In Which it becomes Obvious that I only hang out with Certain Types of people.

So, I was talking the other day to someone from MIT, which, as I am sure you know, is in Cambridge, near Boston (I think? My American reader assures me that I have the wrong end of the stick, here. Apparently they're adjacent, but not actually the smae thing), as is Harvard. Since that's more or less the sum total of my knowledge about MIT (I also know that Owen is doing a PhD in computery things there, and that they are the only big University which doesn't give out Honorary Degrees. So if someone tells you they have a degree from MIT they're either well eductaed or lying, whereas if they nominate any other uni, they might merely be famous or a world leader or humanitarian or something. Because in my mind it's possible to be a famously humanitarian world leader without being educated, apparently?), ok, so since that's the sum total of my knowledge of MIT, the only conversational gambit I had available to me was "a friend of mine went to Boston and said that it was awesome; all the boys were so nerdy and geeky that you could just tell that they all read xkcd or something similar." (Obviously it would have lacked conversational fluidity to have paused here to explain that this friend actually has a very nice boyfriend, so that this was more of an anthropological observation than an answer to "what did you do on your holiday?", but you, Dear Reader, should know that the Honour of my America-Visiting Friend was naturally not compromised.)

Dude was all "what? sure there are a lot of guys there but they have a saying: 'The odds are good, but the goods are odd'. Are there really chicks who actually like geeky guys? Surely not." Leaving aside the issue of "that's a pretty neat saying, that sort of worplay shenanigans is exactly the sort of thing that makes boys attractive, surely! {Also: devilish good looks, bein' an Earl or similar, digging me, being nice and also clever, etc. These things are also plusses for a boy's attractiveness rating. But wordplay is still right up there.)... Leaving aside, as I said, that issue, I realised that my first reaction was "What are you talking about? All girls like geeky boys best!"

It was at about this point that I realised that I've been hanging out with such a specific sort of person that this is genuinely the case, as far as I know, for most of my female friends. Although they make up a majority of the Chicks I Know, though, these are apparently a total minority in the Real World, still. Isn't that wierd?

I mean, I guess, on consideration, I probably have girl friends who have no preference, and even maybe some who would actually prefer a non-geek, but not many, surely? The only one I can think of off the top of my head totally dated the geekiest boy in my course last year. (Well, the geekiest one I knew at the time. Dude does a lot of exercise and is really more a nerd than a geek when you get down to brass tacks, but points for effort, nonetheless.)

Is this because I don't bother befriending people who don't fit my worldview? Is it because only the geeky types look at someone with a Trogdor badge on their labcoat and say to themselves "I'm going to talk to that girl"? Is it the fault of the internet, which allows us to filter our friends (and "friends") by interest? Is it because of the Clubs and Societies which allow us to find our own kind? Or is it some combination of these with an infinite feedback loop: you meet a geeky dude, he intoduces you to his geeky friends, they befriend you and you meet their geeky friends etc etc etc?

Is that even a good thing? I mean, it's a convenient thing, since if you want to date someone who knows their Jabba from their Boba (note: this is not actually a criterion for me) then you have all those people right there and convenient to hand, but on the other hand, who knows who I'd be now if that original geek had been someone who surfed the ocean rather than the internet? To what extent are we defined by the people we know? I mean, I'm a bit geeky. Quite geeky, even. And I like geeky people because they reaffirm that it's ok to be that (or so Psych 101 told me), but I'm not all that good at being geeky. I don't like card games all that much, and role playing is not something at which I've ever had the urge to try my hand. I wonder if, had I met a different type of person, I'd now be a different sort of person, and also be better at being that sort of person? I wonder, am I reaching, so to speak, my full social potential? Have I wasted the potential to become really good at being the popular bitchy cheerleader type you see in Teen Movies?

Probably not, let's face it, if you cut me in half you'd probably find the word "geek" written through my core. You can tell, because this post ends here: I have a lecture which started 5 minutes ago, to which I have run myself late so I could write this blog post. If that isn't geeky, what is? Also, holy crap, you guys, I'm totally late!

TTFN!