability of Linux means her computer will never get infected with adware, viruses, or even slow down on boot time. In fact, it'll never have any problems short of a hard drive crash, motherboard failure, or power supply failure. What good is that? You'll never get to see her again.
I can see a number of problems with this.
OK, I'll admit that most men have the ulterior motive of trying to get laid. Still, the tone of every report I have read is, "Look what the nerds will go through in an attempt to get laid." They are propagating a stereotype and no one seems to care.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
As a Linux user for well over a decade, I'm periodically tempted to drop by the local LUG, but every time I do, I find myself annoyed at the, well, nerdiness of the people there. I mean, sure, I know fourteen programming languages, I was a software engineer for a decade, and I'm working on a PhD in Computer Science (after already having studied Physics and Linguistics), but I just don't fit in to "Nerd" culture. This is because when I'm not doing something useful with Computer Science, traveling around the world, or I'm at the gym, or playing the piano, or sitting court-side at an NBA game or at any number of other social events. Your sorority girls are happy to have a smart guy who can fix their computer — but they're going to go for the ones who can function in society before they go to the fat, bespectacled, social outcasts that seem to congregate at LUGs.
-brian
Maybe the female college students are already smart enough to fix their own computers, and don't need a big strong man-brain to show them how. For that matter, aren't there any female nerds who'd like also to be appreciated for the technical skills? Can they auction themselves off to the highest bidder too? This story is demeaning to women and to geeks.
Yes, because when they mean Penn State or Georgia State, they refer to the respective states (as opposed to, say, the State of Pennsylvania or the State of Georgia).
Gee.
Why do they specifically need sorority girls? There are PLENTY of hot social women in technical majors that would gladly help them present themselves better. I speak from first hand experience. When I was in college, I lived in a dorm building with about 40 women in science and engineering majors. While not all of them are hot (maybe 60% were), about 90% of them were social, fun, and smart. And that was just in one dorm building. If they really must have a sorority, why not try Alpha Omega Epsilon? It's an engineering sorority (yes there is such a thing).
Seriously, sororities are about conformity and groupthink, and being a nerd ([i]especially[/i] a Linux-using nerd) is about fighting that.
/. for any length of time knows that is not true.
I think anyone who has read
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Bottom line is, "Penn State" is obviously the school, while "Washington State" is ambiguous.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Mod parent up!
Are there seriously no women in their LUG? Why not? Reaching out to sororities makes a good joke, but it does almost nothing to address the real issues. Maybe they should actually reach out to, and acknowledge, the geek women who already exist.
But then, this is Slashdot, where it usually seems that every poster is assumed to be male, and where every Linux user is assumed to be male, and every geek and nerd is assumed to be male, so I'm probably just asking for a headache.
And what is more important, she wont be able to figure out how to make som private home video for all of us to see.
Funny how you can always tell the people who haven't booted Linux in half a decade.
Maybe not
- About half the guys in a high school or university want the top 10 super-models. Move a bit lower and about 90% of the guys want the top 10% girls. Some might eventually get realistic enough to settle for a bit less, but only grudgingly.
- About the same applies to the girls. Half the girls want the top 10 jocks. Some 90% of the girls want the top 10% most desirable guys.
Interestingly enough, according to a recent study, girls seem to be a bit more realistic as to who they can actually get. Guys will tend to aim above what they can get.
Do you have a source for that ? I'd be interested to read it, because - along with your conclusion - the result certainly seems arse-about-face to me.
On a related note, I also recall some study done recently (on a university campus, maybe ?), basically on how successful the "Wanna fuck" pickup line works on males vs females (obviously they werent quite that crude, but it sums up the objective). From memory, the "success rate" of males vs females was something like 20% vs 80% (ie: 80% of women received a positive answer to their attempt, only 20% of men did - certainly the difference was dramatic). Further, of the men who declined, the reason was almost always due to some form of outside restriction on their ability to say agree (spouse/significant other, unavailable at the requested time, inappropriate relationship, etc) rather than not being interested in the sex. For women, the reasons were basically reversed - most said no because they weren't interested.
Certainly, the idea that men are more selective than women goes against everything I've ever read about (and experienced, but that's anecdotal) so I'd be interested to read your source for suggesting otherwise.
Basically anyone who says that someone can get laid anytime she wishes and by anyone she wishes because she's a girl, probably is doing the same daydreaming: thinking about those top 10 most popular girls in the whole damn college. Noone thinks of the shy, flat, nerdy girl in the back row when they make such generalization. That's her problem in a nutshell: to 90% of the guys she's just short of invisible, or little more than a piece of decor.
Actually, no, I'm thinking about the ~50% of average women out there, plus the ~25% of "more desirable" women.
with many species, the females are looking for a desirable, dominant male to provide genetic material, and are so more selective. males are looking to spread their genetic material to as many females as possible.