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August 12, 2008 2:00 PM PDT

By a nose, it's the woman over the gadgets

by Jim Kerstetter
  • 16 comments
Freud

We're no Sigmund Freud, but...

Here at Crave, we don't normally think of ourselves as sociologists, psychologists, or anything else that claims to be particularly insightful about the human psyche. We write about gadgets, games, and things that are more likely to lighten your wallet than elevate your soul.

But after a day's worth of poll-taking, we can offer a little insight about our readers: they still prefer women to gadgets, even the wicked big expensive ones.

We posted an item Monday on a new Playboy reality TV show that even the great Chuck Barris, he of The Dating Game, The Gong Show, and alleged spy game fantasies, would think was cruel: The show will force geeks to choose between a weekend getaway with what is surely a rather appealing woman (it is Playboy, after all) and some sort of gadget. They won't know what the gadget is until they make their decision.

News.com Poll

Gadget or girl?
Which gadget would tempt you to give up a getaway with a beautiful woman?

A 60-inch flat-screen TV
An iPhone with one-year free from AT&T
A PlayStation 3
You kidding? I'm not that big of a geek!



View results

To settle a bet here in the newsroom, we asked our readers in the poll included here: What would you do? Not so surprisingly on this side of the winning money, our readers choose the woman.

More than 4,000 readers responded, and just a tick over 50 percent as of this writing picked the girl. Interestingly, more than 39 percent picked a 60-inch flat-screen television (well, that is an awfully big TV), and 6.4 percent went with an iPhone with one year free from AT&T. Another 3.7 percent (and we have to believe this is a joke) picked a PlayStation 3 over the lovely lady.

Our mostly American and Canadian readership seems to be less deferential (but not by much) to women than gadget fans in the United Kingdom. A February survey conducted not so surprisingly by a company that makes TVs found that 47 percent of men in the U.K. would give up sex for six months in return for a 50-inch plasma TV. By comparison, only 25 percent would give up chocolate.

What does this say about what goes on behind bedroom doors in the English-speaking world? Like I said, we're not sociologists, so we're not going there (and we've yet to find a similar survey for Australia and New Zealand). But when you add lower-cost items such as the iPhone and the PS3 to our total (And really, a PS3? Come on now...), we have to conclude the Brits have more of an eye for the ladies.

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