
When Nerds Collide (2014) - forgottenpass
https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c
======
hyperion2010
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 spaces that we now interact no one
individual should ever be allowed to determine what is appropriate (much less
attack people for their supposed transgressions). We all left the world of
"appropriate" because we found it a) useless and b) oppressive. The fact that
our conversations are now public means that, if someone goes looking for
something to be offended by they are going to find it, and then they play the
primate power game and we're back to Cardinal Richelieu: "Give me 6 lines
written in the hand of the most honest man and I will see him hanged."

That said, this does paint reality for those who do honestly want to see more
women involved in tech etc. My take home is that if you keep trying to push on
people who intentionally leave "appropriate" communities behind because they
don't care about those things and find them oppressive, then you are simply
going to drive them to leave again and you will have to start all over again.

edit: Actual take home. The only way forward is REAL tolerance for all kinds
of behavior and a good faith attempt to see people in context.

~~~
tedks
It's definitely spot-on. I think it has a great example of anti-feminist/male-
privileged mindset:

> Desire for civility and freedom from objectification is "censorship"

> Wanting to not support misogynists/rape apologists/rape denialists/sexual
> predators is worse than the soviets

> My fear of social ostracism is as or more valid than your fear of being
> raped

> My chosen "identities" are as important as the assigned social castes you've
> been placed in and are violently oppressed into staying in

> Not having friends in high school is the same as being a woman, or black

Eventually feminism _will_ win; anti-racism _will_ win; these are
inevitabilities we can trace from the first slave revolts in Sumeria to John
Brown to the Black Panther Party to even Barack Obama, in his own way. The
ratchet of history turns only ever in one direction. Reactionaries howl over
lost ground, but they'll never reclaim it.

I eagerly await this world, where finally we will have real hackers, hackers
that bring their skill to bear against _real_ enemies, fight _real_ battles,
and are strong, rather than weak, building on a foundation of just conflict
between the oppressors and the oppressed, rather than being mentally locked in
the 3rd grade in the moment of shame when their lunch money was taken.

One day the creeps will be gone. Only the strong will survive. Choose your
side wisely, for you can only be on one side of history, and one it has left
you behind you will be behind it forever.

>Trying to convince hacker culture to change its norms by appealing to
progressive values alone won’t work. You’re going to have to appeal to hacker
values, and nobody’s done that yet.

If progressive values are not hacker values, the hacker values will be, should
be, and must be destroyed.

~~~
rthomas6
I agree with you 100%, but I feel the need to point out that you can still be
a "weird nerd" and have progressive values. I do not think hacker values and
progressive values are mutually exclusive, but I think they are orthogonal.

~~~
tedks
I agree completely. In fact, I think that the only hacker values that are true
hacker values are progressive, and that the people invoking "hacker values" to
justify misogyny, objectification and sexualization of women, etc., are going
against hacker values in a truly insidious way.

But if anyone thinks otherwise, they should know they are on the losing side
of history in every regard.

------
A_COMPUTER
One of the biggest frustrations to me, and I do believe this is a new thing,
is people with evangelistic universalist worldviews joining these groups and
expecting everybody to conform to it. I feel like "nerd culture" was partially
defined by being made up of the parts left out of mainstream, inherent
heterogeneity, rather than a positive set of things, so arguing you're right
and I'm wrong and that's that, is highly alien. There is a lot of talk about
how as nerd interests have become mainstream, the disdain many nerds have for
this is a sign of their elitism or desire to just be different. But I think
also it is because before it was mainstream, you only got viciously judged by
the outgroup, so you could at least go "fuck them, they didn't like me anyway"
and keep doing your own thing. Now you have people who consider themselves
part of that ingroup telling you you're doing it wrong and bringing all their
social jostling into the group with them trying to make it act the way they
want. I don't think people are exaggerating when they feel like their groups
are being "taken over."

