I’m not some jackass psychologist or Dane Cook wannabe with some crazy pick-up-a-chick technique in order to sell you in my BRAND NEW EBOOK!!@#$@$. I’m just your regular, everyday recovered agoraphobic, Hikikkomori, waste-of-space, pan-nerd with a bad personality and a deep, incurable resentment.

Here are some things that I learned along the way!

There’s plenty of relationship advice out there, but not enough for nerds. But we operate differently from regular people, there are things that most men seem to know instinctively, but we have to learn the hard way.

You don’t need to be an alpha-male. A beta or a gamma will do. Nobody wants to be alone, especially not with Valentine’s Day coming up.

First of all. Confidence is not everything. It helps, but not as much as some people would have you know. If everybody thinks you’re a nerd. A nerd is what you’re going to stay and all the confidence in the world isn’t going to change that. It’s like asking a handicapped fellow to just think positively and maybe his legs will grow back.

Second of all: “being yourself” is some good advice but it is not something you want to use in all situations. Nerds, listen to me. If you’ve got a crush and the apple of your eye doesn’t exactly see eye to eye with some of your more unusual habits, then don’t tell her about them. Hide the nerd—at least for a little while. The trick is to build up the similarities before you introduce the differences. Too much difference all at once just makes you seem irrelevant. Like a liberal looks like to a conservative or an ant looks like to a human. If you both like long walks in the rain, baked potato pizza and M*A*S*H reruns, well then it’s easier for her to accept that you like Azumanga Daioh.

General Tips

1) Rule number one is don’t talk. That’s it. Talk less. Talk is not for you. Girls, like Yoda, want you to do, not try (or talk). If you’re a nerd anything like me, then you’ll probably end up talking her pants back ON, not off. A policy of less talk will take out all the unnecessary babble and bad jokes that nerds inevitably produce as a defence mechanism when dealing with high pressure situations.

2) She wants you to push her boundaries. Being polite is being polite. But she wants to be challenged, not worshipped from afar. Most women hate being worshipped, which is strange, god knows it’s better than the opposite. Now I know that anime teaches us to worship women, (or own them, depending on what anime you’re watching). But women are not abstract concepts that conform to ideal operating conditions. They are just regular folks that want to be joked to and roughhoused with. Use that. She won’t feel offended if you try to kiss her. (But she might be offended if you don’t!)

3) Alcohol. It sounds evil, but it works. I like to think of alcohol as marketing. They’re both necessary evils. Alcohol makes that girl who thinks that you’re “kind of weird but not really her type” into “someone that’s available for kissing when she feels like kissing,” so what the hell.

4) Have a cute dog with lots of energy. A1 seal of approval. Worked for me.

5) Girls are like google adsense. They are constantly indexing your personality, looking for things to attract and sell you. Take a page from the book of girl. Be like google ads. Go places and bring back souvenirs tailored to their specific interests and hobbies. Bring back Caillou books in Italian. Bring back Pocki. Bring back three dollar French wine. It tastes awful but IT WAS ONLY THREE DOLLARS. When you use her own techniques against her, she sees similarities, sweetness and thoughtfulness. It’s win-win.

6) Girls are like video games – if you die at the end boss, you can always restart the game and try a different path to the end. Pick a different girl. So long as you don’t delete all your save states, you’re never completely out of the game.

7) Meet them. I recommend online dating. Go for the free sites, never pay. The pay ones are full of scam. Plentyoffish was successful for me. There are nerdgirls on there, but not many and there’s plenty of competition for them. Look for someone quiet, seemingly overlooked. Start talking. Reign in the weird. Build up similarities before introducing differences. Push for face-to-face meetings because innocent chatting can and will just go on forever if you don’t do anything. Don’t be picky; your soulmate probably doesn’t exist. But there are a whole lot more people you can connect with than you realise. Do you really want a WOW player who likes shojo, Asterix and Ubuntu? You know how regular dudes pick chicks?

They like brunettes.

Or they like blondes.

8) Fixing your appearance. I fought this one tooth and nail. I didn’t want to be like all those freakmeat popular kids with their needlessly expensive clothes and their store bought hairstyles. But the fact is, just a little bit of work can go a long way. Even nerd girls expect their nerd boys to have a pair of non-faded jeans or a nice collared shirt.