Introverted Nerds at Bars

I was watching this YouTube video once where it said that if you are an introverted nerd, you should not bother going out to a bar to try to find a romantic interest. That was deemed to be not the element of such a person.

I forced myself to go to bars and clubs for a period of time. I'd go and I'd try to talk to people, including pretty girls. I'd try to get the phone number of a girl if I thought she was pretty. This never really went anywhere and after about a year and a half I dropped the practice.

While I was doing it, it felt like a job to me. At the end of it, when I'd see a woman standing there, I couldn't come up with a sincere reason for why I was starting a conversation with her.

I remember one time, I started talking to this couple about Japanese history. I was reading about it, and thought I'd talk about what I was doing with my time. It was very strange. I felt like I was being a buzzkill given the environment.

I remember one time, at a strip club, I intentionally talked to one stripper about how I would buy Brita water filters and use that to obtain drinking water. She took up the conversation and replied with how she obtained drinking water via water bottles, and I felt immediately bad for having creating the topic.

I guess when I talk to people I feel obligated to be discussing a grand mission.

When I was finishing college, I did consulting for a psychology department. I was programming a small visual experiment for them. It leveraged OpenGL and just rendered a couple of rectangular slabs in different placements. I overheard the grad students talking about their professor. They said he would talk about psychology all the time. I thought that surely, a well-rounded man should know how to "cut loose" and just have fun when work is done for the week.

I don't really worry about whether I am a social person or not.