~~~
bad_user
My disdain has always been for social rules that never made sense - i.e. in
order to be liked, you have to look good, dress in a certain way, talk in a
certain way, _belong to certain groups_. I don't want to be different, it
isn't my desire to be seen as a geek, however it pisses me off that people
judge books by their covers and in order for me to follow rules, well, those
rules have to make sense.

For the project I'm working on, I often go in dressed with jeans and teeshirts
or hoodies in rooms filled with black suits and ties. I do not have fashion
preferences, all that I desire is for the clothes I wear to be comfortable.
And I don't give a fuck about the company's dress code, because in the grand
scheme of things, they hired me to produce value and not to look good.

To me your comment, the article and these trends with cool/weird geeks, nerds,
hipsters or what have you, do not make sense. It's because if there are two
things that define me is (1) that I have an obsession with building software
and (2) that I don't really give a fuck about anything else, to the point that
it actively hurts my personal life. Am I a cool geek, a weirdo, a nerd? Point
is, I don't really care, never did.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
> I do not have fashion preferences, all that I desire is for the clothes I
> wear to be comfortable. And I don't give a fuck about the company's dress
> code, because in the grand scheme of things, they hired me to produce value
> and not to look good.

I grew up with the same thoughts and just didn't care about dress. Only when
studying psychology did I realize why we judge a book by its cover, and have
begun trying to incorporate this into my daily life enough to be a better fit
in normal society. The problem is that now, since I had to view this from such
a technical point of view, as this is something that I don't just 'get' like
most people, I am viewed as manipulative by others. Of course, pointing out
that they dress to manipulate the opinions of others, just without needing to
put as much thought into it because it is something they 'get' doesn't help.

~~~
spiritplumber
I just don't like the symbolism of wearing a noose around my neck. Suits are
OK, choking hazards not so much (and yes, the normal necktie knot can choke
you).

------
jdbernard
I hate to post the "I agree" comment, but this article is too valuable in my
opinion to just leave with no comment so here are a couple of quotes that put
some of my feelings into words very accurately:

 _Both groups [geek feminists and brogrammers] are latecomers barging in on a
cultural space that was once a respite for us, and we don’t appreciate either
group bringing its cultural conflicts into our space in a way that demands we
choose one side or the other. That’s a false dichotomy, and false dichotomies
make us want to tear our hair out._

 _I’m not claiming that’s entirely rational, because fear isn’t rational, but
it sure does explain the response to being told that our culture is broken and
must be adapted to accommodate the very people who rallied it into being by
shunning us from theirs._

 _Trying to convince hacker culture to change its norms by appealing to
progressive values alone won’t work. You’re going to have to appeal to hacker
values, and nobody’s done that yet._

 _leading with “there are more of us than there are of you, so you have to
change to accommodate us” is, hands down, the best way to ensure that your
carefully constructed appeal will fall on deaf ears._

We made these communities to escape the people that tried to force their norms
and values on us, who tried to pass judgement on us and ostracise us because
of our differences. So it should be obvious why we circle the wagons when
someone comes with accusations, demanding access to our group and insinuating
that our reluctance to accept them is due to something wrong with us,
something bad that we have done. They are acting exactly like the kind of
people we're trying to keep out. I'm not saying we're perfect and have no
biases of our own, but trying to force your way via moral or social might is
not going to work.

~~~
Kalium
Unfortunately, it seems that respecting other subcultures and believing you
have the one true just culture are incompatible beliefs.

~~~
jdbernard
I don't think most hackers believe they have the one true culture. I think
it's more like, this is the culture we chose. Other cultures are great. They
aren't for me, but more power to them. Just please don't come and try and
change hacker culture just because we're popular now.

~~~
Kalium
I wasn't referring to hackers as believing we have the one true just culture.

------
Terr_
> 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 temporary
respite since are significantly more likely to be around people with a
distinct interest in building things and learning things, in an environment
where the "politics" are somewhat restrained.

