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When Nerds Collide (2014)

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Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#61

Post by modfodder »

pekk wrote: post #55
modfodder wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we aren't against diversity"..."they should make their bones, same as we did" sounds like it could come from any all white male institution. The problem is, we as humans prefer to surround ourselves with people just like us, sometimes that means same race, sometimes same religion, or gender, or political views, and often it happens subconsciously, choosing the person closer to our ideal without us even realizing we'…

I can't convince you, and it doesn't matter whether you believe me, when I say that it doesn't matter to me about your race or sex or whatever, I am still going to think your cool hack is a cool hack. That's just how it is. I know not everyone does work this way. But I think it's counterproductive to try to tear down and erase this entire value system. In the worst case it's an imperfectly met ideal, but that's no re…

I will absolutely believe you. I will take your word until your actions show me otherwise.

What value system is being destroyed or abandoned? Surely not one where a person is judged by merit and not by what group they do or don't belong to. At least not by me or anyone I've ever heard about.

Now there are people that are trying to destroy the value system that professes to be based on merit but is in reality based on discrimination, privilege and/or internal groupthink by a narrowly defined group. But if you truly believe in merit above everything else, I would think you would welcome the downfall of these false meritocracies.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#62

Post by dropit_sphere »

modfodder wrote: post #31
angersock wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that we even have a collective shared-ideal of "we judge you by your work" is an achievement worth celebrating and continuing, even if we individually fail at it, or even fail at it a lot. And that's the problem I've got with a bunch of the attacks I'll commonly see that are based on privilege: the entire idea is that "well, no, that cool hack doesn't count somehow, because you're a member of $MALIGNED_GROUP…

"we aren't against diversity"..."they should make their bones, same as we did" sounds like it could come from any all white male institution. The problem is, we as humans prefer to surround ourselves with people just like us, sometimes that means same race, sometimes same religion, or gender, or political views, and often it happens subconsciously, choosing the person closer to our ideal without us even realizing we'…

>This is what [the forces of D]iversity [are] (or should be) fighting against, it really is trying to make it merit based which goes against our survival instincts, even those of the "nerds".

How exactly do you expect a group to react when you push against its survival instincts?

Feminism is accused of this most often, so I'll use it as an example: some have accused the feminist movement of sexism because it simultaneously claims the sanctity of women-only "safe spaces" while simultaneously fighting against the existence of male-only institutions. I don't want to pass a verdict on that so much as point out that that is what the article is talking about:a safe space for nerds.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#63

Post by pekk »

fr0styMatt2 wrote: post #16
Yhippa wrote: post #15

The brogrammers and geek feminists won. There's no turning back.

How does calling people 'brogrammers' in a derogatory sense make us any different than the supposed 'cool kids' that rejected us? Shouldn't we strive to be better than that? (not saying that you are using the term 'brogrammer' like that, just posing a more general question).

If we are interested in certain things that are not mainstream, and then other people who aren't really interested in those things come in and screw things up for interested people by acting in a selfish and conceited and exclusionary way, and we call those people jackasses or brogrammers or whatever, that doesn't make us the same as them. It's just an observation. And any culture worth its salt rejects forces actively trying to tear it down.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#64

Post by EdwardDiego »

dragonwriter wrote: post #54
LordHumungous wrote: post #50

>Programming is an inherently constructivist discipline. A constructivist is like the archetypal Missourian: “Show me!” Many "hackers" are unable to apply this principle to the field of business. They don't understand business, they aren't good at it, and therefore they see it as nothing more than empty headed self-promoters jockeying for social status, just like those "cool kids" who picked on them in high school. T…

The prime directive of a business is to serve the interests of its owners. That usually requires making money at some level, but making money itself may not be the prime directive. It's true that if a company is publicly traded, widely held, or principally owned by investors who choose it based on potential financial returns, the shared interests of its owners are likely to be limited to making money, but that isn't…

> The prime directive of a business is to serve the interests of its owners. That usually requires making money at some level, but making money itself may not be the prime directive.

