By Carolyn Y. Johnson, World Staff

Joyce Dales had 30 dudes on Match her Jedi Knight in shining armor before she found.

“I happened to be either too strange or these weren’t strange sufficient,” she stated.

Ultimately, she discovered and married Jeff Dales, a “recovering attorney” from Nottingham, N.H., who had been geek sufficient to sprinkle Star Wars recommendations into their very very very first e-mails that are flirtatious.

However the list that is long of, from instructors and solicitors along with other specialists spread one of the an incredible number of pages she encountered on popular online dating sites, revealed Dales that folks like her had a challenge: online dating sites — after the domain of geeks — choose to go totally main-stream.

“It is such as the play ground yet again. We are perhaps perhaps not the cool young ones,” stated Joyce, 35, whom summer that is last SweetOnGeeks, a safe haven where in fact the socially embarrassing are able to find a special someone whom shares their fantasy of creating a Hobbit Hole or passion for jousting.

The Dales cofounded Sweet on Geeks with James Crosby, Joyce’s 37-year-old bro — a self-identified history geek whom stated he had been refused when he attempted to fill a profile out for eHarmony.

“we think in the event that you have only a little extreme in your responses, they deny you,” stated Crosby, whom compares the top dating internet sites to walking as a nightclub using the Killers playing — a nightmare for some guy whoever notion of a great time involves plastic documents and a Renaissance Faire.

Sweet on Geeks is destination where tossing away a mention of the an individual’s “midichlorian count” — an easy method of calculating exactly exactly just how strong the Force is in Star Wars — would not end a discussion just how it did whenever Joyce ended up being searching for a mate on Match.

Users choose names such as for example “AlphaGeek,” or “entropy73.” For very very very first impressions, they feature explanations such as “Nintendo fanboy” or “shy and soft-spoken” and point out Nikola Tesla and Leonardo Da Vinci because their heroes.

There are various other geek dating web sites on the market, which range from gk2gk to Trek Passions, nevertheless the geeks behind Sweet on Geeks wish their web site, which includes a few of the features men and women have started to expect on other social-networking sites and today has 4,000 users, can be a go-to spot for Trekkies, gamers, as well as others.

“we are wanting to escape that one-geek label of a man sitting in a lab layer or games that are playing” stated Crosby.

All facets regarding the web web web site is vetted because of the 3 founders — “two away from three geeks must accept,” Joyce claims. brand brand brand brand New features are developed in a collaborative procedure in that the group experiments with brand brand brand brand new tips — to their Macs, needless to say — thinking about things that produce them laugh.

For the first couple of months, account is free for users; from then on, it costs $5 30 days. But sooner or later the founders want to result in the whole site ad-supported, sponsored by geek-friendly advertising adverts such as the Dungeons & Dragons advertising that currently seems on the website.

“You need to promote to your market, and now we have actually quite a good demographic,” stated Jeff Dales, 41, with a person base that likes devices, games, and spends considerable time on the web.

However the geekiness is not just the main pages; it is included in the really base of interactions on Sweet on Geeks.

Each time a user “winks” at another individual to have the banter going, for example, they will have a choice of giving a variety of digital things — the letter that is greek, a unicorn, a floppy disk, a crop group, or perhaps a dilithium crystal utilized to power the warp drive on celebrity Trek. And so they can decide to share with the recipient of this basis for their wink; whether it is courtly love (“as a token of my esteem”) or the nerdish form of making a move (“as a spontaneous display of careless flirtation”).

“Our web web web site is extremely thoughtfully developed so an individual may be who they really are. It is OK to be smart. There is large amount of pressure in internet dating to be removed as one thing in your profile image,” Joyce stated. “We created an appropriate spot to geek a conversation out, a bully-free area.”

That is one thing the users appear to appreciate. Alex Riviere, a 21-year-old movie theater geek from Atlanta, joined up with your website a year ago and posted an image of himself with a solved Rubik’s cube. The screen was taken by him title Fimion — which is elvish for slim guy.

Riviere, whom dresses as a pirate “as frequently he found browsing more conventional dating sites as I possibly can,” said the website offers something a bit more genuine than what.

“It really is for folks who realize that culture would like to shun them. But we’re actually happy with the fact we are geeks therefore it simply takes it self extremely gently,” Riviere stated. “such a thing I put on Sweet on Geeks will probably be real and truthful; on, like, a dating that is normal I’d provide it a tad bit more consideration.”

This is certainly simply the effect the founders are dreaming about as their web web site grows in to an accepted destination where geeks meet, mingle, and perhaps also marry.

But behind the larger fantasy, there is a smaller sized one.

Crosby, using cups with blue octagonal contacts and a top saying “I’m perhaps maybe not dead yet,” continues to be solitary.