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5 Ways You Can Support Paging Dr. NerdLove in 2016

January 13, 2016 by Dr. NerdLove 38 Comments

Normally I do an open thread on Wednesdays, but today I wanted to talk a little about Paging Dr. NerdLove itself. 2015 has been an amazing year – between major milestones like publishing New Game Plus: The Geek’s Guide To Love, Sex and Dating to crazy moments like being interviewed on Nightline and a couple of things that happened that I can’t quite talk about yet, it’s been a non-stop whirlwind. Not bad considering that this is a one-man show.

And speaking of shows...
And speaking of shows…

Recently I’ve had a number of people who’ve asked how they can help out with the site, which I always appreciate. Fortunately, there’re a number of ways to do that.

Follow Paging Dr. NerdLove on Facebook and Twitter

If you’re on social media, one of the best things you can do is to follow me on Facebook and on Twitter – these are the best ways to not only keep up with the latest from Paging Dr. NerdLove but also find out about upcoming events, news and the occasional random “What’s Doc think about Doctor Who” rant. And if you do give the page a like, make sure you set it up so that Facebook lets you know when the page gets updated. Facebook’s algorithms play merry hell about what does and doesn’t get shown in your newsfeed or notifications and so content you may want to see can get lost. To make sure that you get the updates you want – like, say, from me – after you click on “Like” on the page, click the little arrow on the side to bring down the options menu.

Like so!
Like so!

Click on “Posts In News Feed” and pick “See First”. This will make sure that when the I do update the page, you’ll see it in your News Feed. Don’t worry, I don’t spam you with updates; I tend to update twice a day at most. You’ll just be getting the latest news and articles from me, along with some favorite columns from the archives and occasional noteworthy articles from other great sites that I think is worth talking about.

And while you’re doing that…

Share My Articles on Social Media

One thing that really helps me out is when people share my posts with their friends. If you like something I’ve written or think you have a friend who really needs to see it, then please don’t hesitate to share it. Retweets, posting a link on Facebook, sharing posts from the DNL Facebook page, quoting and linking on Tumblr, even posting links on Reddit – these all help immensely. There’s a side-bar on all my articles to make it even easier to share them… even if you’re the one person left on Google +.

Sharing is caring!
Sharing is caring!

And if you come to my articles on the Facebook page, be sure to “like” them there as well; that also helps maintain the visibility of the page in your newsfeed thanks to Facebook’s algorithms.

Next, it helps to:

Tell Your Friends/Family/Co-Workers/Strangers About Dr. NerdLove

Printing out a column or two to share the old fashioned way is another great way of sharing the site. You may miss some of the nifty links, but some folks prefer print to digital media. As long as you’re going to be all old-fashioned about it and, y’know, talk to people in person, then telling people about the site is also helpful. I love hearing “Hey, my friend told me about your blog”  or seeing people get referred to me on Facebook or Twitter. It’s not the sort of thing that you can quantify via Insight tabs or conversion rates or whatever social marketing doublespeak I’m supposed to know, but it makes me feel good and I always appreciate it. Because of this, I’ve had colleges and universities use some of my columns in their courses, been interviewed on podcasts and generally got to hear from and meet all sorts of cool people because of it and that’s always fun.

And if you want to suggest to a convention, podcast, radio show or your college that you think I’d make an interesting guest for a panel or valuable speaker? Well hell, I’m not gonna say no1

Buy My Book*

Obviously, one of the best ways you can help out is to buy my books.

Simplified Dating is your troubleshooting manual for when you’re starting to stall out and need to do some quick refinements to your dating game. When It Clicks teaches you everything you’ll want to know about mastering online dating. And of course, New Game Plus is the big one, my start-to-finish guide to rebuilding yourself from the ground up and turbocharging your dating life for 2016.

New-Game-Plus-Final-Cover

All of these are available as ebooks or print editions for those of you who appreciate the physicality of books. If you know somebody who needs a little help, they make a great gift. And they’re just pretty damn cool in general.

And if you don’t want my book (or already have a copy), there’s also the Paging Dr. NerdLove Bookstore with a number of amazing books that were critical to my journey of self-improvement and can help you with yours. 

Plus, whether you by my book2 or one of the others or not, buying something else from Amazon vial those links still helps out the site through the magic of affiliate marketing. So it’s win/win all around!

*Hat tip to Sam Sykes…

And if you have bought my books…

Leave A Rating and Review On Amazon and Goodreads

I can’t stress how much ratings and reviews help authors. Not only does it boost our fragile egos (writers are sensitive creatures) but ratings and reviews help immensely when it comes to spreading the word about our books. In fact, once a book goes beyond a certain threshold, Amazon starts to recommend it automatically to more people.

So if you’ve read and enjoyed my books and if they’ve helped you, then taking a couple of minutes to leave a rating and review on Amazon and Goodreads is immense. It takes so very little to do but the benefits are profound, and it helps me out immensely and I always, always appreciate it.

