I could use a little help in this department, because I'm a programmer and a graphics artist by trade, let's just say my passions are creative ones (also love playing guitar).

This is always the killer for me though when a girl approaches me at a bar, strikes up a conversation (usually everything starts off great and she acts flirty) and asks me what I do within a few minutes of talking, and as soon as I answer her the conversation gets cut short within a minute or two, this is at least what I've observed, but there could potentially be a whole slew of other subconscious factors I'm not totally aware of. I have read DYD and "How to be an Alpha Male" btw, just doesn't seem to help with this particular thing. I've even had women act straight up rudely towards me after they ask. Lately it's made me a little wary of having conversations with women in normal venues like bars, most of the time in the past when I've dated a girl she's usually been a Masters or PhD student.

I'm not a fan of being dishonest, and I would want someone who appreciates me for who I am, but... surely there's a better way to approach this.

You gotta way better job then me. I still don't have girls getting turned off by me telling them what I do. Is the way you sell. If you sound like your upset about your job, is gonna come across as that and is a turn off. If your excited by it, is gonna communicate that your a freaking awesome guy. Obviously, you know your job and you say your creative, so it should not be that hard to sell as your job as if is the best job out there.

BTW, I have to say, don't dress up like a typical computer programmer. Rock a identity that girls find attractive.

If a girl asks you "what do you do ? ", don't answer it immediately!
It is a hoop.

Let her guess! It is more fun, and challenging for her.

girl: what do you do?
you: guess??
girl: i dunno
You: let me help you: Am i a
1. Lawyer;
2. Plumber;
3. Pizza guy;
4. Stripper
girl: haha, definetely no stripper
You: why you think that?
Girl: I think you are a .......
You: ahhh. come one! Why you think that? Do I look so stupid (DHV)
Girl: I dunno know, tell me
You: so you are quitter then
Girl: no no!
You: I am an artist, digital
[actually no one cares what you do, it's all formality, keep the conversation going. Therefore you have to make this funny!]

Totally get you. I love what I do actually, I have great passions for these things, but I also tend to subconsciously frustrate myself because I'm not where I want to be and may not get there for many years (I've always wanted to do things like start an indy gaming company, or write a novel, etc and hopefully get rich at it, and I feel that these things may be attainable in my lifetime if I keep at it, but these things also take loads of time)... even though in reality at work I'm the guy everyone goes to when they have questions, and in my creative life outside of work people cheer me on when I play guitar on stage or when they see my artwork. Maybe this frustration subconsciously comes across in my confidence when women ask me what I do, I don't know. The other things that come across in my mind is that I may be intimidating them somehow, or coming across "over-competitive" just to impress them, or they think I'm full of crap, or that they may just equate these things to being "nerdy" (and in that case that's really sad because I feel I have more fun with my life than simply sitting around drinking beer and watching crap on TV, I don't really see eye to eye with mainstream society at times).

Reality of it all though is, I'm just trying to have a decent conversation and progress from there rather than straight go into aggressive flirting. Establishing physical contact and all that jazz isn't a big deal for me btw, I just like to try and get to know a person a little at first.

I could of course lie and say I'm a fireman but I feel this to be a worthy challenge, plus any self-respecting guy should be confident in what he does.

Oh yeah as far as dress is concerned I don't dress to the nines when I go out, usually polos and jeans, nice but comfortable, plus we're in the middle of summer so button up shirts don't really come to mind. I might very well be due for a wardrobe upgrade though not sure. I just don't want to run into a situation of being overdressed.

Hell so one night just to share a funny story I was playing guitar and this very cute waitress starts wanting to talk to me. We were actually having a really enlightening conversation until she asked the question of doom. Next thing I know she's off exchanging phone numbers with this fat guy who looked like he'd just rolled out of bed. Pretty sad actually, in a comical kind of way.

I love that answer that's exactly the kind of creativity I'm looking for, you're getting all sorts of ideas going in my head, please share more. Don't you think btw it'd be good for me instead of volunteering the answer at the end there to ask her first what she does? Seems like it'd make the convo last longer plus let her know I'm interested in what she does.

Btw I'm technically both a programmer and artist in a professional capacity. So this is kind of a wild question here but which is the better one to say if not both? Programmers have a negative stereotype of being nerds (because people don't see it the same way I do, whenever I finish something really challenging I get a rush not all too dissimilar from when I've gone bungee jumping in the past), and artists have the negative stereotype of being smelly starving artists.

Let me rephrase this: No one cares what you do!

[unless you are a lawyer, sportsman, celeb, etc. Then it can create some DHV]

THe question arises in conversation, because people are trying to be polite and to keep the conversation going.

Twist this question to make it funny This will create DHV !!

Gotcha

Hi,

i think this is crap, for a large part that is. I do agree with: nobody really cares. If your jobstatus is that important to her, she is not really worth it.

On the other side: when nodoby really cares, dont make a big deal about it. Being creative with stupid answers, she just asked for your job, she doesnt really care that much. To me (also a programmer) it feels like you are ashamed of your job, like think your job is not good enough. It seems like you are afraid of the stereotype.

Building DHV... bwaark. this is all to technical, way to much thinking. Be who you are. Feel confident with who you are, like yourself. This confidence is all of the 'higher value' you actually need. For normal, basic getting to know people, it is that simple.