... But afterwards, back in the "Real World", some of the same high-school
factors return, as you see an increase in the social and financial predators,
parasites, and empire-builders.

> We don’t always live up to this value as well as we should[...] In our ideal
> world, though, your identity and personal history are orthogonal to your
> commit history.

To use an analogy, this is like the ideals of "rule of law" or "freedom of
speech" in various countries. Even when there are chronic violations in
practice, it's still hugely important and valuable that the _culture_ still
holds it up as a goal. Even among two nations equally authoritarian in
practice, the one where the population all knows and recites the social-mores
of democracy is much _much_ better-off and more likely to achieve them.

The creation and maintenance of a widely-believed idea (especially one which
is sometimes inconvenient to individuals and institutions) represents an
enormous and ongoing investment in collective effort and willpower.

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.

~~~
angersock
_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've
finally found a group of people that will actually base how awesome we are
based on our code, and suddenly these newcomers want to butt in and tell us
that isn't a valid idea? It's like these folks never read _The Conscience of a
Hacker_.

You know why Sandi Metz is awesome? It's because she writes awesome code.

You know why Alan Turing was awesome? It's because he wrote awesome code.

You know why James Mickens is awesome? It's because he has amazing satire of
hard problems in computer science.

The fact that we don't celebrate those people because of their biological
traits or social status, and instead do so because of their accomplishments,
is a _feature_ , not a _bug_.

I think that that's kind of the key issue a lot of these folks are running
into, and because they tend to come from very communication-privileged
backgrounds (e.g., dedicated social-media mouthpieces, very organized mass-
media representation, etc.) hackers tend to fare poorly when they misinterpret
why they aren't welcomed. They easily get to portray us as creeps and bigots
because they get to choose from patterns of representation that (taken out of
context) look very much like bigotry and because they get to pick from people
whose social skills and identity are not always attuned or even aware of the
prevailing social conventions.

No reasonable hacker, I believe, _wants_ there to be fewer people of $MINORITY
in developer positions--at the same time, you'll never get that hacker to
suggest we censor the existing culture or forcibly inject more $MINORITY into
the space. "They should make their bones, same as we did", the hacker will
hold. They'll then be decried as $MINORITY_PERSECUTOR.

It's a problem, but only insofar as we're willing to let them continue framing
the discussion. Maybe if we can make them understand that we aren't against
diversity, but that we are against cultural manipulation, we can get
somewhere.

~~~
modfodder
"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're penalising the "other" in ways that we don't
penalise those like us. This is what diversity is (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".

~~~
lucio
No, and this distinction is essential: You're welcomed based on _what you can
do_ and not on _what you are_. "white male" is un-meritocratic, is something
you "are", and not something you can "make" by talent and effort. "code" is
cold, hard, unforgiving ("you can't argue with a root shell"), and
meritocratic. She's saying: Nevermind who you "ARE", you're welcomed if you
can "PRODUCE" (great code). That's exactly the antithesis of what you're
implying with "white male" or "black female" or "$X $Y". The mere fact of
using "$X $Y" or $MINORITY should give you a hint of how much this concepts
are considered. If something fits in a variable, is waaay less important than
the algorithm, it is just content, a parameter, "Lorem ipsum" if you like it.

~~~
arrrg
Meritocracy is a bullshit term. It does not exist in reality. It’s an
illusion, a joke.

~~~
angersock
Diversity is a bullshit term. It does not exist in reality. It's an illusion,
a joke.

Equality is a bullshit term. It does not exist in reality. It's an illusion, a
joke.

See what I did there? You've got to explain _why_ you think it's a bullshit
term--because as an ideal, it's a damned sight more useful than whatever else
people are pushing.

~~~
c3o
\- Because the criteria of "merit" usually "just happen" to be a description
of the people who get to define them and evaluate others.

\- Because measuring only at the finishing line while ignoring how far people
have had to come is in fact unequal, not equal treatment.