And this is certainly true of some businesses. A few businesses. And they're fantastic to work for. But they're very rare in my (admittedly) limited experience.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#65

Post by hyperion2010 »

arrrg wrote: post #52
hyperion2010 wrote: post #26

This article is so spot on and covers many of the things that have bothered me for years about people who try to join nerd communities and then immediately start complaining about "inappropriate behavior" (eg the dongle thing). Yes, there are cases where there is real inappropriate behavior surrounding positions of power in corporate or workplace settings, but in the community at large and in the communal and public…

Uhm, I’m real confused. Why do you talk about “try to join nerd communities” with regard to the dongle thing? Do you know something we don’t? That seems more like a policy of exclusion from your side – ala obviously a real nerd wouldn’t ever find something inappropriate or be clumsy in how they complain about something. This whole thing is a way of cordoning yourself off, isolating yourself from criticism, shunning o…

I can't tell if your last line is flagged with /s but all I will say that it perfectly illustrate the lack of tolerance that drives nerds away. I'm going to generalize here. The description of nerd withdrawal that you give actively implies that the nerd has aggressively attacked someone by TRYING NOT TO BE SEEN. The nerd is trying to avoid conflict because it is a giant waste of time and frankly is pretty depressing. This behavior is the interpreted exactly as your last line reads as "hateful" and "weird." This interpretation leads to a personal attack from the afflicted whereas the nerd was simply trying to avoid any of this. It is like saying that nerds should know better when the stereotype that is forced upon them (often correctly) is that they are often utterly unaware of their affect on other people. That the afflicted does not have the empathy to recognize the crippling social ineptness (in the eyes of appropriate society) of the nerd leads to directed attacks (often call bullying in the rest of the world). When a nerd withdraws it is directed at no one. I am NOT giving the nerd an out for bad behavior. I am saying that nerds often speak their minds without stopping to check who is listening because they don't do the primate thing of checking to see who is going to beat their ass every time they speak and they intentionally formed their own society so they didn't have to. Most nerds will apologize if someone reminds them that other people near by might not feel comfortable hearing certain discussions, but don't be surprised if some of them ask why that someone was listening in the first place.

tl;dr Generalization: Nerd withdrawal is rarely directed at anyone, it is a defence mechanism. Responses to nerd withdrawal or nerds expressing themselves (in their blithely unaware way) are often direct attacks on the nerd. This asymmetry is what drives me nuts.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#66

Post by Argorak »

hyperion2010 wrote: post #26

This article is so spot on and covers many of the things that have bothered me for years about people who try to join nerd communities and then immediately start complaining about "inappropriate behavior" (eg the dongle thing). Yes, there are cases where there is real inappropriate behavior surrounding positions of power in corporate or workplace settings, but in the community at large and in the communal and public…

I don't see anything what you describe as inherent and necessary to nerd culture.

What you want is an abrasive culture and I oppose that.

I certainly never "left the world" and certainly not because I found all those things useless or oppressive.

I can still nerd out on a multitude of subjects from music to board games to digital culture and I do prefer to do it with people that don't use this culture as a reason to be terrible to other people.

I run 3 meetups (one of them now the biggest NoSQL UG for one technology in Berlin), organised 8 very well-received conferences and moderated multiple bulletin boards. All are nerdy to the core - and are successful because you can expect not to be met with aggressiveness. Our credo is that the baseline to attend is interest in the subject. Anything else is hindering.

Your nerdiness is definitely not mine.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#67

Post by timr »

RKoutnik wrote: post #29

I was shocked, visibly, when I found out that no one at the first startup I worked at played tabletop RPGs. I was shocked again when they looked down on me because I did. In a city that prides itself on "weirdos", I was the wrong kind of weird. In college I poured over Steven Levy's Hackers , hoping one day I would be able to meet the tech elite. I jumped at the first chance I got to work out here, hoping I'd finally…

Have you tried going to one of the many meetups for people interested in games, instead of going to meetups for people interested in startups?

http://www.meetup.com/find/?allMeetups=false&keywords=games&...

Beyond that, I don't know what to tell you, because I know plenty of people who play games in SF. They're all over -- seemingly every tech company out here has a game night. And I'm not someone who likes to play, so I have no particular reason to seek them out.

