As a male, computer science major, and avid coffee drinker, I too am repelled by energy drinks. That aside, in my experience I see two mostly-exclusive classes of "geek": people who are much more fascinated with producing technology and people who are much more interested in consuming it. Departments should be targeting producers irrespective of gender issues because they make better computer scientists. Increased diversity is a bonus.
> As a male, computer science major, and avid coffee drinker, I too am repelled by energy drinks.
Repelled as in, "I don't want to be around anyone that drinks energy drinks" or as in, "I don't like to drink energy drinks?"
I find it wildly unbelievable that women would be shying away from Computer Science/Engineering because they are afraid of people who consume energy drinks. There are plenty of other more believable things for them to be repelled by. Are they only talking to women who choose their profession based on whether or not they want to meet their future husband in the workplace (i.e. "I won't find a suitable husband among energy drink consumers")?
I find it hard to believe that 'energy drinks' are associated with 'being a geek.' I've certainly never seen anyone that was considered as 'geek' drinking a Red Bull + Vodka mix, but they are wildly popular in areas. I've certainly never seen any energy drink marketed to geeks in advertisements either.
> That aside, in my experience I see two mostly-exclusive classes of "geek": people who are much more fascinated with producing technology and people who are much more interested in consuming it.
I know plenty of people that do both. My friend/co-worker bought himself a 30" monitor for his work desk (with his own money) just because he was annoyed at only having 2 20" monitors at work (his home setup is 3 screens). He's happy now because he can fit multiple Gvim windows on the screen at a 'usable size.' Yet he has all the latest gadgets (Kindle, iPhone3G, etc). [edit: I should make it more clear that he is a 'builder-type' person that has no love of meetings and would rather 'get the job done.' I really don't think that he falls into the 'people that are more interested in consuming it' category.]
I don't see how those two groups are mutually exclusive.
Bingo! The evaporation of the dot-com boom got a lot of status/wealth seeking drones out of CS departments, but left a lot of the geek-culture asshats that come in thinking that their meager IT helpdesk skills have something to do with CS.
It's the worst with video games: there's the standard "I like playing games, so obviously I'm a CS genius" type that my college friends called 'gamer scum'. At least with the way the big-budget games industry is going a lot of these people are now headed into Art Production where they fit in.
It seems to me that the fact that your friends referred to fellow students that weren't as clever as them as "scum" would seem to confirm another of the unattractive stereotypes about geek culture.
The notion of "people who are much more fascinated with producing technology" vs. "people who are much more interested in consuming it" really strikes a chord with me. I'm in grad school for CS and I've never really been a "geek" except that I've always loved programming and the like. I've always felt "different" from what is normally called a "geek". This is a start at explaining it.