I want to thank each and every one of you for how much you’ve helped me already. It’s been an exciting journey already and with your help, 2016 is going to be an even more incredible year. I can’t do it without you guys; you’re the ones who make this all possible.

(And hey, keep an eye on some of your local conventions; you might see a familiar face doing a tour…)

  1. Well… maybe. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID,  STAR-CON. [↩]
  2. Buy my book [↩]

Tweaking The Comments a Little

July 12, 2014 by Dr. NerdLove 29 Comments

Hey folks,

I’m tweaking the comments section a little. Since there’s been an absolute torrent of comment spam (how many witch doctors and spellcasters ARE there?) and more and more Guests posting at the same time, I’ve changed how people can post on the site. If you want to comment, you need to log in; ideally, you’d want an IntenseDebate account since that gives you the benefit of doing things like editing out your typos, but you can also log in with a WordPress.com account or signing in via your Twitter or Facebook accounts.

Hopefully having definite identities attached will cut down on the spammers and the confusion of Which Guest Is Which.

I apologize for the inconvenience, but I believe this will improve the comments section over all – not to mention making it easier for me to moderate.

(If you want to participate in the Dr. NerdLove Forums, you need to register a separate account. That’s a completely different login than the comments section.)

Paging Dr. NerdLove Episode #05: Frequently Asked Dating Questions

September 11, 2012 by Dr. NerdLove 6 Comments

The team up you demanded! Dr. NerdLove joins forces  with fellow advice columnist and intellectual badass Captain Awkward to answer your dating questions in an episode that can only be called WHEN TWO TITANS COLLIDE! Excelsior, True Believers!

(Too much?)
Got a dating issue that you need Dr. NerdLove’s help with? Call (512) 522-6513 to record a question for the podcast.

Check out this episode

Don’t miss a single update! Be sure to subscribe to the podcast via iTunes and RSS

Creepy Behavior and The Difference Between “Attractive” and “Attracted”

September 9, 2012 by Dr. NerdLove 169 Comments

Looks like there’s going to be a bonus article this week.

Whenever the topic of creepy behavior comes up, you can almost certainly take it for granted that somebody is inevitably going to bring up the Tom Brady Sexual Harassment sketch from Saturday Night Live as though it were some sort of “Drop-the-mic” debate-winning argument rather than a comedy sketch that relies on exaggeration and playing with expectations and stereotypes. One is forced to presume that people who see it as a great truth and insight into the human condition also like to gift-wrap their penises on major holidays as well.

Why does it always come up? Because people see it as validation of the idea that “only ugly people are creepy.” Which isn’t true and relies on conflating “being attractive” with “being attracted”.

The latest version of this argument came up in the comments section for This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things. From the comments:

Harris I get and agree with a lot of what you say. Men do need to be more sensitive to the dangers women face. There are steps and precautions men can take to avoid behavior that might make women uncomfortable. However skits like this one from SNL, illustrate a reality that you nearly seem to be denying: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBVuAGFcGKYSo obviously the scenarios in the above were exaggerated, but the point they are trying to illustrate is spot on. My male friends that are considered attractive can get away with all sorts of behavior that would be labeled creepy by a less attractive man. Of course even Brad Pitt or Tom Brady can go too far, but the guys you’re responding to in the opening of this post are making a real point that you’re not giving enough credit too. I also think, you deny the large number of women who label guys creepy for trivial or absurd reasons. I remember hearing a woman in one of my classes “whisper”(not very quietly) that she found a guy who sat by himself in the back creepy because he didn’t talk to anyone. This guy didn’t look the least bit threatening, and usually had his nose buried in a book, but her friends agreed with her. You seem to write women like this off as being rare, when I see this sort of thing happen all the time, heck its happened to me. I heard you briefly acknowledge in your podcast that women like this do exist, but you almost made it sound as though they were incredibly uncommon and not worth talking about beyond a brief mention.

Pay attention. Class is in session.

The first mistake with this idea is it comes from a place that assumes that attraction is binary; it’s either there or it’s not. It also comes from a place where a person’s boundaries are somehow universal, concrete things and should be exactly the same for any person regardless of circumstances.

Both are wrong. Attraction and comfort levels are elastic and mercurial. They can grow and they can shrink at almost any time.

Behavior is considered creepy when it makes people uncomfortable. Repeatedly pushing against somebody’s boundaries is creepy behavior; a person who ignores a woman’s discomfort or wishes and keeps pushing at her boundaries carries the implication that the he is either testing them (as per the crotch grabber in the story from ExplodedSoda) or ignoring them (in the case of UnWinona’s train harassment).

