This.
To Miss Ordinary, Malfor, and everyone else who genuinely believe in "fake girl gamers," how many "fake nerd" girls do you think
actually exist? How many have you met? Be honest -
we all know that "fake girl games" don't really exist. This is a myth that insecure nerds have told themselves over and over because they fear that the nerd culture has become so popular in mainstream culture that it no longer "belongs" to them. There have always been geek girls, but now there are more of them because geek culture has become more mainstream. That's the reality. More people like comic books and science fiction and video games than ever before, and yes, a lot of those people are women. They're not faking liking something. They may not have as much knowledge about a subject as you do, but that doesn't make them an inferior geek.
Also, be honest, dudes - why the hell do you think women would
want to fake being a geek or gamer? Never mind that the cultural myth is that geeks and gamers are all fat, sweaty, socially inept dudes (which obviously doesn't attract women). Geek and gaming culture is
an incredibly sexist environment. If you want proof, you don't even have to look at the way female game-developers are treated in the industry - just
look at this very thread! In a topic about "fake nerds," a large amount of comments are
about how women only pretend to be nerds! How many men are accused of being "fake nerds" compared to women? Pretty much zero - the conversation is almost always about women.
That is called sexism, and that is why nerd culture
repels women. So what the hell makes you think that so many women are pretending to be geeks so they can be with elitist snobs who assume they're faking? *drops mic*
Partly this. Before gaming became mainstream, a lot of gamers were considered geeks or nerds. So to make themselves feel better, they took pride in how much they gamed. Now that it's mainstream, they are still trying to look good against the "cool" people that used to make fun of them, abuse them or ignore them for being gamers.
Same thing with other areas. People who retreated into their comics and costumes and whatnot because their popular/jock type classmates hurt them in various ways over their geeky/nerdy/loser hobbies resent those same types of people now jumping into the hobby and proclaiming "See! I'm a geek/nerd/whatever too!!" Those hurt by these types of people see the influx as an attempt to take something they enjoy away from them. They fear that eventually the "cool" kids will drive them out for not being cool enough to belong any more.
This also. But this is also a general elitism thing. "I liked Green Day before they became mainstream." "I liked Chris Pratt before
Guardians of the Galaxy." "I liked comic books back before liking them was socially acceptable."
tl;dr, there is no such thing as a "real gamer" - there are only people who like the same thing to different extends and have different amounts of knowledge about it. The idea of being a "real x" is elitist and stupid, but in this case it is also incredibly sexist.
~Psychic