Good morning Hank, it’s Tuesday. It’s question Tuesday, the day that I answer real question from real Nerdfighter. That’s right, no plural today, just the one question.

(Original 2009 intro)

“Hi, I’m a fifteen year old girl named Katie.” No you’re not, you’re John Green sitting slightly farther away from the camera. Right, no, I realize that, but I’m quoting a fifteen year old girl who wrote us an email. Oh, alright. “I’m not very popular. How do I get boys to like me?”

Thank you for your question, Katie. Let me begin by acknowledging that I am not an expert in the field of fifteen year old boys. In fact, Katie, putting aside the question of how to get boys to like you, I don’t know how to get boys to like me. Katie, I don’t know if you know this, but all of our videos, except for the ones that feature giraffe sex as the center screen shot are watched by nearly three times more women than men. So Katie, my first piece of advice to you is that if you want to get boys to like you, you should become a giraffe. And then have yourself videotaped getting your giraffe freak on.

So Katie, from what I can tell, there are about six ways to get fifteen year old boys to like you. The first way is, of course, to become a giraffe. The second way is to become World of Warcraft.

The third way is to be something called “hot”. Now Katie, I would argue that there are at least two distinct definitions of hot. There is the, like, normal human definition which is “that individual seems suitable for mating," and then there’s the weird culturally-constructed definition of hot, which means “that individual is malnourished, and has probably had plastic bags inserted into her breasts." Now, boys may find that hot now but I don’t think there’s anything inherently hot about it; like I think if you went back to the eighteenth century and you asked a fifteen year old boy, “Would you like to marry a woman who has had plastic bags needlessly inserted into her breasts?”, that fifteen year old boy would probably be like “What’s plastic?”

The fourth way to get a boy to like you is to be yourself. Now, I’m contractually obligated as an adult to give that advice, even though it doesn’t work. But yeah, be yourself even though no one has any idea what it means to “be yourself”. Like, whose self would I otherwise be being?

The fifth way to get boys to like you is to meet their expectations by acting like you’re an idiot. There’s this famous poem by e.e. Cummings that partly goes “the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids’ flutter which says we are for each other.” And like nothing against the quality of that lady’s eyelid flutter, but why is it that women’s eyelids are always fluttering while men’s brains are always working? So yeah, you can buy into the cultural constructions that young women are supposed to be stupid and awkward and eyelid fluttery, which of course, Katie, is totally easy to do because sometimes you feel stupid and sometimes you feel awkward and sometimes you wanna get all eyelid fluttery. But the great secret of boys which they are right now denying in the comments of this very YouTube video is that sometimes they feel stupid and sometimes they feel awkward and sometimes they feel all eyelid fluttery! When you realize that all brains gesture and all eyelids flutter and everybody feels awkward, boys will like you because we will be scared of your knowledge!

The sixth way to get boys to like you: consider different boys. Katie, I have two words for you: nerd boys. Katie, I know that nerd boys don’t sparkle in the sunshine but they’re sensitive, they’re caring, they’re sweet, they’ll do nice stuff for you. They’re a little bit needy, I will grant you that they’re a little bit needy.

Oh, and lastly, let me explain something briefly to boys: Gentlemen, nerd girls are the world’s greatest under-utilized romantic resource. And guys, do not tell me that nerd girls aren’t hot because that shows a Paris Hilton-esque failure to understand hotness.

Hank, I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m so excited for song Wednesday, I gotta do a little dance. Dance dance dance dance closing move!