If a woman (or a man, for that matter) is attracted to someone, she is more likely to feel comfortable with them and more willing to accept certain behaviors… that is, her boundaries may be different for this person. This doesn’t mean that attraction is an all-encompasing passport to do whatever you want; just because somebody’s boundaries may be relaxed in certain areas doesn’t mean that they no longer exist. It’s very easy to shut down another person’s attraction to you in an instant, whether it’s by being an asshole, saying something rude or inconsiderate, or pushing at her boundaries.

Being conventionally attractive doesn’t magically inure you to being considered creepy. Don’t believe me? Ask Brett Farve how much being a good looking celebrity helped when he was sending his dick pics around. If Ryan Gosling happened to sit down next to UnWinona, draped his arms around her and started demanding to know what she was reading, she’s going to be equally annoyed as she was by the biker before he went nuts. If Adam Levine were to start talking about tits to Ky at the Minecraft party and showing off pictures he’ d secretly been taking of women’s breasts at the party, it’s <em>still</em> going to be creepy as all fuck, regardless of how good he might look naked.

Nobody has ever argued that being an Adonis wasn’t an advantage, but it’s also not a prerequisite. Being attractive is about more than just looks – especially since nobody can agree what’s a universal standard of physical beauty. Folks will cheerfully tell you that Kate Upton is fat. There are plenty of people who wouldn’t fuck Megan Fox with a borrowed dick while Kim Kardashian was doing the pushing. Folks may think Brad Pitt is the bee’s knees and the badger’s nadgers, but there’re just as many people who love Joseph Gordon-Levitt for his scrawny, nerdy looks. My friend Rubio – who was on the second Paging Dr. NerdLove podcast – is short and fat. And yet the man gets ass like somebody in a car chase who plows through an ass-cart and crashes through a plate-ass window… because he knows how to <em>be</em> attractive.

If you happen to be somebody’s physical type, great, you’ve got a leg up. Maybe this means she will be more comfortable with you than she would be otherwise. This doesn’t mean that anyone else approaching her is automatically going to be creepy, it just means that she may draw the line elsewhere, which is her prerogative. A woman isn’t required to maintain just one universal standard of what she considers acceptable behavior and trying to insist that she has to treat you exactly the same as she would treat Christian Bale is – once again – telling her that your right to approach her is greater than her right to decide who she wants to talk to and when.

If that seems unfair to you… well, you should stop and think of what sort of behavior you’d be willing to accept from Gabrielle Union or Jewel Saite that you wouldn’t be willing to accept from your eighth grade history teacher.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t become more attractive to her – and thus make her more comfortable with you… but if you want to have the chance to do that, you’d better not be acting like a creep.

Those girls whispering about the quiet guy in class that the commenter brings up? They’re assholes. Women who use “creep” as a way of saying “ew, how dare you think you had a chance of talking to me?” They’re assholes.

And you know what? I have no time for assholes. And neither should you.

So no I don’t consider them worth mentioning; they’re not that common to begin with and even if they were, it doesn’t change the metrics. The fact that assholes exist doesn’t mean that people aren’t allowed to be creeped out by people

I don’t take assholes like that into consideration when I talk about avoiding creepy behavior because assholes are going to act like assholes. They would talk shit about him even if he were the very model of etiquette and manners.

So quite frankly, fuck ’em.

Ask Dr. NerdLove: Love Hurts

September 8, 2011 by Dr. NerdLove 1 Comment

Doc:

I’m the nice guy, and I managed to score an amazing girlfriend. Just a few quick notes about me: I don’t watch porn, I don’t enjoy it. I’m about as monogamous as you can get, and when I’m in a relationship, thats who I focus on. To put it in perspective, I’m about as much of a chick as you can get from a guy on relationships.

Anyways, I’ve been with this girl for a year and a few months. We’re both super geeky together, and it is fantastic. About 95% of the time.

The question is, how much maintenance is too much maintenance?

Basically when it’s good, it’s amazing. We have everything in common, we share the same interests, we can do everything together, and sex is super fun.

However every other week she goes through a mood swing. It is irregular, and almost anything can trigger it. We could be watching a movie, and if an actress gets naked, there’s a good chance she will sulk about it. This is usually followed by questioning me on whether I find the actress more attractive than her.

Everything we do is like walking through a mine field. If It looks like I’m checking someone out, she is miserable about it. A girl adds me to facebook, or messages me on my wall, I hear about it.

So I ask this after a big fight where she has reached over a year back to accuse me of shit, and to complain I’m hiding stuff from her. From over a year ago. What the hell do I do? Keeping in mind she admits to having been diagnosed with and suffering from clinical depression.

I know the obvious answer, which is to break up. Is there a better answer than just “find someone less complicated”?

[Read more…]

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About Dr. NerdLove:

Harris O'Malley (AKA Dr. NerdLove) is an internationally recognized blogger and dating coach who gives dating advice to geeks of all stripes. Making nerds sexier since 20011

Remember: Dr. NerdLove is not really a doctor. [Read More …]

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