\- Because the concept victim-blames those who aren’t
allowed/enabled/supported to succeed according to it.

\- Because it's a really astounding statistical anomaly that all those
"meritocratic" communities "who don't care about gender etc." are in practice
ridiculously less diverse than the population in general.

~~~
angersock
Thought exercise: reconcile concept of victim blaming with objective criteria-
based meritocracy.

------
RKoutnik
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 find "my people" (substitute whatever pithy phrase
you like). Hasn't worked out so far.

I'm in SF now and have been for a while. Where are you guys? All the meetups
I've been to were fun (hard to turn down free pizza) but it seemed like
everyone was more interested in collecting business cards than talking hacker-
speak. Maybe I'm going to the wrong ones?

~~~
bronson
Yeah, that's SF. It's 80% posers, especially at meetups. The minority that are
doing interesting things are, of course, not so easy to find. Work hard on
your passions and eventually you'll meet likeminded people. (that's true no
matter where you're located)

Just be glad you're there now, and not being forced by management to go to
glitzy web parties in 1999. Those were insufferable.

~~~
Animats
SF has been 80% posers for decades. That's why the art and music scenes in SF
are so bad. In NYC, they tell you if you suck. In LA, if you suck they don't
call you back. In SF, there's no judgment or criticism, and you can suck
forever.

~~~
hueving
Nobody cares about the art scene in SF vs NYC and LA. Take that discussion
elsewhere.

~~~
CmonDev
That's not even art. HN appreciates art.

------
cinquemb
> _" At a company the size of Google or even GitHub, you can expect to find as
> many varieties of cliques…"_

> _" Some hackers even argue for greater exclusivity, and curiously enough,
> many of those who do are also members of minority-by-birth groups. (I’d link
> to examples, but being caught between a minority-by-choice group and a
> minority-by-birth group means being extra careful about expressing unpopular
> opinions where anyone unsympathetic can hear you.)"_

This reminded me recently when I was contacted by a Facebook engineering
manager for some "Black Engineers in Tech" BS for some less than marginally
interesting projects in the scheme of things. Do companies really have to
resort to this type of pandering to attract "talent"?

I mean, after from C&D'ing a "hacker-esque" project I was working on (mining
public urls on "open" graph and crowd-sourcing info about everyone, no log-in
for engagement, public by default [opposite of facebook walled garden "connect
the world" mantra]), suspending my account indefinitely, yet digging through
their treasure trove of info to boost "Diversity" apparently so I can have the
opportunity to become apart of the "Black" clique at FB NYC?

Yeah… fuck that.

------
misuba
But the proof can't be made. If you’re conditioned to feel like an outsider,
you’re going to believe the rejection is always lurking around the corner, and
the acceptance is never real, never complete. You’ll remain in sullen sureness
that outside is where you’ve been _placed_ — or you’ll keep _testing_ , poking
and prodding for the thing you could do that’s horrible enough to prove that
you were never really welcome.

The word the author is looking for to distinguish "weird nerds" from "nerds"
should never have been "weird" \- the word is "wounded." And the wound is
real, crippling, and unjustly dealt. Time doesn't heal all wounds. We
shouldn't be looking to prove something that can't be proven; we should be
looking to heal the wound, actually heal it, in all the generations of
children to come. Or even, heavens forfend, stop it from being inflicted at
all.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's not always about just being wounded. Many became "weird nerds" because
they don't like the tons of bullshit, politics and signalling games mainstream
society lives and breathes. You can't "fix" them without destroying who they
really are.

I say them, but I myself am a part of this group.

~~~
misuba
If, by your own admission, you just _don 't like_ something, you can't claim
that "who [you] really are" is being "destroyed" if you're taught how to avoid
injury in dealing with it. Your pet peeves are not a part of you.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's not really a pet peeve, it's a difference in thinking and perceiving the
world.

~~~
misuba
The point is, how do you know the difference between something that's "who you
really are" and something that you simply feel discomfort around being asked
to change?

