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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."
I submitted this yesterday, but apparently a working link to the story is considered bad form.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Okay, I'll bite (anonymously). What's the difference between a geek and a nerd and what's so terrible about conflating the two?
As I've been saying before, the situation is pretty skewed for both genders.
- 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.
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.
To put it even more bluntly, half the western culture (of both genders) is generally more about getting a status symbol than someone they actually plan to get along with. It's the same as getting, say, the sportiest BMW you can afford: it's typically not as much because you actually need something that expensive and that much of a gas guzzler, but just to show everyone that you can afford what most others can't. Same here: girlfriends and boyfriends get chosen as status symbols more than anything else.
And same as almost noone wants the lower half of the guys, if they have a choice, noone wants the lower half of the girls either. Note that I'm not talking about the butt-ugly gang of either sex. Just being _average_, already isn't much of a status symbol.
So my take of what's going to happen is basically:
1. They _will_ find a bunch of girls noone else wants, willing to give it a try. Then they'll get to go, "eeew" as they discover that they didn't get some smooth and highly desirable jock. (Who just happened to be single and limited in nerdiness to knowing how to install Windows.)
2. The guys, conversely, will drool at the thought, right until they find out who they got to meet. And that it's not the horny super-model with huge tits, that they thought they _deserve_ for being so smart and for knowing all that command line stuff. Cue the mandatory "eew" from the guys too.
Nice try, but probably no banana.
Both groups will eventually settle on something more realistic, but if we're talking university LUGs and sororities, not yet. Well, not for most of them.
(And before anyone accuses me of being sexist, note that I've talked about both genders.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Truly fine promotional work. I joined the WSU LUG my freshman year after playing willing victim with my Windows 95 box to a few exploits a member showed me. My passion for computer security and quality operating systems has never waned. Since I left WSU in 2001 I've kept in contact and Ford has been one of the remaining members who has put in a great deal of personal effort into sustaining the group. Congratulations and I hope you have a fabulous year.
It's quite common around here to hear people say "I live in Washington State". AFAIK this is the only state where this is said, and I suppose it distinguishes between it and Washington D.C.
I went to WSU, but I live in Oregon now. A similar problem we face locally is when you say Vancouver and you mean Canada, you have to say Vancouver BC, otherwise Vancouver, WA is assumed.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Sorry to ruin the day of anyone trying to trash-talk Ben and the WSU LUG, but I can attest to the fact that the previous post here is completely false and a blatant lie!!! I could get into how much he does love his children and the amount of time he spends with him but I won't sink so low as to bring his personal life into this! If you are going to talk about the LUG and the auction, that is fine, but leave their personal lives out of it!
I can tell you that Ben's intentions are considerably less suspicious than yours are!!! Those "poor sorority girls" would be in much better condition being around him than many of the other guys around here! If he was such a bad guy, Ms. Ex-Fiancee, don't you think he would have less of a support system around here than he does?!?!?! You may be bitter and have joined up with a certain other EX but keep your trap shut! You have NO right to talk like that about him!
See, this is great and all, however; the fact that CS enrollment is down has nothing to do with the women. It has to do with the fact that we have a crappy CS department. I was a CS student, I worked for the Tech area of the department for a year and a half and yet we have not done anything to fix the fact that we have terrible intro-professors, insane upper division professors and a straight-up ridiculous course catalog. I'm sorry, but if you want CS you don't go to WSU. With over 2 years involved with the department, I can say that it has been over run by bureaucratic imbeciles that either have the intention to run it into the ground or are desperately failing at letting it succeed.
I like the idea, but really our problem doesn't come from our students or our outreach, it is directly and irrevocably involved in the faculty and staff that make the computer science department the most ridiculously out of touch department on the university campus.
Economic sensibility is not implied by "clever." You must be thinking of "shrewd." Very clever inventors often die in poverty, or see little for their revolutionary inventions.
My thinking on the do-it-yourself instinct is this: I work my 40 hours a week. What do I do with the rest of it to better myself? If I wanted to do more work, I would have to do some consulting on the side. This would require a significant amount of networking and other energy expenditure on my part to maintain, and while it might be a good long-term career move, in the short-term it would take a lot of time for relatively little money. Plus, I spend my whole day talking business - I hardly want to keep talking about it for hours after 5:00.
On the other hand, I could take up auto repair a hobby and maybe save some money on basic repairs and maintenance. It's meditative and interesting. Plus, I learn something, and I don't have to worry about being cheated by dishonest technicians.