TechBromance: Fine Tune Your Geek Game

Posted by The Professional Wingman.

Let’s face it. Geeks are hot. There’s nothing sexier than a man who knows his way around technology. Don’t believe me? Just ask my girlfriend. She found me on Twitter. And let’s face it guys, lady geeks are damn hot. Some of you may be asking, “What if I am too much of a geek?” Don’t worry, I’m here to not only help you let your geek flag fly, but to use technology to score with the ladies - and we’re not just talking about dating apps.

But first, let’s talk about your in-person game because, even if you have technology to help you out, you need to create the magic face-to-face. If you’re a guy who can’t get it together to talk to that hot girl across the room, here is something I want you to think about. Developing your social skills is like a video game. At the end of every level, you’ll have a boss to battle. The problem is, every time you think you beat the boss, you find out there’s another level and each time, it gets harder. This will always be your battle with women - and it’ll get harder. The cool thing is after every battle, you build up experience points. The higher your points go, the more able you’ll be to win the next battle. Life is a game and you need to embrace it and play to win.

The best way to handle your difficulties with women is to experience talking with them. The next time you see your princess, approach and talk to her. Let her know she caught your attention, so you had to introduce yourself. The more you do it, the more experience points you get. The easier it gets, the further you’ll go. Now, the question lies. Where can you find your princess?

If you’re a reader of this blog, chances are you have a smartphone. That means it probably has GPS-location abilities. The two combined makes for a powerful resource when it comes to finding where women are hanging out. Here are some examples and how you can best use applications you probably use everyday more effectively. If you don’t use them, get your hands on them now!

Foursquare combined with Assisted Serendipity. Foursquare is an amazing application that lets you see where other people are in your vicinity and gives tips for certain locations. It also lets you know what places are “trending,” meaning there’s a lot of people there. But wouldn’t it be cool to know if there are a lot of women there? Or better yet, wouldn’t it be amazing if you were told when the gender ratio “tips” in your favor? Welcome Assisted Serendipity. This web application will not only notify you by email when the ratio you set is met, but it will also show you at least 3 of the people who are there. Select up to 10 venues you enjoy going to and let them do the rest. This is definitely the easiest way to know where to go on any given night.

UrbanDaddy. When it comes to planning a night out or a date, you need a few ideas to get your brain going. I’ve always used this application to find great date spots for my girlfriend or to take her to another place (hence the title, “The Next Move”), but it’s also useful to find locations that are great for meeting women. Just choose from the many options and the app will give you a ton of possible locations. These locations come with map directions and a brief description of what to expect. Not bad as a last resort for figuring out your plans for the night.







SCVNGR is another great location-based application with a growing user base. But what makes SCVNGR special is the ability to create your own challenges for certain venues. If your buds knew they’ll get points towards a deal at a venue, they’ll be more motivated to interact with the ladies.

With all of the tech in our lives, it makes sense to embrace it and use it to get you...well, you know. Let your geek flag fly, boys.



*These apps are not meant to follow women around in a stalker-way, but to know where you should be going to better your chances to meet women.

The Top 10 Techromance Moments of 2010

In 2010 it felt like techromance errupted like a an oil rig in the Gulf Coast and spilled out everywhere even landing on the big screen as Jesse Eisenberg played out the wicked "E"dentity of Mark Zuckerberg in the Social Network. Some moments we were ready for and some we may never be. To recap, below is a countdown of the top 10 most memorable moments in techromance this year.

10. Brett Favre's Ball Pass - Okay I know it's hard to believe that a professional athlete and overall good guy could get so raunchy via technology right? Especially directed toward a hot, scantily clad brunette with hair extensions and too much lipliner. If you missed the full story just rewind to 2009, insert Favre and Jenn Sterger for Tiger Woods and Rachel Uchitel and upgrade the technology from texts to video.

9. Netflix Scorned Lover's Hack - I love web trolls. Especially when they are smart enough to hack into the Netflix account of their unfaithful partners and scare them straight by ordering months full of psycho-dramas delivered to their door. Afterall, there's nothing like watching Richard Gere smash that hot French guy's face in with a snow globe to inspire chastity.

8. Facebook Faceoff: Catfish & Social Network - Nothing made me happier than seeing these two techromance tales play out on the big screen. Their presence elevated the importance of social networks -- showing how life online can effect the real thing and that no matter how desperate you are to attract "friends" there are really only a few you'll ever get to poke. And fewer than that if you continue to wear a GAP sweatshirt.

7. The Rise & Fall of ChatRoulette - Like all great Russian things, ChatRoulette had an epic rise and a tragic fall. At first it seemed like a brilliant idea -- the perfect antedote to the overly sanitized rules of Facebook -- that is until the only people that were attracted to the site were the ones seeking unsanitzed rules and roaming their basements in white tshirt, no underwear.