~~~
TeMPOraL
A good question.

I can't talk for all "weirdos", but let me tell you about my personal fears.

I fear that I will have to give up my intellectual honesty. I fear that I will
have to start caring about politics (which I consider waste of time and
something that shows the worst parts of our nature). I fear that I will have
to start playing signalling games. I fear that I will have to censor my words
and my thoughts, so that I don't express an opinion that is unpopular this
week (winds on the Internet change fast). I fear that I will have to accept
and participate in absurdity and irrationality I try so hard to stay away
from.

I'm a very open, tolerant and accepting person. Just like every other "weird
nerd" I know. But the crowd that tries to overwhelm us is not open, not
tolerant, despite waving the banner of "diversity" and "equality". I fear I
won't be allowed to be a nice, honest, decent person with interest in
technology anymore.

~~~
misuba
What I hear you saying is you personally identify with what you perceive as
intellectual honesty, what you perceive as rationality, and the freedom to say
whatever you want without worrying whether listeners will like it.

The trouble with such identifications, though, is they can lead to logical
errors that make your life a lot worse, by causing you to _feel_ as though a
question about your intellectual honesty, rationality, or empathy is in fact a
personal attack. This happens entirely unconsciously, and repairing it can
seriously suck.

I could go into the ways in which I eventually learned that challenges to my
own intellectual honesty and rationality ended up strengthening them both once
I stopped reacting to those challenges emotionally and started choosing to
believe in the good will of the people making them. But that might just be
tedious; instead I will say that in my own life, waving the banner for
diversity and equality has come along with being happier, feeling more decent,
and being more energetically invested in technology than I was before.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _The trouble with such identifications, though, is they can lead to logical
> errors that make your life a lot worse, by causing you to feel as though a
> question about your intellectual honesty, rationality, or empathy is in fact
> a personal attack. This happens entirely unconsciously, and repairing it can
> seriously suck._

I agree. Thanks for a reminder.

> _But that might just be tedious; instead I will say that in my own life,
> waving the banner for diversity and equality has come along with being
> happier, feeling more decent, and being more energetically invested in
> technology than I was before._

I agree. I like diversity and equality. But diversity means allowing different
groups to coexist, and to tolerate people with different opinions and outlooks
on life. I don't see "weirdos" trying to impose their own worldview on
everyone - on the contrary, it's them who are being forced to conform to the
rest. That is not diversity.

~~~
misuba
What is the specific thing you feel you're being forced to do?

------
paul
This article is delightfully thoughtful. Her other post is also worth reading:
[https://medium.com/@maradydd/okay-feminism-its-time-we-
had-a...](https://medium.com/@maradydd/okay-feminism-its-time-we-had-a-talk-
about-empathy-bd6321c66b37)

It makes me wonder though how much nerd culture is driven by forms of autism.
Those wishing to end oppression women should be careful that they are not
instead perpetuating the oppression of autistic people.

~~~
leereeves
I agree, her other post is also excellent.

I wonder if we could ever create a culture that doesn't oppress _anyone_ (with
the obvious exception of murderers, rapists, cannibals, etc). I hope so. But
in light of our vast differences and the ease with which we hurt one another,
I suspect we'll have to settle for a culture that doesn't oppress anyone _too
much_.

------
icelancer
I am loathe to post an "I agree" comment here... but damn. This is a very
well-said article and one I have tried to express many times but have failed
over and over.

The "invaders" who claim to be socially liberal are actually authoritarian in
nature, completely hypocritical by pushing so-called "tolerance" on those who
received none by society's "normal."

Just a powerful essay.

