Beauty and the Geek: Pick-up or Grow Up?

Though it has dubbed itself the “Ultimate Social Experiment,” the reality television series Beauty and the Geek has garnered criticism for being allegedly exploitative and crass. Defenders of the series, on the other hand, have pointed out that it rewards the “Geek” and the “Beauty” who undergo the biggest personal changes and improvement in attitudes during the course of the show. University student Niels Hoven appeared on the show and participated during the third season as one of the geeks, though it was eventually fellow contestant Alan Zackheim who won instead. At the time, Hoven was working towards a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, though also feeling the negative effect of having little to no social life.

Later on after his stint on the reality show, Hoven attended an unpaid internship at an institution calling itself Pickup 101. A dating and pick-up school for men, he initially made an effort to further enhance his social skills, and eventually ended up one of the place’s head instructors as well. Yet he has also been openly critical of the so-called “seduction community” associated with the school and others like it, which has been recently featured on the VH1 reality program The Pick-Up Artist.

Responding online to a forum poster who explained and detailed the elaborate ranks of so-called pick-up artists, who judge themselves by the number of girls they manage to seduce, Hoven stated that bedding as many women as possible definitely wasn’t a credible measure of manhood. He derisively declared the focus on numbers and quotas as no less geek-like compared to obsessing over video game scores, and that what really mattered was the satisfaction level for the people involved in the hookups. He confidently claims that he can create any type of relationship that pleases him, ranging from casual to long-term, and that the mature ability to pursue and achieve what makes him happiest is the best way of handling relationships.

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