Sex in Silicon Valley

IT bachelors: rich, busy, socially inept and getting none

By Kieren McCarthy • Get more from this author

Posted in Business, 23rd November 1999 11:11 GMT

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Geeks have overtaken lawyers, doctors and rock stars as the social group most effective at using their skills to make a truckload of money -- just look at King of the Geeks, Bill Gates -- but when it comes to social skills they have a long way to go.

Successful, rich, hard-working and well-educated your IT bachelors may be, but when it comes to women and sex, geeks live up to their stereotype. Richard Gosse, founder of American Singles, the US' largest dating organisation, has set up in Palo Alto in the hope of getting sex-starved boffins to loosen up.

Palo Alto, incidentally, has the lowest women-to-men ratio in America -- with the exception of the furthest point in Alaska. It may seem crazy that in a country where a majority of women have said they would trade looks and sense of humour for money, that the world's greatest concentration of multi-millionaires has not been overrun with gold-diggers.

Times journalist Grace Bradberry infiltrated one of the organised get-togethers to find out what was going on. The stats were right -- young, rich, white, middle-class, single men -- hundreds of 'em.

But, as you would sadly expect, the dating game wasn't all that easy. One didn't have time for a relationship -- he usually slept at his desk; another took six weeks to arrange his last date, and then made it clear he wasn't willing to marry until he was 40.

The men and women were separated into "gentle" and "assertive" and then paired with those in the other group. You can imagine the rest. As terrifying as it all sounds, we give our unbridled support to the bachelors of Silicon Valley -- sexual frustration focuses the mind wonderfully. Keep knocking out those innovations, boys. ®

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