Make sure you're not falling into the comfortable, easy trap of Reverse Nerd Discrimination: these people don't fit comfortably within my own self-image as an outsider, so they must not be like me. There are a lot of True Nerds here who have outgrown the stereotypical image of what a nerd is supposed to look like.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#68

Post by modfodder »

dropit_sphere wrote: post #62
modfodder wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we aren't against diversity"..."they should make their bones, same as we did" sounds like it could come from any all white male institution. The problem is, we as humans prefer to surround ourselves with people just like us, sometimes that means same race, sometimes same religion, or gender, or political views, and often it happens subconsciously, choosing the person closer to our ideal without us even realizing we'…

>This is what [the forces of D]iversity [are] (or should be) fighting against, it really is trying to make it merit based which goes against our survival instincts, even those of the "nerds". How exactly do you expect a group to react when you push against its survival instincts? Feminism is accused of this most often, so I'll use it as an example: some have accused the feminist movement of sexism because it simultan…

Well, I would say that first, the threat feminists are often fighting against is the threat of bodily harm and behavior that leads to bodily harm (1 out of 6 women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape¹). Compare this to the threat that nerds are fighting against today, the threat of having to accept those that they deem unworthy.

Secondly, I'm not arguing nerds shouldn't have a safe space. But that safe space shouldn't be at the expense of diversity in the workplace (hired on merit) or online public spaces (where everyone should be treated with respect regardless of the merit metric). That safe space doesn't preclude nerds from learning basic social skills in order not to harass members of the opposite sex while at work (or really anywhere). Just like nerds shouldn't be harassed at school or work, they shouldn't harass people then hide behind the excuse that they are allowed because they're socially awkward nerds who don't know any better. And I say this as a socially awkward nerd.

¹https://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assa...

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#69

Post by flomo »

Terr_ wrote: post #5

> When weird nerds watch the cool kids jockeying for social position on Twitter, we see no difference between these status games and the ones we opted out of in high school. [...] “corporate culture” that’s as loudly promoted and roughly as genuine as the “school spirit” These bits resonated with me more than I had expected. The declaration "life is not like high school" is only partially true. College offers a tempo…

That resonated with me for completely different reasons. Most of the "extremely weird nerds" from my high school were people with pretty serious functional problems who never did make it anywhere. They are pretty much the forgotten ones.

The successful "nerds" were always at least introspective or 'ironic' and could function somewhat normally in social situations including attempting to play whatever status games that entails. Most of the programmers I've worked with are at best superficially-nerdy relative to how far some people can go.

A lot of this analysis suffers from pretty severe high-school politics category error. That guy from high school who had nothing going except being "good with computers" is probably not at all the same person who is 'brogramming' for a startup, for example. But no matter how much it is reframed, the social stigma of the lost ones is unescapable.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#70

Post by hyperion2010 »

Argorak wrote: post #66
hyperion2010 wrote: post #26

This article is so spot on and covers many of the things that have bothered me for years about people who try to join nerd communities and then immediately start complaining about "inappropriate behavior" (eg the dongle thing). Yes, there are cases where there is real inappropriate behavior surrounding positions of power in corporate or workplace settings, but in the community at large and in the communal and public…

I don't see anything what you describe as inherent and necessary to nerd culture. What you want is an abrasive culture and I oppose that. I certainly never "left the world" and certainly not because I found all those things useless or oppressive. I can still nerd out on a multitude of subjects from music to board games to digital culture and I do prefer to do it with people that don't use this culture as a reason to…

I don't want to get into the nerd vs geek debate here but my interpretation of TFA was that it was specifically talking about the types of people that simply didn't want to play the social hierarchy game. Just being interested in and doing nerdy/geeky things does not place you in that group (unfortunately the terminology we have does a poor job of distinguishing this).

I also don't think there is any implication that I want an abrasive culture. I do not think that early google style corporate culture is a good thing. I think we need to dissociate nerds behaving badly from simply not picking up on social signals or not caring about them. The reason I say this is because when you treat someone as a villain who is simply thinking out loud you basically stop any potential for real dialogue in its tracks.

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