Bro in Tights: Nerd Speed Dating (Part II)

By Brogrammer on April 21, 2012

(If you’re only reading Part II to see the pictures, go ahead and skip to the bottom. We don’t mind.)

With 10 minutes to go until speed dating began, and my fresh number 16 stuck to my costume, I was a little nervous. I’d never speed dated before, and I was pretty sure my bulge was obvious in my skin-tight costume. A quick shot of liquid courage would have been nice, but since no one had a bottle of vodka handy, I made do with a couple of Monsters I’d stashed away in a bag.

The event was starting and everyone filed into the dating room in an eerily orderly and silent fashion. Men stood in a row and women sat while the rules were explained. Here’s how it works:

Each person was given a number before entering. Since no one wants to come out of speed dating with a stalker, those numbers are the only “name” a person has for the event. Everyone is given a note card and a pen. If you like someone you talked to, you can write down their number, so that you can swap contact information with them at the end, if the feeling is mutual. Each speed dating round is three minutes long, and at the end of each round the guys rotate one seat over.

Three minutes isn’t a long time to get to know someone (unless you’re talking a mile a minute from a caffeine overdose), so I focused on the basics: what they do for work, what they do for fun, what brought them to the convention and speed dating. A surprising amount of girls were there looking for friends or to “work on social skills”, but some were there lookin’ for love or lovin’.

I’ll spare you the not-so-exciting details of my conversations and leave you with my top 10 lessons learned, that I think every ‘Con speed dater needs to know:

Lesson #1: Don’t drink a ton of liquid right before a 2 hour long event, especially when you can’t get your costume off to go to the bathroom.
- Related Life Lesson: Those warnings on energy drink labels? Listen to them.
Lesson #2: As simple as this seems, make sure you write down some identifying characteristics for the people you like next to their number. If you forget, you’ll get to the end and have no idea who you’re swapping contact info with.
Lesson #3: Don’t focus on the obvious in your three-minute dates. Oh, she has a tattoo on her arm? I’ll bet no one has asked her about that yet. Seriously, it gets old and a lot of times seems insincere.
Lesson #4: Don’t stare at her boobs… yet. I know she’s in a revealing costume, and that those things are just staring at you, but if you behave for three minutes you might just have a chance to get to know them better.
Lesson #5: No dead baby jokes. One of the guys tried that. He got zero numbers. To put that in perspective, there was a guy dressed as Alice in Hairy-Leg-Land (see pictures below if you dare) who got two numbers.
Lesson #6: As long as it doesn’t violate rule 4 or 5, be yourself.
Lesson #7: Don’t fall into awkward silence. You might be nervous, but if you really can’t think of three minutes of stuff to talk about, maybe you’re not getting dates because you’re boring. If the conversation isn’t flowing smoothly, ask a not-too-personal question to get things rolling again.
Lesson #8: This is the one and only time when your comic book collection will impress someone: use it to your advantage.
Lesson #9: Bathe before-hand. The only guy who got zero numbers besides dead baby dude is one that reeked of B.O. and Cheetos. It’s called deodorant, and it negates that -10 Charisma curse you cast on yourself.
Lesson #10: Chill. Don’t panic. Whatever the Klingon word for “relax” is. All will be well, and if not, in three minutes you’ll have your next shot.

Play your cards right and you might just be well on your way to some good ol’ nerd-lovin’. I personally walked away with 12 out of 22 girls’ contact information, three of whom were contact-worthy. Not 10 hours later, one of those three girls contacted me, and the very next day after the event we were already “playing some horizontal Dungeons and Dragons”. If I’d listened to my first rule and hadn’t been doing the super pee pee dance, maybe things would have gone even better.

Now, what you’ve all really been waiting for: the pictures.

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