[2] Similarly, in a 1996 study of high school cultures, linguist Mary Bucholtz noted that "nerd status is overwhelmingly associated with males.
In 2007, actress and gamer Felicia Day popularized the archetype through the webseries The Guild and the YouTube viral video "(Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar".
"Fake geek girl" is a pejorative term for a woman who is accused of feigning interest in geeky topics such as video games or comic books to get attention from men.
[15] In the article, she discussed the difference between geeky women as social outcasts, and "pretentious females who have labeled themselves as a 'geek girl' [who have] figured out that guys will pay a lot of attention to them if they proclaim they are reading comics or playing video games.
In this article, he denounced women who pretend to be interested in geek culture to gain attention from men or to advance their modelling careers.
[16] Comic artist Tony Harris wrote a Facebook post in November 2012, described by The Daily Dot as a "diatribe", about female cosplayers who were not knowledgeable about the characters they were representing.
Kirk Hamilton wrote in Kotaku that people perceived to be fake geek girls simply had interests that varied, in aspect or degree, from those of a male reader.
[22] In April 2011, New York Times television reviewer Ginia Bellefante caused a minor uproar by characterizing the medieval-fantasy series Game of Thrones as "boy fiction" that "no woman alive" would wish to watch.