At long last, the utopian dream of nature and technology living in perfect synergy has come true, thanks to the efforts of a pair of dedicated Silicon Valley visionaries. The ground-breaking duo, Amy Andersen and Nina Ericson, have at last found a way to intermingle men in tech, that rare specimen, with the wild and voracious Cougars Of Silicon Valley — through a high-end dating service recently profiled in Vanity Fair.
Andersen’s biggest contribution to cougardom occurred on a historic night in 2009, when she launched an unofficial cougar night at the Rosewood Sand Hill hotel in Silicon Valley. She summoned her male clients with a rousing battle call (a seasonal newspaper called “Dating Confidential”), urging the lovelorn, sweatpants-clad venture capitalists to “change out of their baggy Palo Alto polo shirts and exercise pants, to dress up, and put their best side forward.” She also helpfully recommended that they “bleach [their] teeth” and “spray tan.” And so the newly-groomed men flocked to the upscale hotel bar, like helpless ungulates to a mountainous landscape, and Cougar Night was born.
The cougars in question came to Andersen for help because they exhibit the characteristic of “being assertive without the ability to turn it off.” According to her, “They have a tough time being women.” Having drank from the chalice of assertiveness, these beings can no longer be fully-formed humans with two x chromosomes. By day, they are male eunuchs. By night they are large stalk-and-ambush predators who prefer to hunt in dense underbrush and rocky areas.