Top 5 Tips on how to be a Sheek

I’m almost done with the online registration process – now all I need is a fun, sociable and interesting username. One that contains a little bit of the “me” that I don’t mind sharing online which is proportionate to the “me” that keeps to herself at the office. Who arrives early sometimes and gets straight to work, especially since the office move, which means that I get to sit next to Evan, who is a very hard worker.

The lights are ridiculously bright that time of the morning. If Evan arrives as early as I do, they make his dark chocolate skin glow a pensive purple. He doesn’t waste time like some of the others, who stand around colleagues’ desks the minute they get in and chit chat about what reality TV show they saw last night, or about their weekends. Or their kids, or what they’d really like to be doing for careers, if they’d had the courage to pursue them.

Having a good, strong username (and password) is Top Tip Number Four on www.sheeks.com. Sheeks.com is a site created for women, by women, who are reaching out and applauding women everywhere who like to play videogames in their spare time, but anyone can use it. They’ve even been in the news, talking about how it’s high time someone spoke up for women who like to do what – enter sardonic quotation marks – men do. Sheeks is an amalgamation of personas that some women may possess, just like everybody and gender in the entire world who lives and breathes. Girl geeks equals Sheeks. She Geeks. It’s clever, logical, and cute.

I decide on a name: GirlGotGame. Hah hah. It’ll do. I’m prompted by my console to complete registering by clicking on the box that says “All done”. This should be the easy part. I’ve done this so many times over the past few months. It never gets any easier. My heart head butts my ribcage.

Signing up to these things is definitely better than going out. A part of you gets used to filling out the forms and hoping that what you write comes out as enthusiastically as you hope it will if you said them aloud to some tall, sexy guy in the flesh. In the bar that everyone at the office goes to on Fridays after work. Mistaking that guy’s look for romantic interest before you realise he’s looking at something just beyond you. 

This is the third online community I’m trying to join in three months. It’s hard to find one where you can really fit in, and even harder if you’re a female who’s stated in her profile that she likes playing videogames. “A girl? What you doing on the internet, then?” a user on another site asked me. I didn’t reply. I took the hint and deleted my profile.

Sheek.com Top Tip Number Three: Never waste valuable time trying to make friends with people who are stuck in their ways. It’s unfortunate, but you can always do better. I take a deep breath, click on “All done” and am instantly transported to a menu full of forum choices. A huge pop-up banner appears, welcoming me. That’s nice. The site’s colours are a blend of orange and mauve – it’s an attempt to be neutral, I guess. It’s nice to stare at. They’re soothing and make me feel safe.

Sheek.com Top Tip Number Two: Explore sites thoroughly before committing to any one forum. First, I give my eyes the two minute break suggested by our annual office desk assessments and look around my bedroom. Rain spits silently onto the glass of the window. Some of my clothes and computing manuals are scattered all over the floor. I need to tidy up. What would my flatmates think if I ever let them in here? Imagine if I had a date over – what would they think?

On the right hand side of the screen is a globe coloured orange and pink, spinning inaccurately fast on its virtual axis. I hover my mouse over it and dabble in the geographical choices in front of me, let my mouse randomly settle over one place: Hong Kong. Another bubble appears as I do, giving me a ten second fact about the country. Did I know that Hong Kong is one of the most thickly populated areas in the world? No, I did not know that, but this new knowledge excites me. There are others in the world, right now, doing what I’m doing. Probably. And that it is OK, really, when I’m not lying in bed in the blue darkness, thinking too much about such things.

The glamorous women in my office are not doing this. They all sit together in the break room at lunchtime, wearing matching knock-off Jimmy Choos and thin silk scarves. Some of the men who play on the football team sit together, too. Evan is on the football team. He’s a lean, supple, thirty-something who takes care of himself without making it out to be a conspiracy theory about the rise of metrosexuals. That’s the impression I get from him whenever I eavesdrop on his conversations. He’s rarely interrupted when he speaks. He’ll casually say something like: “I think we should step up training, so that we can beat the Finance department next week” and everyone will just nod and agree with him, because he’s smart, but he’s also nice.

He likes videogames, too. I think. He’s got a small picture of Kirby from Kirby’s Dream Land taped to the bottom-right corner of his PC monitor. Kirby is a popular videogame character created by Nintendo. Some say that Nintendo games are for girls. Kirby is a blobby pink, puffy, cutesy creature with huge eyes. He’s also an amazing fighter because he can do martial arts and possesses other special abilities. Evan’s picture of him is black and white, which makes it quite masculine in a way. Once, when I was feeling bold and we’d both arrived to work before anyone else, I said that to him with no hint of irony. He laughed and told me I was funny.

