Fedora Geeks and Dating

My family loves hats. If you want to give a brother an amazing present, a hat his size will be the very best. My personal favorite is a fedora I got for Christmas. It is thick gray wool, and fits my 1930’s gangster looks. In a tragic twist though, it isn’t being worn right now. Because of a stereotype given to geeks, the entire wearing of fedoras is now an evil thing.

First off, those aren’t all Fedoras being worn. The hat really doesn’t matter since it is just a common enough geek clothing. The terms, and ideas are older than that. There is a sort of tier system that has to be understood. Once you know it, there are a lot deeper questions to be asked. Sadly, those questions are not being talked about.

The hat being worn by all these geeks is not a Fedora. It’s a freaking Trilby. Some of them are actually porky pies, and others are tyroleans. Get it straight here folks. Do not screw up Ascot for Fedora either.

The idea of the fedora goes into some history. The entire idea of black hat, and white hat hacking is aimed towards the color of the fedora. There is a form of Linux called Fedora. In other words, the idea of the fedora within computer folks would easily filter into videogame culture.

The hat being used is from macho folks. Imagine Jersey Shore, or guys pumping iron, and then realize that many of them wore the same hat.

The fedora is stylish -if worn right- and harkens back to older times. During the depression and up to the 60’s a Fedora was the hat of the working man. Anyone who wanted to seem business like wore one. The Escapist has a great article on the image of the Fedora, and it’s meaning:

It's no accident that in the last decade we've seen an explosion of shows, from Mad Men to Boardwalk Empire that depict characters being fashion conscious while retaining their masculinity. Not coincidentally, these shows packed with tough men in snappy suits all take place in the past, with all the distance that affords. These shows provide an outlet for men who are interested in clothes, but retain the worry that this makes them appear feminine. Clinging to yesterday's most iconic hat is a way to assert fashion sense without worrying about public perception.

To be honest the hat itself doesn’t matter. What matters is that it is being used to fit an image. Whether it be historical -like myself-, fit the hacker cred, or try to seem manly the idea is to look good.

There have been similar things worn by Geeks that have been shunned. Pocket protectors for example. Let’s not forget T-Shirts for comic books, movies, or sci fi stuff. It gets even better, how about that uniform you wore at graduation? It’s actually a symbol of Academic status. The deeper you look into it, the more clothing styles, and ideals are met with folks wearing nerdy clothes.

As I have explained a couple times now, the hat, and clothes are merely things. Like a stick when you were a kid could become all sorts of things in your imagination, the Fedora, or pocket protector takes your mind to the image of a nerd. Our minds now associate my Fedora with a nerdy thing.

So why is wearing a Fedora considered evil? Why is it that a picture of someone wearing the hat is a major thing? The answer is a bit deeper than is let on by todays giant diatribes against them.

The concept of Geek is really old. Go ahead, think about the image of a dweeb, a geek, a nerd, or scientist? If you just imagined someone cloistered in their room, who has a hard time dealing with the outside world, but in one field is brilliant, you are starting to recognize the problem.

The concept of a nerd is older than the ideas being placed modernly about them. Sir Isaac Newton, creator of modern Physics and Calculus, fit this image incredibly well. Along with the cloistered, sad attitude, there was a real problem with dealing with the opposite sex. To put it bluntly, being able to create amazing things by taking yourself out of the world is also a great way to have no idea how to ask a girl on a date.

As you go deeper into any fandom, or idea, you find someone who has so separated themselves away from the outerworld that conversations can be difficult. The deeper it goes, the harder it is to find someone into the same stuff.

In the book Hackers: Heroes of the Revolution, the story is told of people who gave up common life to work with computers. They stopped talking to other folks, hung out at the lab, and created everything you could possibly imagine a computer would need. This small group introduced the idea of hacker, bug, and open source tehcnnology. In one story, they disrupted a major users program.

You can find the book here or here. You can also buy it here. The belief among hackers is that all information should be accessible, and free. So, I have no problem posting info from a book about hacking. I am certain that the author feels the same.

In a similar story from the same book, you have an announcement of marriage.

To achieve this much skill, and have this much progress meant giving up the rest of life to accomplish it. The only early hacker had already been married before entering. In other words, it was common.

