What the hell is the point of this?

....The idea that there aren't beautiful woman who truly love intelligent men for reasons other than money. I happen to LOVE me some geek-man. I may happen to be a looker right now, but we all grow old and wrinkled. Who cares? That's just a pleasing and lucky arrangement of DNA. I like them chubby, balding, too skinny, hairy, attractive and unattractive, so long as there is substance! Do you think all beautiful women are vapid, shallow, empty-headed beings constantly looking for who is going to finance their next shopping binge? Look at all of you open minded, liberal, intellectuals, men and women alike, perpetuating fairytales about beauty and beasts. I shake my head at the whole discussion.

If you're not in the group of women he's talking about, aka gold-diggers with really low standards, then why get offended? If you are, you pretty much deserve the remarks.

I have a feeling that web geeks, even the ones who can't remember to put on a clean shirt in the morning, are capable of figuring out that a done-up athletic blonde who thinks her CD player is a cupholder isn't dating them for their brains.

I don't think anything anti-women was meant. As Canuckistan Bob said, it looked to me like simple humor: presenting a ridiculous situation so as to get people to laugh. If we can laugh at The Daily Show presenting actual events in an exaggerated way and with outrageous interpretations, why can't we just laugh at a man making fun of groupies, who are not even representative of womankind? (See Clockwork Smurf's post above.) What exactly makes it in bad taste or offensive? (Not a retorical question; I'm really interested in opinions from those who felt offended by it, like Herself above.)

@dterrydraw: well, I didn't think that Ms Wakeman's post was "hysterical" in the bad sense of the word (I normally use it to mean simply 'funny'); except for the final 'barfing', I think she did it OK. I also agree that the item in question is not very important, and that there's no reason to feel offended at the joke (see my comment above). But Broadsheet is not about getting very important things discussed, right? My understanding is that it's about anything that seems connected to gender (basically female stereotype) issues, and how the editors feel about them. So, in many cases, the fact in discussion is not terribly important: nobody would write a dissertation on it. Still it's often fun to talk about, and sometimes one hears interesting comments with interesting ideas in the comments threads. Why not?

Mountain. Molehill. Basically, Jessica has drawn attention to a rather bitter and unfunny guy who wants people to believe his form of bitterness is amusing.

I learned in dog training that when a dog is good, you reward it with attention and treats and when the dog does some unwanted behavior, you ignore that bad behavior.

I recommend using that style of training on annoying people. If they only see rewards (attention), they will keep thinking they are doing something right.

I'll start to get upset about the "sexism" blah blah blah here.

Your first clue? Celebrechaun ... a mythical creature that doesn't exist in their wildest dreams. The video was loaded with self-deprecating inside jokes, which obviously went over your head, and was actually quite funny and even sweet at the end.

Julia Allison wrote this article on how to pick-up men at tech conferences. She acted like a real tart and she got a lot of attention and this clip is an extension of that ‘joke.’ It’s like the Heidi/Spencer (why are they famous again?) publicity machine – they don’t care what people say as long as they get attention.

I was a member of the founding team (employee #10) at a startup that was launched during the bubble. One of the founders was single, good-looking and brilliant, and also had zero social skills. He was a good friend, and a great leader.

And then he ran into Elizabeth (fake name, obviously). She was a very skilled, once-divorced (married a CEO, didn't work out) money-grubbing whore. She had her eyes on the prize. In this case, the prize was a guy who had one million founders' shares of a startup, who was alone and working his ass off, eating stress for breakfast. She went after him like a shark going after a wounded tuna.

And month by month, as the bubble inflated and his stock became worth more and more, she increased the intensity of her seduction. She was very hard to resist -- knowledgeable about business, red hair, impressive rack. She worked very hard.

And it worked. Ultimately, he sold out for about $100 per share. Do the math. They're now married, with the house in Marin, everything. Rumor is that she managed to get herself pregnant with his child during this process, but although it's quite plausible, I can't prove it.

If you deny that this happens, you have no idea what you're talking about. Or you're fourteen years old, and reading too much Betty Friedan. People who launch startups can make serious, serious money really fast. There are lots of very hot, very financially ambitious women who know exactly how all this works, and who want some of it. They just earn it differently.

I suppose that, if you acted/spoke a bit less hysterical/ly (and let me add that I wrote my dissertation on Victorian emerging-discourse regarding "female phsychology", so please don't bother your selves to lecture me on that word)......well?...I suppose we'd just come back to the fact that you really don't have much to say that would get published anywhere else (including other sections of salon.com?....

So?...let's get "hysterical", shall we, girls?

It's a pity that "feminism" has, in this venue at least, come to this sort of jigged-up follery for mediocre self-agrandizing "writers" who happen to be female..........

.......

David "Let Folks Dig their Own Graves" Terry

I could be wrong, but I think this was supposed to be some kind of tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating in-joke, along the lines of "we're such dweebs that beautiful women couldn't possibly be dating us for anything other than our money." The graphics were clearly meant to be amusing and the pictures of various male web geek victims weren't exactly flattering. And the 97% disappointment statistic was in the form of a pie chart, which struck me as funny, although I'm not sure why. Moreover, I don't think he was seriously blaming his hair loss on a failed relationship with his ex-girlfriend.

In any case, the loudest laughter seemed to be female. Of course, it could have been nervous laughter...