6. Iphone 4 G-rated Video Chats - You gotta love the innocence of Apple, they are all cute French songs in their commercials and even pick racially unidentifiable actors to shill their products. That's why when they promoted their video chat feature on the Iphone 4 as a way for hipster girls to show off their new pixie shags to their Williamsburg boyfriends instead of admitting the feature would be more likely to show videos of people shagging themselves, I didn't even roll my eyes.

5. Ashton's Kutcher's Cheating Tweeting Heart - The only thing more anoying than watching Ashton oaf around in those obnoxious trailers with Natalie Portman is listening to him drone on about how much he loves Demi Moore on twitter. Especially when they come days after he's been caught with his hands all over some waitress's ass at an LA coke den. Apparently "what happens in Vegas" winds up on the cover of Star magazine and 140 characters isn't enough to cover up your own when you're boning a woman that looks like your wife 20 years ago.

4. OK Cupid Stats in the City - In a smart and hilarious marketing move, the dating website OK Cupid launched OK Trends--a blog that shares insights from the data they collect from their user base. Funny stats like "people are 20% poorer and 2 inches shorter than they say they are" reminded us that maybe there is a reason why we don't want to hold up a mirror to our digital dating self.

3. Charles Manson's Cell Phone in His Cell - Earlier this winter Charles Manson was busted for sneaking a cell phone into his prison cell and using it to place calls and texts. Though this was his most minor offense to date there is something particularly disturbing about finding a phone in the cell of a person who is notorious for mind-manipulation and convincing people to kill other people. Almost as creepifying were stats released from the prison stating that his phone was one of 8,675 cell phones confiscated in California prisons this year.

2. Getting Checked Out & Checked In - The adoption of FourSqaure this year helped take stalking to a new level. Serving as a polar opposite strategy to HTG (hard to get) this technology made coincidental run-ins a little more common and turned people on to our daily rituals, sometimes provoking unflattering questions like "how is her ass that big if she checks in to the gym everyday?"

1. Douche Duke University PowerPoint Scandal - In May of 2010 Karen Owen's infamous presentation, "An Education Beyond the Classroom: Excelling in the Realm of Horizontal Academics" hit the internet disturbing upper middle class prudes everywhere. With whor-ifying stories about making out with multiple guys in one night, leaving a period stain on a random dude's sheets and stealing belongings as hook up souvenirs, she showed America that you too can get a degree from Duke, even if you get by on Fs.

Thanks for reading guys! Here's to a happy and romanTECH 2011!

Memories Offline

This week I am leaving my day job after almost 8 great years! Among my most grueling tasks has been packing up my office after roughly 1800 days of work -- a number that makes 500 Days of Summer, look like a drop in the bucket.

Among the dried up markers and pay stubs was a paper trail of memories dating back to 2002. In each drawer and cabinet are relics that document the last 8 years of my life. Among the most valuable items were: a birthday card from a friend that has since passed away, a photo of me and Anna Nicole Smith from Fashion Week when she was promoting TrimSpa, an apology note from the first guy who broke my heart, a train pass from Montclair from when I couldn't afford NYC rent and a business card from a cutie I met the night my best friend came out to me on the roof of the Gansevoort Hotel.


Although I love tweets, texts, chats, BBMs, wall posts and FourSquare check-ins these communications are forever fleeting and can make the past seem to completely disappear from our newsfeeds, inboxes and eventually our lives. Just think of the birthday wishes we receive on our Facebook walls. After just a few days those heartfelt messages are buried beneath updates on where we ate lunch and what we think of that evenings' Dancing With the Stars performance. The lack of permanence creates an emphasis on the here and now with less thought left for the where we have been.

As we all continue to move as fast as a status update, I hope we do not become a world ridden with NOstalgia -- a place that is less humble, where people forget their history and are less thankful for the journey that took them to their final destination.

Right now my last 8 years barely fits into 6 large cardboard boxes -- and I hope in the next 8 years I only accumulate more baggage. Even if that makes packing up a total b*tch.

Location Based Stalking: Foursquare is Creepy

Facebook stalking is so common now a days, that I actually think its offensive if someone takes you out without doing some online research. Its kind of like going into a job interview and asking the employer to tell you about the company.
But the social media world can also go too far when it takes the information that is at our finger tips and lets us use it to put people under our thumbs. A good friend was at the beach in LBI two weekends ago and was uploading photos and commenting about the fun he was having. Fastforward 3 hours later and he gets a text from a girl he has been casually seeing asking him what he was doing. He responded that he was down at LBI and she commented back "OMG me too!"Coincidence? He thinks not. FourSquare, the mobile GPS that lets you check in to locations is also propelling this trend. A good girlfriend recently checked into a bar and was shocked when an ex walked in shortly thereafter. He said he was in the neighborhood, saw she was there and wanted to say hi. That night she earned the socially awkward badge.

I hate to be a romanTECH pessimists but according to the New York Observer's report on research released this week from Forester 80%of Foursquare users are educated white males -- wait isn't that the same profile as a serial killer? Ok I am praying that people continue to use this technology for good and not e-vil. The last thing we need is a CSI episode based on a girl that checked in one too many times before checking out for good. What do we think?