~~~
Animats
_The "invaders" who claim to be socially liberal are actually authoritarian in
nature..._

That's been true from the days of the Third International[1] to the Mozilla
Foundation.[2]

[1]
[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/apr/15.htm](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/apr/15.htm)
[2] [https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/02/10/extension-
signing...](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/02/10/extension-signing-
safer-experience/)

------
felipeerias
Once upon a time, in a very small part of the developed world, there were a
set of activities which provided identity and sense of belonging for
introverted people who didn't otherwise fit with mainstream society. That
ended up being called "nerd culture".

That "culture" is now prevalent in fields (like computing) that have moved
from the fringe to the mainstream in the past decades. Many seem to find it
worth preserving, even if that means perpetuating an abrasive and hostile
environment.

I've always thought that I had ticked all the checkboxes to be considered a
nerd and a hacker. Yet I don't recognise myself at all in the picture that the
article paints, and I would not want to live and work in the environment that
many here are advocating for.

The author outlines a description of a "hacker" that, to be honest, sounds
more like "mildly autistic" to me:

 _" That guy in the group who stares at you without saying anything? He could
be undressing you with his eyes, but I’d lay better odds that he’s paying
attention, watching your actions and reactions to build a mental model of how
it’s safe to interact with you."_

The proportion of introverts (like myself) in the computing field is higher
than in society as a whole. Some patience and understanding is therefore
needed. But this does not justify treating people poorly because "those are
our values and you are a foreigner". I fear that her arguments, well-
intentioned as they may be, will do more harm than good.

------
noonespecial
_I’m thrilled to bits that every day the power to translate pure thought into
actions that ripple across the world merely by the virtue of being phrased
correctly draws nearer and nearer to the hands of every person alive._

Whatever else this article brings, that was just beautiful. I'm shamelessly
borrowing that for daily use.

~~~
jschwartzi
This is the sentiment that gets me out of bed and into work every day.

------
LordHumungous
>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. They do
not understand that the prime directive of a business is to make money, and
that doing so is _always_ more important than quality engineering. Given that
most hackers work for businesses, I think this is a large blind spot that
leads to a lot of bitterness and feelings of exclusion.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It isn't such a blind spot. They may understand the "prime directive" pretty
well and see how bullshit it is. It's a system of redistribution of scarce
resources that most people got confused about and now play it as a game of its
own. It's not the profit that should matter, but the value that is produced,
the improvement of human condition.

~~~
LordHumungous
Let's face it, 90% of companies in this industry produce nothing but
meaningless bullshit. If you work at one of the few companies that is making
the world a better place and not just selling ads, social media, games, or
other diversions for rich people then my advice may not apply to you. I don't
work for one of those companies, and I prefer to dispense with the notion that
anything I'm doing is for the improvement of the human condition. It's about
money, period, full stop.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _If you work at one of the few companies that is making the world a better
> place and not just selling ads, social media, games, or other diversions for
> rich people then my advice may not apply to you._

Unfortunately, I don't (and it depresses me). But then again, I treat my work
as a neccessary evil, and I (try to) care about the product's face value, not
underlying notion of it making money. That's for sales people to do; the best
I can do is to make sure that what we build has at least _some_ value to the
end-user. It's about the attitude - when tasked to design a widget, do you
primarily care about building a good widget, or performing a ritual of work
that will bring the cash in?

~~~
LordHumungous
That's a good point. Being a craftsman means caring about the quality of your
work.

------
bootload
_" The idea of anathematising all of a person’s good works because of
something else they said or did is just as alien and repellent to us as our
reaction is to someone who wishes Hacker News would die because Paul Graham is
kind of a dick sometimes."_

Ha, love this bit, bit wordy though. If you squint while you read, it sort of
reads like a pg essay.

------
whybroke
Where physically will weirdos live? The bay area was certainly a haven of
which only a subset were technologist. And from that culture and thinking came
many of the technical miracles of our age, many ideologically driven.

My concern is really painfully mundane: uncontrolled cost of living increase
means there could never be a mass migration of free thinkers to the bay area
today.

So individual programmers being gradually displaced in a technologist's social
setting today is just a sliver of that larger displacement with its very basic
cause.

------
MollyR
I found the part of the article where it talks about the what if situation
about Japan getting rid of work visa to be really interesting. Honestly it
shocked me, and has changed the way I think.

Also I never thought of it this way, but feminism/brogrammers are super
similar in the way they try to colonize nerd culture.

A lot of unskilled people are trying to get a career in tech for its perks.
They are not good at it or as good as they should be for the industry
standard. When they get called on it, they hide behind something like
feminism.

Essentially it's all about grabbing power in our community via subversion
rather than skill. And This is a problem because computer programming is
intensely logical problem. It requires a lot of skill.

I'm glad I read this article, I feel like I understand people like Linus
Torvald a little bit more.

