EDIT: On the advice of Susannah Breslin, I tweeted Tara Tiger Brown about the story. I may not agree with Brown’s article, but I just feel awful for her now. She wrote this article for no compensation at all. The reward, she says, is “knowing who [her] friends really are,” but in my opinion, that’s no adequate payment for the trolling she now faces.
In my opinion, this article is the divisive sort of argument that harms the geek community. However, according to Brown, it’s not link bait but a message she truly believes. For that reason alone, I can’t write it off completely.
As a geek and a girl on the Internet, there’s no way I could have missed today’s drama over Tara Tiger Brown’s Forbes post: “Dear Fake Geek Girls: Please Go Away.”
While there have been some great responses to come out of this—my favorites have been Team Valkyrie and Leigh Alexander‘s rebuttals—I don’t think anyone’s touching on what’s really going on here.
This is the Internet, and Brown needs hits. Today, I learned that geek feminists are no more immune to geek-rage link bait than self-described angry fanboys.
As some people who’ve been reading for a while know, I’ve got a very slight connection to Forbes blogging—thanks to Susannah Breslin, whom I regard as a mentor, I’ve gotten the chance to try it myself. And one thing I know from Susannah is that Forbes bloggers get paid by the hit.
In her recent post about how to be successful without really trying, Susannah encourages bloggers to go for the lowest common denominator, the stuff that is guaranteed to get clicks:
When you blog for dollars, which is what many of us do here at Forbes—that is, our page views dictate our paycheck—you pay a great deal of attention to what works and what doesn’t.
What works for me? Tits and porn.
Forbes’ Chief Product Officer Lewis DVorkin confirms that this is how Forbes bloggers are paid:
It’s a simple deal: there is a flat monthly fee, a bonus for hitting certain unique visitor targets, and a fee per unique user after bonus targets are achieved.
In other words, raging at Brown is playing right into her hands. If people keep linking her article, she’ll reach her unique visitor target and won’t have to put out another blog post for the rest of the month. Think of it like paid vacation.
I’m exaggerating a little here. Forbes blogging doesn’t pay enough for it to be Brown’s full time job, or at least that’s my guess since Susannah, who regularly gets tons of hits, often blogs about her other freelance positions. Speaking of which, Susannah is a blogger who constantly pushes people’s buttons—and she only encourages them to come back for more. Insisting that Brown’s credibility or readership is lost after one controversial article wouldn’t be reasonable.
If you really need to rage, there are plenty of examples all around us about the ways female geeks get shafted in our own fandoms. We’re confronted with sexism and geek elitism at every turn already. You don’t need to read a sensationalist article that’s been crafted to garner your clicks in order to figure that out.
4 Comments.
That article was a lot less offensive than I thought it was.
If it was sensationalist, then it’s pretty obvious she’s not even trying.
(Seriously, I’ve read more offensive articles on Sankaku Complex and taboids.)
It depends which perspective you’re coming from.
The basic premise of the article—that girls shouldn’t be fake, and instead should do what they love—isn’t offensive at all. The part that’s offensive is that this article criticizes only girls and women when this is a message that should pertain to everyone. It’s unfair of Brown to single out girls, or to assume that we women are “faking” our hobbies to impress men. This just encourages more men to test us with the “geek test,” and to discount us as sex objects who show up to anime conventions to get laid; and encourages geek women not to trust one another.
It’s not the message that’s so offensive, but whom the message is directed at—a breed of “fake geek girls” whom I’d argue don’t even exist.
This was a great read. You make some excellent points, and I agree with a lot of what you said.
Before your edit, I read this article as it was: a response to something that triggered a strong stimulus within you. That’s why we write, right?
What gets me though is that no matter how you shake it, what angle you look at it, whether she’s getting paid or not, is that women are constantly under some form of scrutiny when it comes to video games. Because of the stereotypes, it is difficult NOT to judge a female gamer, even if the intentions are pure. I believe Leigh Alexander wrote another article about people who are surprised because she is a female gaming writer, instead of being just a gaming writer. So in that instance, I can see why she chose the subject that she did.
While Miss Alexander puts it best, that we are not in high school, I believe the ‘nerd’ community has been so conditioned through the years to not see women accept those in this realm, let alone live in it themselves, is where the problems lie. We have a hard time adapting to change when we believe it to be customary. After all, we still can’t accept the fact that same sex marriages and men dressing like women (and vice versa) can happen. How can we expect those to realize that it isn’t only men who are interested in video games, technology and anime? It isn’t just men though, that are playing this card. Women inadvertently put themselves out there as well by being overly defensive, or even boasting about it. At least, this is what I see from where I am sitting.
I digress, you addressed the most important point in your article: the audience that Miss Brown has pulled out was not appropriate, because ‘being fake’ is not restricted to ‘geeks,’ ‘women,’ or a combination of the two.
@Peter, thank you. I think that years ago, “geek” was an insular enough term to satisfactorily categorize the group of people we all found to be “like us.” Now that there are more geeks than ever, the human need to categorize has come out again. We’ve got “girl geeks” and “fangirls” and “fake geek girls.” And as I’ve been saying, I don’t think fragmenting geekdom is a constructive use of our time.