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.

This probably isn’t the first time you’ve seen a review for Boomslank‘s otaku-catnip t-shirt line.

Boomslank’s marketing tactics would make my SEO expert proud:

1) Pick a nonsense name that nobody else has and trademark it.
2) Send free t-shirts for review to every anime blogger you can find.

Now, any Google search for “Boomslank” leads to nothing but happy bloggers and their positive reviews, because everyone loves free stuff.

Obviously, I’m not exception. Let this be my statement of transparency: I’m reviewing this company in exchange for a free t-shirt. But before I agreed to that deal, I made sure to do my homework. I wouldn’t be recommending a shirt from a company I couldn’t get behind.

Boomslank is an independent “anime clothing line” out of Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s run by three brothers, the youngest of whom designs the shirt graphics. While the designs are anime inspired, each one is original. The one thing I couldn’t figure out was why Boomslank needed a review from a small time blogger like me—they have 30,000 Facebook fans.

The thing I liked most about Boomslank was its women-friendly designs. Not just the fact that it carries women’s sizes, something my feminist t-shirt article concluded that any geek company or convention can do easily. These shirts go above and beyond because their graphics are neither obscured by nor designed to highlight a woman’s chest.

I picked the Pisces design, currently the shop’s fourth best-seller. I may be curvy, but both the design and cut of the shirt mean my figure doesn’t warp or hide the image very much. In the photo, I still am stretching out the t-shirt to show off the design as much as possible.

As you can see, the cherry blossoms have reached their peak here in the DC area. John took these photos of me after the rain, and the wind must have shaken the blossoms right off the trees. It’s too early for this pond to be filled for the summer, but it’s already filled with petals.

When’s the last time you waited in line for an hour to get into a fine art museum? That’s how I, John, and a couple hundred other geeks spent Saturday morning. This weekend was the opening of The Art of Video Games, an exhibit which showcased everything from Pac-Man to Mass Effect.

The last time I’d visited the Smithsonian American Art Museum had been for a dressy Online News Association cocktail party. Several miles from the better known Smithsonian museums on the National Mall, it’s a place you expect to see fewer tourists and more established patrons of the arts. Its classical paintings, puzzling modern art, and live jazz performances in the orchid-filled courtyard feel highbrow to me.

However, this exhibit showed me that I was wrong to assume there was anything snobby about this open-minded museum. The organizers arranged The Art of Video Games with the same reverence for the subject as any fine art display. I particularly appreciated their regard for video game fans—since early 2011, I’ve been voting along with 19,000 other people to choose which games would be exhibited.

In fact, I think other art museums can learn something from the Smithsonian. Rather than seeking to please a few wealthy patrons, the Art of Video Games looked to the crowd for its funding. Here’s my name in the scrolling list of donors to the exhibit. It took around ten minutes for this video to cycle through, which gave me plenty to look at for the thirty minutes I stood in line trying to get in.

However, before I could get inside to even wait in line to see the exhibit, I waited outside for an hour before the museum opened to see Hideo Kojima. A couple weeks ago, the organizers gave a few of us the chance to see Mr. Kojima in person—if we could click fast enough. The free Eventbrite tickets sold out in less than two minutes! You can bet I had set an alarm in order to snag those. Kojima stepped outside for a photo-op with Pac-Man while we were still in line.

At the conversation, Kojima still seemed to be surprised to have his games exhibited at a fine art museum.

“My games are displayed around the world, but to have them at the Smithsonian is truly an honor,” he said through a translator.

In 2006, Kojima once insisted during an interview that “games aren’t art.” During this interview, he conceded that while he still does not think his games are art (at least in the traditional sense), the fact that the Smithsonian thinks otherwise has caused him to rethink a bit.

“I’m not going to come to the Smithsonian [where my games are being displayed as art] and say they’re not art,” he said, prompting appreciative laughter from the audience.

Kojima said he’s been busy working on a project he can’t say anything about. Could it be the previously alluded Metal Gear Solid 5?

Outside of the exhibit, most of the activities taking place were in the courtyard. Visitors could listen to chiptunes, have their photo taken in a video game setting, craft “pixel art” or take part in a live action game with Spontaneous Art. And of course, there were plenty of screens for actual gaming, both in the courtyard and in the exhibit itself. Plus, Pac-Man cookies.

For a complete set of the photos I took, check out my Flickr photostream. They’re mixed in with photos of the cherry blossoms, since during these unseasonably warm times we’re nearly at peak season. (Last year, the blossoms weren’t in full bloom until mid-April.)

Since the exhibit was so crowded, I’m planning to make a trip back after the hype dies down. Until then, I’ll be paging through companion book John picked up, also titled The Art of Video Games. If you can’t make the real thing, it’s a complete round-up of every game featured in the exhibit.

Whether you call it “Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou,” the English “Daily Lives of High School Boys” or the simple, punny “Nichibros,” I think we can all agree that this show slipped through the cracks. I’ll never understand why shows like YuruYuri get legally streamed while this one gets turned down.

I picked up Nichibros hoping for a spiritual successor to Nichijou, and I wasn’t disappointed. In both comedies, characters react to quirky and absurd situations without skipping a beat. The main difference I can find is that the Nichibros guys are much more meta, willing to break the fourth wall at the slightest inclination.

There’s one aspect to Nichibros that confused me at first—have you noticed how most of the female characters don’t have faces? Except for one or two notable exceptions, the eyes of the protagonists’ sisters, teacher, and female strangers are concealed in shadow. Even when we first meet Literary Girl, the most interesting female character in the series, her eyes are also covered up. (By the way, for a fascinating take on Literary Girl, check out AJTheFourth’s analysis.)

At first I thought this meant that we’re supposed to see the girls as antagonists. Perhaps that’s a holdover from an earlier period—when I used to try drawing manga in middle school, I always drew villains like this. Now, however, I’ve developed a theory.

It’s not we, the viewers, who can’t see the girls’ faces. It’s the teenage, male protagonists themselves. I can’t speak from experience, but I’d guess that to high school boys, women are a mystery. They can’t read their faces, or tell how they’ll react. For example, when Hidenori agonizes over pointing out a hairy mole on a female stranger’s neck. Or when Motoharu can’t gauge whether his sister will pick on him or make him curry for dinner.

This would also explain why Ringo, the socially inept female class president, never has her face concealed. Her awkward mannerisms are no mystery. And it’d explain why we always see the faces of the three female protagonist in “High School Girls are Funky,” the clip after the credits which mirrors the events of the main episode, but with women.

One thing my theory doesn’t explain—Toshiyuki’s baseball cap. But at least with him, his eyes are always visible.