5 ms·

I've always wondered, given this "stereotype" if there isn't more to it. Is it possible that because, in general, people who were "nerds" were likely more of a

by tw04 10y ago

I've always wondered, given this "stereotype" if there isn't more to it. Is it possible that because, in general, people who were "nerds" were likely more of a social outcast growing up, that they have essentially become "hardened", if you will, to social graces. They spent so much of their developmental years being teased/ridiculed/whatever that what is "normal" treatment of others has essentially become foreign to them? Sure, you can form a relationship with your family, but that really doesn't extend to how you interact with people outside of your inner circle. There seems to be such a strong correlation, curious if anyone has ever studied it. It seems we've gotten to the point that so very much of our adult behavior can be traced to childhood events/upbringing that this can't be an outlier.

sametmax 10y ago
+1. Most asocial persons I know have been raised that way by society. Now you want them to undo what took years of training. This is hard. And unfair.
- mseebach 10y ago
  That is true, but irrelevant. "He had a hard time in school, so we should tolerate him being an asshole" won't really fly. Many racists were probably raised that way by society, too, and undoing that is probably both hard and unfair - but necessary and a reasonable prerequisite for being a part of polite society.
  - tw04 10y ago
    I think you're missing the point. "Being racist" is pretty easy to nip in the bud. Telling someone not to be mean to someone else just because they're insert non-white race is easy. Telling someone "when you say X, that doesn't even occur to you might be offensive, it upsets other people". Now repeat that for a thousand different social interactions, and tell me how easy it is. "Don't be an asshole" is what? "Being an asshole" means different things to different people. THAT is the core of the issue. For instance: I've got coworkers, who if they screw something up, I can just straight up say - that was wrong, do it this way next time, then we won't have an issue. For other coworkers that direct interaction would be the absolute end of the world. And instead you have to tap dance around until you eventually get to a state where you're fairly certain they know not to do what they did again. Would it make me an asshole for not knowing one person can handle direct feedback, and others can't? Is it "being an asshole" for telling someone factual information without sugar coating? I don't think so, plenty of people out in the real world do, however. And, quite frankly, most of the people who want direct feedback consider people who tapdance assholes because so much effort is wasted on getting to the point.
    - apinstein 10y ago
      Great analysis! Have you heard of the Birkman personality assessment? One of the components it measures is exactly what you describe (they call it Esteem). It doesn't make you an asshole (intent) not to know that, but it does make your interactions less effective to not work "with the grain" of that dynamic. At our company everyone takes the Birkman and we train everyone on how to leverage the knowledge it provides on your personality style and how that intersects with others' style. Whenever you're having trouble in an interpersonal interaction with someone, you can think about / looks at the profile and tweak your approach to improve things. It had been incredibly effective for making it easier, more effective, and more pleasant to work with others.
    - nagvx 10y ago
      I generally agree with your idea that "don't be an asshole" is an incredibly subjective and unhelpful rule of thumb. However your comment that "being racist is pretty easy to nip in the bud" is just absurdly oversimplified. A racist may live in fear of the criminality of (insert race here) without seeing the bigger picture of poverty that causes it. A racist may have a majority of bad experiences with (insert race here) without realising their own prejudice was to blame. Racism isn't "being mean", racism is potentially diverse set of prejudices and overly broad opinions that are founded on faulty logic or incomplete data. Racism can be propped up by an entire web of social beliefs and a lifetime of personal experience. Racists don't think they're "being mean", they think they hold sane, justifiable opinions against other "mean" or even "inferior" groups of people. Indeed, it may "not even occur to them they are being offensive". The long and sordid history of racism around the globe can attest to the fact that racism is not something "easy to nip in the bud".
      - tw04 10y ago
        Stopping someone from fearing someone of a different race isn't easy. Stopping blatant racism in the workplace is. I think it's a bit of a stretch for you to assume I was talking about "eradicating racism from planet earth" when the context of the discussion was interacting with coworkers. CLEARLY when I said "nipping it in the bud is easy" I wasn't referring to the end of racism across the planet. That will LITERALLY be impossible until the point we have a unified culture globally: which I won't say will NEVER happen, but we're generations away if it ever does.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
There is a scene in "Better Things" where Sam's oldest expresses a dread of the future because she'd spent all her time "being social" and felt unprepared. This when the school counselor had demonstrated that her options for college were quite limited. This appears to be still encouraged, or at least not discouraged.
dpark 10y ago
I think this is mostly an effect of nerds not wanting to be exclusionary and therefore enabling this kind of behavior. If you're a nerd and you're kind of a prick, other nerds will tend to excuse it rather than just pushing you away. They'll disregard your behavior and keep inviting you to events. They'll ignore the fact that you're unpleasant when bonuses/promos are being handed out at work because it should be based on merit, as if there's no merit in behaving sociably. They'll generally look the other way because the alternatives are to be confrontational (which most people, including nerds, don't want to do) or to exclude you. On the other hand, if you're not a nerd and you act like a prick, people will just start to cut you out of their lives. You won't get invited to social events. You probably won't get promoted because no one wants to work with you. Your behavior will impact your life. You can be a prick and be successful, but it's harder, because you have to balance it by being really good at something else. You're an amazing salesperson so you get rewarded despite being unpleasant. You're wealthy so people hang out with you even though you're rude. The bar for nerds looking the other way seems to be lower. You're rude, but that's just how you are. Obviously there are limits even for nerds, but the limits seem to be pretty high.
- g00gler 10y ago
  Why not both?
  - qball 10y ago
    To someone with an uncommon interest (a "nerd", in other words, though nerdy interests tend to require higher-than-average intelligence to possess), people with that interest are hard to find. Once you finally meet someone sharing that interest, and it turns out that they act like a prick, you have a difficult choice (if you value sociable behavior over the opportunity to be social at all; willingly choosing isolation is frequently not a tenable position). The cost and stakes for confrontation (and exclusion) are higher than it is in a "nerdier" group than for people with more common interests, simply because of the lack of people who are capable of the interest in the first place. So, more bad behaviors are tolerated. It's also worth noting that "bad" covers both "weird" and "malicious", which is also why groups with these interests tend to be much more accepting of people with other interests outside of those standard for the surrounding society. The feedback loop is as such less; personality quirks don't get as rounded-off as they would in a less-exclusive group, so any conversions from asshole -> non-asshole in a small community will take longer if they even happen at all. So, it should be no surprise that individuals more aware than most of the fact that "good people are hard to find" are willing to make certain sacrifices to retain them. For individuals whose interests and abilities involve a larger cross-section of the population, however, people are much more interchangeable, so excluding weird/malicious behavior is much easier. As an example, consider the tech community's recent trend of attempting to exclude speakers with non-standard political views from conferences. The arguments for doing so come from people with the mindset that technology experts are interchangeable (which is valid in some areas), the arguments against it come from those who see technology experts as an unusually scarce resource (which is valid everywhere else in the world).