This doesn’t mean women were not part of the story, or that men did not get married. They simply married other nerds. I know this to be true, because thats the story of my grandparents. To give you an idea, I felt like I was somehow betraying the family to give up being a Physicist, and become a historian/anthropologist. My brother, an engineer, has said that most engineers have very few skills with making friends, or talking to girls. A common scientist is quiet, and tends to only talk about things they enjoy.

As you can see, the idea of a fedora wearing weirdo, who is really awkward with girls has quite the history. We sort of owe some of these weirdos a lot of respect. Part of being a nerd is being awkward, and liking things that may not be popular to the outside world.

You might ask what is going on? Why are the smarties so frightened, and having difficulties with socializing? Building a rocket to mars is totally something that should be the life of the party. What does this have to do with someone acting like a loser with girls?

To understand this, we need to acknowledge a tier system within social styles. You saw them in highschool, but never wanted to admit to them. These tiers are pretty easy to recognize at large, but difficult to see in a single person. The first is the type of person that socializes easily, and is therefore attractive. The second is close, but will never be super popular. The third has given up completely. The fourth is theoretical, and is possible only in extreme circumstances. These same tiers are used to find abilities to find a mate.

The first is the naturally social. This person would be attractive. They enjoy the right things, have the right hobbies, and wear the right clothes. These people really do exist, but are super rare. I think I have only met one or two in my lifetime. This attractiveness at the most amazing levels are beauty in human form.

The second tier is where most people lay. They enjoy popular things, hang out with friends, and are part of the crowd. There are varying interests, and a possibility of finding a mate with a little work. It is not the most attractive folks, but they meet the basic standards.

The third tier is the dorks, the nerds, the dweebs, and anyone else who has difficulties with socializing. They will be ostracized for even being in the same room as someone else. It can be aggravating just being in a crowd, or speaking in public. Any move to seem popular will be done wrong, and thus be frowned on. Their hobbies, clothes, and style is unpopular, and they accept this as part of life. They obsess about the things they like to the point of ignoring much of anything else.

The fourth tier is theoretical, so please don’t bite my head off for mentioning it. In extreme circumstances, a person placed with no real options with finding a mate or being popular will change themselves. A prison full of men, and no chance of finding a female mate, will change to some men trying to be attractive to other men. Another scenario is if there is only a few females, and the male is resigned to never even being looked at. The clothing, hobbies, and whatever else will be changed to meet these new needs.

For the most part we can talk about these subjects in general, but not specific. The reason why is that one person will be on several tiers at the same time for different groups. So, you may be a tier 2 with the badminton folks, and tier 3 with the fencers. The two groups meet, but do not find the other to be attractive. Likewise, a tier 3 nerd may be really attractive to another nerd, but the tier one folks won’t even look at them.

Something to realize is that the people involved will be moving up and down the tier system wherever they are. The tier 2 may be working hard to become tier one, and thus drop to tier 3. The tier 4, has lost so much interest in being attractive, that they somehow become attractive. They move up and down, and it can be bizarre. In the end, it is up to the female on what is the proper placement for the male making his moves.

When you watch a video of a female playing a game, and then guys begin to rag on her. What you are actually seeing are tier 3 males, trying to assert themselves to someone they view as unreachable. You can’t touch the shrine, so you throw rocks at it. This is an obvious sign that the tier 3 wants to be left alone.

If you are a reader of this blog, you would know about Tomodachi Life going through some turmoil. A game about random things came under scrutiny because somehow within the Japanese game, a man and a man could marry. It turned out to be a bug, and a bunch of tier 3 gamers having fun. The bug was fixed by Nintendo for the US release, and thus same sex marriages within the game were harder. Nintendo tried to explain what was happening, but no one believed them.

When I went to PAX, I noticed a giant discrepancy between male and female gamers. There were far more males than there were females. It seems that when it comes to the cultural idea of gamer, this holds true all over.

If you look at it as people who play games, female gamers are about 50% of the population. If you look at it from the cultural ideal of gamer, then females are a much smaller percentage. This means that without really trying, videogames become a tier 3 pass time. Gaming companies have tried to gain more players by saying their game is tier 1 or 2.

This gets even more interesting when you realize that videogames have a mini nationalism. The last few times that something like this has happened, gamers used this nationlism to promote themselves to others, and to hold fast against the attackers. Some of the same article writer bemoaning the sexism of gamers, have defended Grand Theft Auto against Jack Thompson.

