Honestly I think this is just the impression one gets because nerds do more of everything online combined with the fact that they tend to know a lot about speci

Honestly I think this is just the impression one gets because nerds do more of everything online combined with the fact that they tend to know a lot about specific things. Look, there are absolutely a lot of asshole nerds out there. A lot of guys who went through hell in high school and turned into comic book guy as a defense mechanism and just never grew up (a lot of people from all walks of life never grow up). Okay, but I don't think those people are representative of geek communities. I think by and large criticism is constructive and nerds are supportive of beginners. Maybe we don't sugarcoat things as much as would be to some people's taste, but that's not an asshole quality in and of itself. Rather I think the impression comes from the fact that it's hard to ignore assholes, and there are always going to be a number of them in any large community. People say HN is overly critical, but I think if you look carefully most of critical posts are actually fairly even-handed and not overtly mean; but if you have 20 of them all coming from different angles, and you sprinkle it with a few true asshole remarks, the resulting impression can be quite harsh.