by tw04 10y ago

sametmax 10y ago

+1. Most asocial persons I know have been raised that way by society. Now you want them to undo what took years of training. This is hard. And unfair.

mseebach 10y ago
That is true, but irrelevant. "He had a hard time in school, so we should tolerate him being an asshole" won't really fly. Many racists were probably raised that way by society, too, and undoing that is probably both hard and unfair - but necessary and a reasonable prerequisite for being a part of polite society.
- tw04 10y ago
  I think you're missing the point. "Being racist" is pretty easy to nip in the bud. Telling someone not to be mean to someone else just because they're insert non-white race is easy. Telling someone "when you say X, that doesn't even occur to you might be offensive, it upsets other people". Now repeat that for a thousand different social interactions, and tell me how easy it is. "Don't be an asshole" is what? "Being an asshole" means different things to different people. THAT is the core of the issue. For instance: I've got coworkers, who if they screw something up, I can just straight up say - that was wrong, do it this way next time, then we won't have an issue. For other coworkers that direct interaction would be the absolute end of the world. And instead you have to tap dance around until you eventually get to a state where you're fairly certain they know not to do what they did again. Would it make me an asshole for not knowing one person can handle direct feedback, and others can't? Is it "being an asshole" for telling someone factual information without sugar coating? I don't think so, plenty of people out in the real world do, however. And, quite frankly, most of the people who want direct feedback consider people who tapdance assholes because so much effort is wasted on getting to the point.
  - apinstein 10y ago
    Great analysis! Have you heard of the Birkman personality assessment? One of the components it measures is exactly what you describe (they call it Esteem). It doesn't make you an asshole (intent) not to know that, but it does make your interactions less effective to not work "with the grain" of that dynamic. At our company everyone takes the Birkman and we train everyone on how to leverage the knowledge it provides on your personality style and how that intersects with others' style. Whenever you're having trouble in an interpersonal interaction with someone, you can think about / looks at the profile and tweak your approach to improve things. It had been incredibly effective for making it easier, more effective, and more pleasant to work with others.
  - nagvx 10y ago
    I generally agree with your idea that "don't be an asshole" is an incredibly subjective and unhelpful rule of thumb. However your comment that "being racist is pretty easy to nip in the bud" is just absurdly oversimplified. A racist may live in fear of the criminality of (insert race here) without seeing the bigger picture of poverty that causes it. A racist may have a majority of bad experiences with (insert race here) without realising their own prejudice was to blame. Racism isn't "being mean", racism is potentially diverse set of prejudices and overly broad opinions that are founded on faulty logic or incomplete data. Racism can be propped up by an entire web of social beliefs and a lifetime of personal experience. Racists don't think they're "being mean", they think they hold sane, justifiable opinions against other "mean" or even "inferior" groups of people. Indeed, it may "not even occur to them they are being offensive". The long and sordid history of racism around the globe can attest to the fact that racism is not something "easy to nip in the bud".
    - tw04 10y ago
      Stopping someone from fearing someone of a different race isn't easy. Stopping blatant racism in the workplace is. I think it's a bit of a stretch for you to assume I was talking about "eradicating racism from planet earth" when the context of the discussion was interacting with coworkers. CLEARLY when I said "nipping it in the bud is easy" I wasn't referring to the end of racism across the planet. That will LITERALLY be impossible until the point we have a unified culture globally: which I won't say will NEVER happen, but we're generations away if it ever does.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