One more point, but then for niftypickle: You fail to say how the conversation continues. You say that the conversatiion gets cut short, but what happens really then? You stop talking? She stops talking? Does she just run away when you say what you do for a living?

Ask her what she does for a living. Ask her if she likes it and why she does or doesnt like it. If she doesnt like it, then what would she really be doing and why? when talking to people, get to the core of them. Dont stay superficial (i dont know if you do, but if you say the convo is getting shortcutted), find out who this girl is. What are here passions? can you relate to those passions? If you had fun, or if she seems something, tell her you want to meet her again.

_________________
"Stop being a fucking vagina and escalate" - CaptainJackHarkness

Like the naked leads the blind.
I know I'm selfish, I'm unkind.
Sucker love I always find,
Someone to bruise and leave behind.
placebo - every me, every you

I tend to agree with you in some aspects. If a girl asks me within a couple of minutes of talking what I do that instinctively throws up a red flag of "gold digger" to me, but I try and move beyond that and just realize that not everyone has good question to ask at first when getting to know a person, so I just try and keep the conversation going as normal and not jump to conclusions.

Let's see, do I feel ashamed to be a programmer? I have kind of mixed feelings on this subject. I love what I do first of all or else I wouldn't be doing it (and you know as I know as a programmer that there are plenty of people who are just simply "job coders" who do it for the paycheck I do it because I get a rush out of solving complicated problems and being able to create). However, I find myself in a lot of situations (I was a frat boy in college) where the people I'm around want to drink beer all day and talk sports and that's really not my cup of tea. People have written me off a lot of times as a nerd for having creative passions. I don't think it's a bad thing to be a nerd at all personally, but there are a lot of negative stereotypes because that's unfortunately the way that western society works. Perhaps I do fear the stereotype and intolerance because I've received some negative backlash from people about it, which I think is very petty on the part of the people who've been so intolerant, and maybe even more petty on my part to get offended by jerks LOL.

So anyways, let me give you an example of a rather brutal situation I encountered one night at a bar to hopefully answer your question. So one night I had finished up a 3D sculpt in ZBrush (if you're not familiar go google it now and check out the user galleries you'll see some amazing stuff people do) that I'd spent a good week on and wanted to celebrate so I headed down to a local bar for a few drinks. So I'm chilling in a booth and along comes this blonde HB8, sits down next to me, asks me for a cig, we start talking. She asks me what I do so I tell her I'm a programmer/artist, she then tells me oh artist that's cool she works as a bartender and has been wanting to get into interior design on the side. Well I thought in my head hey she might be interested in some of the architecture stuff I do since she's into interior design, and asked her if she wants to see this 3D model I did of my apartment and kind of my plan for using it to do some experimenting with interior design, so she's like sure that sounds cool so I show her and she's all like OMFG that's awesome you're so talented.

So anyways, right afterward I kid you not, she pulls an "I'll be right back" and goes and grabs her friend, comes back and tells me her friend has an "emergency". They proceed to go sit at the bar and pretend like they're crying every time they think I'm looking and then proceeded to laugh heavily every time they thought I wasn't looking. To make it even worst I had to walk past them every time I wanted to get a drink from the bar, and this girl would look at me like she was expecting confrontation and I just tried to blow her off.

Should I just chalk that one up to "jealous chick" or what? This is just one example though, I got a little wary about showing the artwork to people after that btw.

EDIT: Here just for the sake of comparison you can tell me if I went completely overboard by showing my 3D models (sorry for the large sizes):

I like saying I'm a rocket scientist or an ass model and then turn around and show them my ass, which they usually grab.

You shouldn't say things like that because I may in fact now actually want to try my hand at ass modeling since you've put the idea in my head... or ass I guess...

WTF??? These are computer generated ?????????????????????????

Say you are a programmer and that you write security software for banks and that sometimes you are hired by the CIA to test the security on government computer systems, and that once you were hired to...... oh never mind, I can't tell you, it's classified, if I'll tell you I'll have to kill you.

Oh wow its so great of you to grace us with your high intellect then. You are so smart "normal" girls are repelled by your awesomeness?

_________________
Bow chika wow wow

Yes those are computer generated. I used a program called Rhino 3D and basically went around my apartment with a 12' tape measure to input all the dimensions. After I was all done I used another program called Modo to bring in the lighting and materials and do the final renders. Whole process took me about 3 months.

I didn't write security software for the banks though, just backoffice analytical and automation software for the banks, although I did spend some time doing some hacking of certain systems in banking at the request of my boss at the time. My father tried to push me to apply to Langley a few times but I gave him the excuse that I wanted to "be a family man one day" and didn't think I could ever do that if I were in the CIA and gave my life over to the gov't. Well... yeah... I kind of eat those words today since I'm 32 and never married anyway.

(I do get the joke though btw good one LOL. Part of the problem I guess is that my life actually is completely unbelievable to people I meet in bars and I can see why I suppose. To Anthony's point though, he's right, nobody would care unless I were some kind of famous celeb or something.)

I can assure you friend if anything that there is no self-perceived "awesomeness" here on my end or I'd be getting dates on a far more regular basis. That is why I've come here for help.

Historically though just the chemistry of it all I guess, my last 3 LTRs have been Masters/PhD students and I didn't even intend it to work that way. Plot Spoiler: they're needier and more devious than most, I'll spare you the gruesome details.