I’ve always embraced my inner nerd. I wear glasses. I read a lot. I like science. Sadly my geekiness is almost catastrophically tarnished by my love of sports and ‘hitting things’ in general. Hitting tennis balls, hitting people, this is a total distraction from proper, full-fledged nerdiness, and I can only apologise. So in terms of me and Bill Gates, I’m one tennis racquet to the good, and 130 billion dollars in the hole.

But as the Gates divorce begins to unfold, tales emerge of the ‘inner life of geeks’, the ‘other side of the coder’s coin’. When pale, spotty, pasty, 19-hours-a-day on the screen creeps let rip. Because as the sun began to rise in Silicon Valley and all the way up the west coast to Gates’ ‘own’ Seattle, the tales of the wild parties, the orgies, the drug’n’booze filled, 4-day pool extravaganzas of which Caligula would have been proud, begin to emerge. And shed new light on the species, nerdus softwarian.

Because these dudes, the Gates and the Elon Musks and Zuckerbergs were the rock stars of their day. But they didn’t look like Jon Bon Jovi and Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison. They looked like the kids who got bullied at school, didn’t bathe too often, and had a wardrobe of 6 items, 4 of which are ‘dirty t-shirt’.

But the rules of engagement are the same universally. FOLLOW THE MONEY. And these guys had the money, growing vastly even ‘back then’. And where there’s money there’s generally groupies, drugs and lots of sex. Call it ‘misogyny’, call it ‘boys being boys’, call it Cyril for all I care, but its just what happens. And this gets taken back to the workplace and manifests as ‘abuse’ and harassment and all kinds of HR nightmares, as the division between the ‘work’ and ‘play’ becomes a little blurry and the geeks feel liberated from their snail-like persona to live the full ‘masters of the universe’ life they can very quickly adapt to. Probably more quickly than non-nerds because real ‘rock stars’ grew up gorgeous and had babe-magnet status at 12. And the nerds were the untouchables until the money flowed.

And Bill Gates, the nerd’s nerd, the straightest, nerdiest LOOKING of them all, was, by all accounts, a fucking animal. I don’t condemn him for this. He may be brilliant and rich, but he’s only human. And more, he’s a male human and thus fatally flawed from birth with ‘that organ’ which causes endless trouble.

Among Bills vast array of properties is a little (by his standards) beach-side, wooden house in North Carolina. Which he keeps to share one weekend every year with the same ‘ex-girlfriend’, with consent from Mrs Gates. So although the amazing Mr Gates, philanthropist extraordinaire, giver of money all round good person who strongly resembles a preacher from Boise, Idaho; there’s something of the Weinstein there, just waiting to come out.  

#me0010 (binary code joke)

A xxxx