Lately, there are a lot of people tossing the word “geek” around as the new cool label in town.  Personally, I don’t quite remember this to be the case when I was in high school.  I know that many geeks, including myself, wished that being flagged as a “geek” got them the attention of that cute boy or girl, or better yet, the homecoming king or queen title.  Nevertheless, geeks grew up being themselves.  They were devoted to their studies and passionate of all intellectual things, especially science and technology.  They hardly had any time to mingle in social activities that most other teenagers were able to attend or experience, such as homecoming, bonfires, and chaperoned house parties with the cool, popular kids.

Today, geeks can attribute their success through their smarts, hard work, and passion to solve problems.  It is true that geeks shall inherit the earth.  We have already seen a small glimpse of this happening.  The tech geekette Justine Ezarik, also famously known as iJustine, casually hangs out with Ashton Kutcher.  Hollywood celebs, LeVar Burton and Tony Hawk, gave a talk at the Twitter Conference in front of a live audience of tech geeks.  Chamillionaire, a talented rapper, is now a staple at tech events.  The tech community is slowly merging with the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and forming as one.

Is this a good sign for the Silicon Valley geeks and community?  Yes and no.  Hollywood, endearingly referred as Tinseltown, is one of the few superficial central hubs in the U.S. that survives solely on good looks, fame, and money. The glamour of Tinseltown attracts huge mass media, both nation and worldwide.  By combining efforts of tech and Hollywood, the geeks are finally being recognized and praised for their contribution and impact to society.

On the down side, the merge may cause the seemingly innocent and untainted geek world to experience a bit of the superficial Hollywood effect.  In L.A., a single, young, and attractive individual who can turn heads, sometimes can find love to be a bit difficult.  They are competing with other beautiful people that have better surgically enhanced traits.  They are being judged on their looks every day.  Gold diggers, both males and females, run abundant in Hollywood, while the powerful and wealthy men and women have the pick of the crop of the superficially enhanced.  As a result, it’s hard to know whether the person is genuine or not.

Silicon Valley has inherited some of the superficial Hollywood effect.  Sometimes, it feels as though the tech bubble is trapped in a rap video. Scantily-clad dressed women are hired to work at booths at tech conferences to promote new startups and products.  Some of these male geeks have tried creating a special application for the iPhone to locate “geek diggers.”  Instead of a time where smart women should be praised for their mind and not as sexual objects, this outlook is going to have the female geeks work ten times harder than they have already been doing to gain the respect in an industry that is predominantly all male.

Will these geeks be able to find love or be seduced by all the fun of the glitz and glamour that Tinseltown has trickled into Silicon Valley? According to the Wall Street Journal and other blogs, they believe that Silicon Valley is the new hot spot for young professionals to find love.  This comes as good news, but personally, I believe that finding love might be tougher than before.  It’s already hard for an attractive, single person to survive and find love in the superficial world, but to have a geek be sucked into this new found fame and power when they never experienced this kind of attention previously, it’s going to be a bit more brutal and overwhelming.

What does this mean to all of us?  It just means that the tech social scene has been reinvented.  Silicon Valley has been spooning Hollywood over the past few years.  If it were not for the birth of Facebook and Twitter, no one would believe that Silicon Valley and Hollywood have been and are currently forking each other.  Nevertheless, as geeks, we’re smart and able to adapt to situations and find solutions to problems.  Tim Ferriss, for example, outsourced his love life by hiring individuals to set up dates for him.  Developers are constantly creating dating websites and iPhone applications.  There are love coaches that specialize in helping geeks find love.  These methods may not work for all of us, but it’s in the right direction.  Yes, it’s going to be a tough journey, but I truly believe there’s hope in finding love in Silicon Valley and San Francisco.  Don’t you?

My friends call me the San Francisco/Silicon Valley “Hitch.” Not sure what it meant at the time, but found out later it was in reference to the movie Hitch that starred Will Smith as a professional wingman who knows the dating game so well that he teaches his clients how to court the ladies.  However, when it comes to his dating life, he struggles on how to win the heart of one woman that he’s completely smitten with. He violates all his dating rules and games that he taught his clients because he fell for this woman.  Of course, like all movies, he won her heart at the end.

I’m not a professional wingwoman.  I’m just a regular girl who happens to be a young professional executive in the Silicon Valley, but somehow make my way up to the city almost every night of the week.  I can definitely relate to the character that Will Smith played in Hitch. I had my share of dating men from different backgrounds – the gorgeous models, the geeks, the players, and everything in-between. I’ve had a lot of experience in the dating world.  It should be, since I just entered into my 30s.  With that experience, I’ve mastered the dating game and etiquette quite well.  My friends benefited from my skills since I helped them court the opposite gender. Many have landed in a successful relationship.  I’m not here to brag about my wingwoman skills, but rather that I know the game, but absolutely *hate* to use it on those I truly like and want to date.  Like “Hitch,” I naturally know how to connect others with love, but when it comes to mine, I’m still trying to figure it out.

I never arrived this way.  I was the bonafide geeky, American-born Asian girl with glasses who grew up with her nose in her books.  I was the nice girl that went unnoticed under the big glasses and baggy clothes. Boys aren’t insightful at a young age, so they couldn’t look beyond the nerdy attire I sported every day.  You wouldn’t know me now if you met me then.  I ditched my glasses by the time I hit college and changed my Asian haircut with the front bangs by the time I started grad school.  I didn’t have my first real boyfriend until I was 21.  I was late in the dating game.  Mostly because I was raised in a strict, conservative Asian family.  Ask any Asian girl and she will tell you the stories of her strict upbringing.  I don’t regret anything about it.  We all have different experiences that influence who we are today.  I embrace who I am and how I got here.

Today, I consider myself as an attractive woman, who is confident, ambitious, and independent.  I am successful in many ways in my life. I am a builder and creator of things and ideas.  At the same time, I make mistakes and acknowledge I’m not perfect, but I learn the most when I fail or am not at my best.  I believe I also described 90% of the women in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.  With that said, I am in a pool with a high number of very intelligent and *single* women with academic degrees, corporate experience, and/or startups to back up their names.

Why does this all matter?  To begin with, there is a lack of number of qualified single heterosexual males in San Francisco, in contrast to the large number of shy, geeky guys in the Silicon Valley.  The men in San Francisco acknowledge the lopsided scale of eligible single women versus eligible single men and they use it to their advantage by playing the field and always looking for the “next best thing,” even though the girl they are with hits all points in looks, smarts, and personality.  It’s understandable that we all need to date a lot to figure out what we want in a partner.  But seriously, does it really need to be a constant every day search for an upgrade?

On the opposite spectrum, the single males outnumber the single females in Silicon Valley.  Many locals have sometimes referred San Jose as “Man” Jose for this very reason. The single women in Silicon Valley have the pick of the crop.  However, the guys are a bit more shy and awkward than compared to their San Francisco male counterpart.  Nothing is wrong with this, but rather the Silicon Valley guys are too shy that they don’t ask a girl out or demonstrate interest.  If they do make an attempt, their methodology is a bit awkward. (I will get more into this at a future blog post).

I’ve been in the Bay Area for a total of 6 years. I use to live in San Francisco for the first few years before making the leap and stationing myself in the lovely Peninsula or otherwise, known as, Silicon Valley.  Here, I am going to chronicle my dating adventures as a Silicon Valley Bachelorette (and maybe share a few stories from my single friends).  Like every single person, I’m hoping that this fun, but also equally agonizing process called dating that I find Mr. Right.