I decide to step inside the forum called: “Like Thy Neighbour”. It seems like a good place to start to try to making friends. I join a game: Tennis Champs 2014. I select a player whose vital statistics add up to a combination of Serena Williams and Marion Bartoli. I select a three-set match and wait for a competitor. As I do, a tennis ball floats up and down in the centre of the screen. If you look at it fast enough, it almost looks like a bouncing, happy heart. Suddenly, it transforms into the name of my opponent: YoudBSoLucky. I quickly scan their profile box before it disappears. My opponent is a man.

Sheeks.com Top Tip Number One: Never ever take abuse from anyone. Report it. Stay safe. An instant message appears at the bottom of my screen: “I’m really good, and you’re a chick. YBSL.” I win the first three games, breaking his serve as if breaking eggs. YoudBSoLucky quits and signs out at the beginning of the fourth game. His parting message: “Get back in the kitchen.” I’ve weeded out both a terrible potential suitor and a sour puss. I wonder if he’ll remember me as a good competitor, or just as a girl who beat him silly at a game. Or as anything at all.

One lunchtime at work, Evan was asked about the date he’d gone on the previous evening. The top of my foot-long Subway sandwich glistened. I was starving, but my stomach did a little jig so I couldn’t eat it straight away. He said it hadn’t gone well, whatever that meant and chuckled. Someone asked him what he meant. He said, “Dates are awful, right? Who’s ever really attractive when expectations are so high?”

I tried going on a date recently too, I wanted to tell him. Set up via a site I’d overheard one of the glamorous ladies talking about. My date had been sweet and presentable. He’d held the door open for me, and let me order first. His smartphone sat next to his plate the entire meal. His eyes roved the environment around him, landing on his phone at times like a sniper’s laser, before positioning themselves strategically onto my collarbone. He’d asked me if I knew anybody in the music business. I’d said, “It’s a big business.” He didn’t laugh.

I try another forum: “Get along, comrades”, and find a survival shoot em up match set in a dense woodland. The usernames are a mix of references: Shakespeare, modern literature, TV shows, songs. They could be anyone. A wave of positivity overwhelms me. I join in.

The game consists of stalking other players and tagging them out. No weapons are allowed. You have to use a mix of tactical skills and good old-fashioned guts. I win one round.

Tempest1122 sends me a message: “Man or boy?”

I type back: “Neither.”

Tempest 1122 doesn’t send me any more messages.

I play another round and come second, feeling very proud of myself. Soon I’ll make a friend and share these achievements with them. We’ll find things in common, instant message each other about our favourite games and agree that doing this is sometimes better than doing stuff in real life. To win shows off your gaming credentials. To lose could be a funny ice-breaker. You never know.

I receive a number of instant messages in seconds. Most of them are abusive. One is patronisingly nice: “Did your boyfriend teach you how to play?” When I click the button to play again, I’m voted down in the “teammate ratings”. I exit the room. It’s how it goes, sometimes.

I wonder if Evan is part of an online community like this. If he has an online avatar, I could send him an invite to this site. I could make my profile picture black and white using Instagram. I wonder if that would annoy or please him, or if he’d simply delete it. We’d team up and win games together just for the sheer thrill of wining, because he’d be good at games, too. One day, we’d leave our laptops behind and go travelling. I should ask him if he’s ever been to Thailand because I’ve always wanted to go. I could send him an email, or catch him early one morning when we’re alone and ask. I’ll think about it.

He wouldn’t mind that my profile picture is only a touch out of date. I look more tired now – the long working hours have scored thin lines under my eyes, but not so much that I need makeup. That it shows off a Sheek who likes how she looks more often than not, and doesn’t need to be as slim as the glamorous women in the lunchroom, who stare at her as she happily tucks into her chicken ciabatta sandwich, because it’s delicious.

That she lied only a little bit about her aspirations when filling in the registration form for this site. She doesn’t have many at all, but the box looked stark when she left it half blank. That she truthfully answered the question “Do you think the world is a better place for all of the technology that’s available?” Yes, I wrote. Because I can be a Sheek.

Sheek.com Top Tip Number Five. Never be ashamed of who you are. I nod at the screen, as if someone can see me.

The rain is falling a little heavier now. I hope Evan remembered to take his umbrella on his way to the bar. If it rains again on Monday, I’ll try to remember to remind him.