~~~
gretful
Before all those late-night commercials in the late '90's ("Make $70K a
year!!!") only people that were interested in computers chose a career in
them. We make, on average, twice the national average (for U.S.) salary of our
peers: people that want the bucks will move in, whether they enjoy bits and
bytes or not.

~~~
Cthulhu_
TBF, software development itself is only a relatively small part of the whole
tech industry - marketing, communications, recruitment, even food supply and
whatnot are all part of it. Just because there's more people that want to work
for one of the cool companies, doesn't mean they're actually infringing on the
domain of the weird nerd hacker/programmer.

------
wcummings
I didn't go to public school, is it really as 80's-teen-movie-tropes as pieces
like this make it sound? It's just _really_ hard for me to take seriously.

~~~
ejk314
To an outside observer, no. The tropes are exaggerations. But to someone in
public school at the time, it can certainly feel that way.

------
questerzen
Not everyone has had the same negative social experiences. I was very lucky to
go to a school where being an outsider with nerdy interests was respected so
long as you did it with passion, aspired to excellence, and were not afraid to
show others what you found cool; and we were expected to have the same respect
for the sportsmen, musicians, artists etc. In a sense we were all doing the
same thing through different outlets. It's a culture I'm very proud to have
been a part of and it produced some great people in many different fields. In
contrast, in my programming niche, I frequently feel uncomfortable with the
level of aggression and exclusion on display - every comment on a forum seems
like you are exposing yourself to ridicule and judgement. Conversely, in pure
maths forums, which I also participate in, the atmosphere is far more
welcoming, open, patient and respectful of good work. I think the problem is
that in computing it is far easier to be a dilettante and much harder to tell
the difference. Yes, all communities will have their dicks, but responding
with aggression and elitism pollutes the community for everyone and encourages
hostile and collective responses from others: be sure that the dicks are a lot
better at playing hardball and ganging up together than we are. Let's take
some responsibility for creating communities we're proud to be a part of.
Please.

------
jkot
There will always be bullies, it does not end at high school. Only thing nerd
can do is to keep his cool, and not feed any trolls :-)

~~~
spiritplumber
Or, you know, quick, reflexive, and measured (no overkill) retribution.

Stick a kitten's nose in their pee a few times and they'll learn to use the
litter box.

That doesn't mean you hate or disrespect the kitten, it means you're applying
a bit of punishment now to avoid bigger problems later.

This is true regardless of who's in charge for the simple reason that the
carpet doesn't care who's in charge, if something pees on it, it will smell.

------
john_butts
Am I misreading the Japan thing? Like, it's not hard to imagine that there
would be candidates that would be immediately excluded based on surname alone
without even getting into race or gender - is this "fair" or "unfair", or is
it just the way things are? Is the latter(est) the analogy we're supposed to
take from this?

~~~
Cthulhu_
The Japan analogy is more a reference to people of a completely different
culture (like the US) going to Japan and making the Japanese adhere to their
culture, instead of the other way around. It may not be a very accurate
comparison though, and to extend on the analogy, if Japan was to open up its
borders, they would have to adjust themselves.

Compare getting employees from India over to the US; there are some cultural
differences that may be hard to work with / around, but both parties
(employee/existing co-workers and the new foreign workers) will both have to
adjust.

