Help For Geeks In Love
Featured Site: GeekCheck.com
Are the ones we'll lay to rest
The ones who love us least
Are the ones we'll die to please
--Paul Westerberg
In the Computer Age, geeks enjoy unprecedented power. But when V-Day comes around, the geeks among us still feel the pain of rejection disproportionately. The holiday cuts like a shiv into the heart of those who spend the day of couples wallowing in bitter angst.
Now the heartbroken nerds of the world can console themselves with Dating Advice for Geeks.
This site is more evidence of the fact that teenagers today have it easy. In my day, celibate teenage loners didn't have Web sites that dispensed free dating tips.
Run by About.com dating columnist Brenda Ross, the page will make you feel better by seeing others feel bad. The Pathetic Stories area collects high-school dating tales of horror along with memorable bachelor quotes ("Put a table there? But I already have a cardboard box with an old tire in that space") and reviews of really bad movies ("'Meet Joe Black' ... Make sure you pee before you see this piece of faux-existential Hollywood drivel").
Dates From Hell is run like a posting board. The date descriptions read like they were written in purgatory. "We went roller-skating and had a good time, but she wound up having a seizure at the rink," laments one tortured soul.
Lauging With Us Or At Us?
Mystery Date is a new feature with (supposedly real) personal ads from freaks around the Web. Want to meet people through the highly recommended realm of the Internet? Just fill in the interactive bachelor or bachelorette form online.I have to say, though, there are about 90 times more men than women on this section. But then again, males probably have a greater need to stumble across a site for romantic outcasts.
The actual tips on the site are a bit of a slam against nerds, suggesting such meeting places as insane asylums and how to meet teenage runaways.
Says Who?
Cruel, yes. But suffering is only half of the story. In her other persona as an online dating advice columnist, Ross actually dispenses stuff that's often helpful (or so I'm told).
Ross has been featured in several television and radio interviews since she started dishing out advice for About.com four years ago.
As Ross (pictured at right) writes on her bio page, it all started after her stint working for Sega where employees were given $200,000 for a Web site: "I decided that I could create something worthwhile and impressive -- the pressure of being an artist -- but decided to make fun of my ubergeek videogame co-workers instead. It all snowballed from there."
There is more than one legend surrounding the demise of our St. Valentine, after which the modern holiday is modeled.
One version has the priest Valentine defying the Roman Emperor Claudius, who had put a moratorium on marriage because men were needed for solidering. When Val united lovers anyway, he was hauled off to the dungeon, where he rotted and died on Feb. 14 in the year 270.
Another version has Valentine helping a band of Christian martyrs, going to jail and curing the jail keeper's daughter from blindness. They whacked Valentine's head off, but he had left a note for the daughter saying, "From your Valentine" -- whence the card tradition.
See, there's torture for the lovers as well as the geeks. Even those who do have valentines face the agonizing dilemmas of "Am I romantic?", "Is this date any fun?" and "Will she like this antler-rack shoe tree?"
Like it or not, the nerds are taking over. Ross' Web site asserts that it's time for misfits to have sweethearts, too.Torture As A Valentine's Day Tradition
Making pleasure out of pain, I suppose -- like Valentine's Day itself. We all get torn up over this silly observance. I just think the geek angle is a more encompassing way to look at V-Day. Just look at the third-century priest for this day is named.
