Online Love for Out and Proud Geeks

Aug. 14, 2007 — -- By day, 28-year-old Scott Josephson is an educational software writer. By night, or during any of his free time for that matter, he is a Trekkie.

In fact, Josephson's obsession with "Star Trek" has evolved to such a degree that he is now attempting to watch all the TV episodes, from the original version all the way through "Enterprise" — in chronological order. But "Star Trek" is not the only thing on Josephson's mind these days.

He is also trying to find a girlfriend.

"I am not doing the bar and club scene, so it is not that easy for me [to meet people,]" said Josephson in an interview with ABC News. "I have tried some dating sites with minimal success. I am just not finding that person unique enough to date me."

Fortunately for Josephson and the many "Star Trek"-loving seeking light saber-wielding/video game-playing among us, the answer may now be just a mouse click away. It's sweetongeeks.com, a new dating site that encourages its members to embrace the geek in all of us.

"I am absolutely a geek," said Josephson. "No question about it. You can put my name on a screen with geek under it, and I would be happy."

Bully-Free Zone

If Josephson's enthusiasm for "Star Trek" and science fiction weren't enough to make him the perfect candidate for sweetongeeks.com membership, his unabashed acceptance of his "inner geek" certainly does.

"We are hoping to create a bully-free zone where people can come and fly their geek flag as high as they want to," said Joyce Dales, who co-founded the Web site with her husband, Jeff. "Instead of just trying to hide their nerdiness, they can just celebrate it."

The Dales, who met on another online dating Web site, launched sweetongeeks.com because they believed — even on the Internet — the dating scene had become too image conscious.

"A lot of the profiles are aimed at being super-cool, being good looking. Being hip is not what most geeks are about," she said. In fact, Dales jokes, that the last straw came when her brother got kicked off another online dating service for being too nerdy — it was then they decided that geeks across the globe needed this Web site.

And they were right.

In the year since sweetongeeks.com's debut, over 4,000 self-proclaimed geeks from over 60 different countries have signed up.

With profiles like, "Unhitched hacker seeking relationship or dates with other hackers," or "I don't care if you can fix the transmission, I care if you can integrate my new gaming system and hardware into my existing set up," it's obvious that sweetongeeks.com have a definite type.

"Our geeks are very honest, brutally honest about who they are in their profiles," said Dales. "I think that's very refreshing and different from other sites. If you look at one of our profiles, people are like 'This is who I am. I love this, this, and this and I'm not ashamed of it.'"

Winks, Hellos and a Floppy Disk

Unlike Match.com which is funded by users, sweetongeeks.com features ads for cloak makers, paranormal investigators and even a paranormal radio station.

If a user wants to start an online chat with someone, the user can send winks or characters that include floppy disks, a unicorn or — if they're really special — a liger ("a mystical animal that's a cross between a lion and tiger," Dales said).

Members are even allowed to design their own profiles by changing the format to better suit their personality or create questions that pertain to their specific interests.

"I think having lots of interesting content for geeks to show their personalities [is important]," said Dales. "They don't want to hide. They want to post their photos. They want to put up photos they've created themselves, brag about all the nerdy things they do in day-to-day life and, with Web 2.0, they can pimp their geek space out and show their skills."

Thus far, sweetongeeks.com cannot take credit for helping to arrange any marriages, but it is certainly shaking things up on the "geek" dating scene.

Since joining sweetongeeks.com, Josephson has struck up a dialogue with several women, one of which he is hoping to meet — as soon as he returns from the Las Vegas Star Trek convention, that is.

"I want to find my geek," he said. And, in the end, isn't that what we all want? Sort of?