Holly's Dating Tips for Guys Part 1: You are Not your Fucking Linux Code

For the past few months, I've writing standup with a very basic routine--basically, I retell the sorry stories of bad dates I've gone on. I realized after two years of being single that these stories seem to really entertain, maybe through second-hand humilation, shadenfreude, or whatever. I'm not exactly sure what's going on, but the truth is, these stories are hilarious. Like that guy who insisted the entire time that my hair wasn't real. Good times.

Anyway, through suffering comes enlightenment and I've decided maybe instead of keeping my thoughts to myself, I should counsel heterosexual 20-something men on how dating works. Sure, they didn't ask for it, but I think they need it.

The first lesson: You are Not your Fucking Linux Code.

I am, by all measures, nerdy. Full Rock Band setup? Check. Use Star Wars references in common parlance? Check. Battlestar Gallactica? Check. I speak nerd. I can translate nerd. I am, as I said, nerdy. However, what is important to stress is that virtually all of these things that make nerds "nerdy" are consumer items. They are items you buy and bring into your home. You do not create them. You cannot change them. No iota of you as a person went into their production (unless you're actually Joss Whedon). To represent your entire identity via movies and video games is to do yourself a disservice. Think about it this way--how inclined are you to dig a girl who describes her personality by her consumer habits? Sex in the City and Reese Witherspoon movies. Oh god, right? What would we ever have to talk about? Well, that's my point.

You know those guys who obsess over sports? Are you asking yourself constantly how they seem to pull girlfriends and you can't seem to get a single girl interested in you? For one thing, they don't expect a girl to share that interest (they wouldn't hate it if she was, but it'd be unexpected). Instead, I've watched many of these men in action and they actually approach a girl with the assumption that they want to get to know her (gasp) as a person. Personality, for many them, is not expressed by taste the way it was when we were fourteen and so hopelessly insecure about being different, we gave ourselves chronic teenage personality constipation. True, personality for many of them isn't even the most important part of a girl (ahem), but nevertheless, these guys don't pretend that their interest in sports constitutes their entire personality. And they can put up with a girl who obsesses over Gossip Girl because they accept that that doesn't constitute the whole of her personality, either.

But I watch "nerdy" guys limit their scope of females two ways. In the first, like every guy, they gun for the hottest chick available and pine. At the extreme, they pull the "nice guy" routine and try to win her affections by weaseling themselves into her life at every opportunity (more on this phenomenon another time). But rarely does this work.

So option two (learned response to failure of option number one?): Narrow the field to girls who share your interests. Especially girls who profess to love the things you love (because obviously the girl who loves the things you love will love you, right?). Wait, get out of here, a girl who loves Clone Wars? No way. A girl who reads comics?! No way. A girl who gets Stargate Atlantis?! NO WAY. I could go on, but I won't. The problem with this scenario is that I watch men project a personality onto a girl on the basis of shared consumer interests. Would you do this with anything else?? Oh we both like hiking, ergo, she must also like getting up early in the morning and loves drinking beer? No, you wouldn't! And yet, I've gone out with many "nerdy" guys who have on the basis of learning one thing I like, create in their heads an entire personality for me that I in no way conform to.

For one thing, I'm not mousy. I'm not timid. I'm not shy. I'm not introverted. And yet, I feel very often that when I meet a guy for the first time and he learns I'm actually incredibly self-confident and outgoing, his image of me was shattered. Why? After the second time this seemed to happen, rather than waste the opportunity (I wasn't exactly interested in a second date, anyway) I politely asked my date about it. We met at an online dating site and he admitted that from my profile and my list of favorite books and movies, he had decided I must be like him: introverted, quiet and more of a homebody.

I'm sure this happens all the time for a lot of different reasons, but I see this most often with "nerdy" guys. They get excited by the prospect of dating someone who is like them and they derive that targetgirl's personality must be a match on the basis of shared consumer interests.

So what's my advice? Don't choose your dates on the basis of shared buying habits. Don't walk into a date and grill her for her Netflix queue. The idea here is that you're trying to get to know a person, not look in a mirror. To this end, let me illustrate how dates I've been on could have gone better had the guy gone this route. Let's use an interest that is very often shared among me and my dates: Ender's Game. I'm just going to explore for a bit how you can use this piece of knowledge as a tool to get to know someone better, rather than just a checkmark on some invisible list.

• "So one of your favorite books is Ender's Game, huh?" "Yeah." "When did you first read it?" "Oh, I think junior year of high school?" "How did you react to the ending?"
  

• "So one of your favorite books is Ender's Game?" "Yeah." "Did you read the Ender's Shadow series, by any chance?" "Yes!" "What did you think about what I think is Petra's pretty flat character development. It's always something I've thought about and I'd love to hear someone else's opinion on it."

• "So one of your favorite books is Ender's Game?" "Yeah." "So what do you think about Ender's use of violence? Did you think it was necessary?"

• "So one of your favorite books is Ender's Game?" "Yeah." "So are you a Peter, a Valentine or an Ender?"

It's not that hard, but I can't tell you how impressed by these questions I would have been on a first date. Maybe they sound corny but they're great icebreakers and a great way to start a discussion that has the potential to evolve into other great discussion territory. It's better than asking someone how many brothers and sisters they have. "One." "Yeah?" "Yeah, a brother." "That's great." .....*chirp* *chirp*.

Disclaimer: I have totally used one of the above questions on a date. When date could not answer, I was disappointed :(