The Internet Loves Gay Geek Nate Silver

The stats geek everyone is in love with now has his own Internet meme, a Twitter parody account, and a very popular (and very funny) hashtag devoted to his praises.

BY Lucas Grindley

November 14 2012 6:42 AM ET

Is Nate Silver gay? The answer to that question hasn't stopped him from becoming the Internet's latest ladykiller.

It also didn't stop him from improving on his accuracy in predicting the election's outcome, despite a theory from the now thoroughly discredited inventor of "Unskewed Polls," Dean Chambers, who said Silver was too "effeminate" to be trusted. (And who Silver basically laughed at in response.)

Silver is a self-described geek who writes for The New York Times and is the founder of the blog FiveThirtyEight. He's also got a new best seller on his hands, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don't. His way with statistics earned him a spot on the Out 100 in 2010. And Silver posed for a photo back then (seen above) with two other big gay names in media — Gawker's Nick Denton and GQ's Jim Nelson.

Out magazine this year called Silver "Our Favorite Gay Geek." And that followed a 2011 love letter in Out that said Silver "sets many gay (and straight, probably) hearts aflutter with his eerie prescience and rumpled-yet-sharp geeky aesthetic."

The latest Internet meme — now that Silver can lay claim to having predicted the outcomes in all 50 states in the presidential race correctly, instead of just the 49 from 2008 — shows it's more than just the gays who have a crush. A hilarious hashtag on Twitter called "#NateSilverFacts" is worth following. There's also a parody Twitter account devoted to him, called "Drunk Nate Silver." And then we love the Tumblr that's collecting the many Silver "Hey Girl" lines.

Check out a few of our favorite odes to Silver on the following pages.