Look at the title. The title, I think, poses a very important question: while lots of nerds will angrily go on diatribes about “fake geek girls”, I think we have to ask. Do “fake geek girls” even exist, and if they do exist, why are some men so goddamned angry about them?

Just to clarify before I receive a deluge of hate mail—yes, there are women that are earnestly interested in nerd stuff, nobody is denying this. What we’re talking about are the allegations that there are some women who pretend to be into nerd fandoms in order to get some sort of benefit for themselves (money, fame, or merely the slavering attention of thirsty beta males).

Naturally, many would argue that this phenomenon does not exist, and that this is all a product of the fevered imaginations of “bitter manbabies”. This is the position that Rational Wiki takes and, I will assume, the rest of the leftist political sphere takes (Rational Wiki being one of the few leftist sites I feel actually can make a decent point now and again). RW’s argument is essentially: “Why would these so-called ‘fake geek girls’ even bother pretending to be fans of [X franchise], when they could probably get just as much attention by dressing in skanky clothes and walking into a nerd consortium?”

This argument is certainly logical, but I don’t think that this is right at all. I think that there are quite a few examples of women pretending to be part of stereotypically male-dominated fandoms in order to profit off of them somehow—and not just in nerddom, as we shall see.

(And again, I must clarify that: no matter the field, the majority of women in them are probably legitimately engaged in them. We’re not talking about those women here, nor are we talking about something like a woman being a petty tyrant in a comic book shop—that woman presumably likes comics while still basking in the attention of the dorks around her)

Those of you who followed Gamergate will of course know that fake geek girls are a thing—despite her rapidly growing irrelevance to things, Anita Sarkeesian is a shining example of a fake geek girl. She has openly admitted that she had no interest in video games until she had the idea to do her video series, because she was smart enough to know that there was a lot of feminist criticism of video games, the winds of culture were starting to turn against “angry manchild nerds”, and there was money to be made—and she certainly made a lot of it off of the controversy.

Having no interest in a nerd fandom, pretending to in order to shoehorn herself into the public eye, and making 160k off of it? Sounds like a fake geek girl to me.

But I would argue that the “fake geek girl” nomenclature is a bit of a misnomer, as their numbers are wildly overstated in nerdom—most women nerds are legitimate. However, there is another subculture that attracts pert and perky poseurs, in much higher numbers than video games or comic books:

Right wing politics!

I’m not the first one to point this out, but it bears repeating: the term “Fake geek girl” really ought to fall out of use and be replaced with “pundithot” or “conservathot”, because unlike nerd fandoms, rightist politics have no shortage of vapid bimbos repeating talking points (a lot more than video games or comic books do nowadays), and there’s even greater numbers of sexually incompetent dorks thirsting over their every word—the only difference being that the right wing dorks are probably middle aged men rather than the teenagers and young men associated with nerd fandoms. And really, that’s even more pathetic; they ought to know better.

But no, just take a good looking girl, give her an American flag bikini and a rifle, and in comes the fan mail from thirsty, middle aged fatasses!

Why else would intellectual non-entities like Tomi Lahren and Lauren Southern have careers? Because they certainly look a lot better in bikinis than Glenn Beck or Alex Jones do, and they’re intellectually on par with them. And you want to talk about an utter lack of respect for the denizens of the fandom? Lauren Southern quite obviously has no respect for her fans (and not to mention that as somebody who not infrequently wears anime pants, Lauren Southern significantly overlaps with the fake geek girl as well).

So the question remains: why do women do this, and why are some men so angry about it?

Women want attention—more than just the sexual, they want adoration, even if it is from dorks. Women want to be the queen of their own little kingdom. A pretty girl wearing skimpy clothes is just a model and there’s no shortage of those in the world. But a pretty girl that’s into nerd stuff? That’s (allegedly) rare and exciting!

This goes for conservatives too—a lot of them are high cholesterol failures that don’t get laid, and seeing a pretty girl spouting rightist talking points gets them *ahem* standing at attention.

As for why some other men are angry about this? It’s not because “THE BIG BAD WOMEN ARE INVADING MAN SPACE”, it’s the disingenuity and blatant lack of respect these women show. I don’t see it as being at all pathological that an ingroup is angered when somebody pretends to be part of the group to make a quick buck.

Most nerd men are, from my experience, perfectly willing to accept a nerd girl if she can prove that she is a genuine fan, they just don’t like being lied to and disrespected. And that goes for girls on the political spectrum.

So, to answer the question: Yeah, fake geek girls exist, but most of them are holding rifles and American flags now.