There is a scene in "Better Things" where Sam's oldest expresses a dread of the future because she'd spent all her time "being social" and felt unprepared. This when the school counselor had demonstrated that her options for college were quite limited. This appears to be still encouraged, or at least not discouraged.

dpark 10y ago

I think this is mostly an effect of nerds not wanting to be exclusionary and therefore enabling this kind of behavior. If you're a nerd and you're kind of a prick, other nerds will tend to excuse it rather than just pushing you away. They'll disregard your behavior and keep inviting you to events. They'll ignore the fact that you're unpleasant when bonuses/promos are being handed out at work because it should be based on merit, as if there's no merit in behaving sociably. They'll generally look the other way because the alternatives are to be confrontational (which most people, including nerds, don't want to do) or to exclude you. On the other hand, if you're not a nerd and you act like a prick, people will just start to cut you out of their lives. You won't get invited to social events. You probably won't get promoted because no one wants to work with you. Your behavior will impact your life. You can be a prick and be successful, but it's harder, because you have to balance it by being really good at something else. You're an amazing salesperson so you get rewarded despite being unpleasant. You're wealthy so people hang out with you even though you're rude. The bar for nerds looking the other way seems to be lower. You're rude, but that's just how you are. Obviously there are limits even for nerds, but the limits seem to be pretty high.

g00gler 10y ago
Why not both?
- qball 10y ago
  To someone with an uncommon interest (a "nerd", in other words, though nerdy interests tend to require higher-than-average intelligence to possess), people with that interest are hard to find. Once you finally meet someone sharing that interest, and it turns out that they act like a prick, you have a difficult choice (if you value sociable behavior over the opportunity to be social at all; willingly choosing isolation is frequently not a tenable position). The cost and stakes for confrontation (and exclusion) are higher than it is in a "nerdier" group than for people with more common interests, simply because of the lack of people who are capable of the interest in the first place. So, more bad behaviors are tolerated. It's also worth noting that "bad" covers both "weird" and "malicious", which is also why groups with these interests tend to be much more accepting of people with other interests outside of those standard for the surrounding society. The feedback loop is as such less; personality quirks don't get as rounded-off as they would in a less-exclusive group, so any conversions from asshole -> non-asshole in a small community will take longer if they even happen at all. So, it should be no surprise that individuals more aware than most of the fact that "good people are hard to find" are willing to make certain sacrifices to retain them. For individuals whose interests and abilities involve a larger cross-section of the population, however, people are much more interchangeable, so excluding weird/malicious behavior is much easier. As an example, consider the tech community's recent trend of attempting to exclude speakers with non-standard political views from conferences. The arguments for doing so come from people with the mindset that technology experts are interchangeable (which is valid in some areas), the arguments against it come from those who see technology experts as an unusually scarce resource (which is valid everywhere else in the world).