There have been women in gaming since the very beginning. The numbers have been few, but powerful throughout this time. As far as I could tell from the interviews I made, none of the women felt bad about this. It meant they could have fun, and had better selection for a mate than women who enjoyed other activities.

Within gaming, there are enough tier 3 men, that it would be expected for them to act in a specific way. It would take a lot for them to believe that a girl is interested in them. It is the same for many tier 3 girls I have dated. They could spend several hours a day with someone, and not realize they were dating, because of how impossible it would seem.

With all this now understood, we begin to see questions that need to be asked. How do these same tier 3 nerds feel about videogames, comic books, and other stuff becoming popular? There are movies making billions of dollars that are about comic book characters. It is bringing in all sorts of fans, and big responses. Yet, we see that there seems to be a blow back against this. The declaration of Fake Gamer Girls, and other things are common enough.

This can be explained by a term I learned in Hawaii, Tourist. Holy crap I hated that term. It refers to people who only visit the islands every now and then. You could live on the island for years, decades even, and still be a tourist. The need to change how you talk, walk, dress, and act to not be a tourist was very important to me. Honestly the biggest pain has been moving back to the mainland, and having people demanding I change into whatever they consider local.

An insider within Hawaii is a Local. It comes with requirements that demand you treat all the kids like your nieces and nephews, and all the older folks as aunties and uncles. You had to bring food to parties, and work somehow to help it out.  Surprisingly enough, I noticed tourists the most when I started to be accepted as a local.

Tourists were also a real thing. While working at a grocery store, I met people who honestly didn’t know that half of North Shore was Mormon. They had lived on the island for nearly 20 years. If someone was buying a bunch of soda, and party foods, they were likely just visiting. Socks on the sandals  is also as a dead give away.

The reason for the treatment of folks as tourists is two fold. The first is that often times, certain types of people are not going to stay long. The best thing to do is to not give a ton of emotional investment. We did the same in school, it wasn’t until someone stayed a second or third semester that we went passed light friendship. There were too many people who thought they could just go to the beach and not study. They freaked out at their grades, and then left.

The second is that many people want the cool insider knowledge, without doing anything about it. Imagine someone asking for a days wage, when they hadn’t even started work. It is insulting at times to even speak with them. The problem would be that the person would act as if they had this amazing insider knowledge, when they were still beginners. It could become very insulting to meet someone who thought they spoke pidgen.

To help tourists have a welcome time, many locals would be kind, and helpful. They knew how to steer the tourists to spots they wanted, and away from local stuff. At times, there would be direct lies told to keep the tourists away.

How does this work within videogame culture? There have been men demanding that women prove what games they love. There has been treatment of women as if they were not true locals. Mind you, it is usually when the girl doesn’t fit the description. If she is attractive, and single it simply doesn’t make sense that she would be in a comic books shop.

Because geek stuff is usually used for Tier 3 folks, it becomes very shocking to have someone say they love Doctor Who, or that Loki is hot. The geeks look for signs that the person speaking is a local. If it looks like a tourist, then direct lies or a bad attitude will be given to send the person off.

This is the part that gets really tricky. You see, both sides are actually being oppressed. The women are being oppressed because the geeks do not think it possible. The male geek does not think that a woman could like the same things as him. It is simply a non existent thing. Because of this, a bad attitude will be given.

So what are these fedora wearing neckbeards? They are geeks. Not the big popular term that is being used today, but the ones that years back were being made fun of. Since Geek became cool, a new term had to be made up. There is a long history to this. The first hackers didn’t really understand dating as an actual thing. It’s been like this even to today. The reason why is because the things the nerds are into, are not popular. This makes it difficult to even think about dating. Many nerds have accepted this, and have a hard time seeing girls walk into their culture.

The problem is that the response to this has been just as bad. A friend of mine nearly left Tumblr because of the many demands being made by social activists. He agreed with the people, but the methods were getting overhanded. The constant worry of offending one of them drove him batty.

It gets even weirder when you realize that the hacker ethic is very inclusive.

1. Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-on Imperative!
2. All information should be free.
3. Mistrust authority—promote decentralization.
4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race or position.
5. You can create art and beauty on a computer.
6. Computers can change your life for the better.

So these pocket protecting computer geeks also had a utopia they were working for. The problem wasn’t that any geek actually hates women, its that they have been at tier 3 their entire life. Responding to an impossible situation is a very difficult thing, and not always done happily.