Nerds have questions, but nerds have to appear authoritative or risk losing their nerdy cred.<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why, as a recurring feature on Alert Nerd, Jeff answers these conundrums anonymously. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like Savage Love as written by Detective Chimp. We call it Nerdly Advice.<\/p>\n
Dear Nerdly Advice,<\/em><\/p>\n I met this guy at trivia night not too long ago, and I know him well enough that we’re Facebook friends.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is to say, pretty much only superficially.\u00c2\u00a0 He keeps trying to ask me out without actually asking me out – saying things like “Hey, come out to the bar tonight.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll buy you a comic book.”\u00c2\u00a0 I really don’t have anything against him and I’m sure he’s a nice guy.\u00c2\u00a0 Nominally, he’s only being social and friendly – it’s not overly CREEPY or anything – but how can I make him stop without looking like a bitch?<\/em><\/p>\n Conflicted In Central City<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Dear Conflicted,<\/p>\n Stop the presses.\u00c2\u00a0 Did the guy who was trying to impress you just offer to buy you a single comic book as a bribe to spend time with him?\u00c2\u00a0 Listen, I’m not a huge proponent of trying to put a pricetag on love or anything, but if the message is supposed to be that your company is worth $2.99<\/em>, then you might want to worry so much about sparing feelings.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m just saying. I know that I’ve made some harsh comments about fetishizing a hobby in this column in the past and they might be applicable here.\u00c2\u00a0 If this guy is equating you to Comic Book Girl in his head, then that’s a warning sign, especially if it’s the sole motivating factor behind his interest.<\/p>\n But I’m sidetracking myself.\u00c2\u00a0 There are two real things to look at here – first, why nerdy guys do this all the damn time<\/em> and second, whether it’s even possible to defuse this without looking like the bad guy\/girl?<\/p>\n Nerd guys are rarely known for being pillars of confidence.\u00c2\u00a0 Mainly because they spend a lot of their younger lives being heaped on with rejection and derision from their peers and prospective paramours.\u00c2\u00a0 As a result, we (and I say we because I’ve done this, too – I think any geek will cop to this behavior in at least one or two instances) don’t want to act on any of our relationship impulses without a degree of surety in our success.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s hedging bets and it’s cowardly, but it’s also risk management from a certain point of view.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s understandable, I guess, but there is nothing about risk management that is ever sexy.<\/p>\n If you’re interested in the guy, give him some time until he’s comfortable.\u00c2\u00a0 Or ask him first – that’s always an option.<\/p>\n That said, if you don’t have a vibe with the guy in question, you really need to let him move on, and there’s no simple or nice way to do that.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, the nicer you are, the bitchier you’re going to seem.\u00c2\u00a0 A quick and simple “I’m not that into you” conversation is going to sting at first but will be the best thing in the long run. Worse yet, if you string him along to not look like a bitch, what happens when he does ask you out?<\/p>\n If you’re honest and don’t go out of your way to be mean, you probably won’t come out of that convo looking like the villain.\u00c2\u00a0 And it will teach the guy a valuable lesson, maybe.<\/p>\n Do YOU have a question you’d like us to answer?\u00c2\u00a0 Email it to nerdlyadvice@gmail.com!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nerds have questions, but nerds have to appear authoritative or risk losing their nerdy cred. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why, as a recurring feature on Alert Nerd, Jeff answers these conundrums anonymously. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like Savage Love as written by Detective Chimp. We call it Nerdly Advice. Dear Nerdly Advice, I met this guy at trivia night not too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[217],"tags":[413,427],"class_list":["post-3134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nerdly-advice","tag-comics","tag-nerdly-advice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}