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

~~~
pseudoplatypus
... and with that victory, they have given rise to generations of new weird-
nerds that no longer feel as much as outsiders.

Ok, I went there for the sake of the quote, but as someone who spent most of
high-school maintaining an online forum about nerd topics on a Hardened
Gentoo[1] Pentium III[2] server in the floor of his own bedroom; I still find
I cannot quite empathize with the fear of "insiders"/"normals" that the OP
talks about and which other comments seem to echo. Not saying I can't imagine
it, or that it's not real, but it wasn't like that for me. In my experience:
video-games were utterly mainstream, MTG/D&D where "a bit weird, but hey, to
each their own", computer programming was cool (not a super popular hobby to
pursue, but people seemed either neutral or genuinely impressed if you did).

Many of those cherished "hacker values"? They are now mainstream ideals: Net
neutrality! Wikileaks! "I prefer texting than talking on the phone"! ;)
Everyone I know is now in an online forum or another
(Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Reddit). Not saying all of the values have been
popularized, but many have. Our pop culture now a days makes more fun of jocks
than of nerds. It has more nerd heroes (specially for middle-school/high-
school aged kids) than "popular" heroes. Freaking LoTR is one of the biggest
movie franchises of all times!

Besides, it's not like the groups have no intersection. Geek feminists often
are or were at some point "weird-nerd" girls or "weird-nerd" guys that agreed
that the world was, among all of its unfairnesses, biased to take male as the
default. So we are not excluding just those "not from our tribe" (whatever
that means), we are excluding "those from our tribe happen to be different
from what we picture our tribe to _look_ like". Even for those genuinely not
part of the culture you might naturally want to associate with? Well, we still
need to interact with and do business with them in a civilized manner. That's
all any diversity advocacy I have ever read demands: not that you be friends
with anybody, but that you be willing to interact respectfully with everybody.

"Brogrammer" is less well defined. But the most gym-going and adventurous
friend I have is also among the most nerdy, smartest and occasionally
painfully awkward people I know. Also, the most social person in my circle is
a gregarious, party going, business savvy, MIT engineering trained woman that
in the right crowd can make jokes consisting entirely of function plots.

There are no three cliques against other! There are many ideas, associated
with different stereotypes, let's try not to pit armies of stereotypes against
each other, and be open to the ideas! If that's not a hacker value, then I
don't what is.

[1] Why Hardened Gentoo just to host a small PHP forum? Because it was
there...

[2] Gives the age away fairly precisely, doesn't it?

~~~
forgottenpass
Yeah, tech went mainstream and blockbuster movies are made out of cult classic
books. That's one of the points in the post, those things _used to be_ signals
of particular kind of person but are no longer.

 _There are no three cliques against other! There are many ideas, associated
with different stereotypes, let 's try not to pit armies of stereotypes
against each other, and be open to the ideas!_

In broad strokes I agree with you. For a few reasons, not the least of which
because I don't exactly agree with the authors analysis. I differ from you in
specific as there is a difference between being accepting of the ideas and
people who live them, versus adopting it for myself. Being "open to" an idea
means the former, yet often euphemistically implies the latter.

I see the author's point in the way people with more social power than myself
ask for my conformity, to their benefit and my cost. It's framed so politely,
everything is these days, but sometimes I don't want to adopt another persons
standards. Only then do you see how serious they are about getting you to
conform.

~~~
pseudoplatypus
> Yeah, tech went mainstream and blockbuster movies are made out of cult
> classic books. That's one of the points in the post, those things used to be
> signals of particular kind of person but are no longer.

They were more than signals, they were the culture that reflected the values
we identified with: the wonder of discovery, the beauty of places that didn't
exist, the value of smarts and imagination. Those values are nerd values and
are also mainstream values. It is a point of agreement for which we can all
start to talk. I think most nerds I know define nerdom by what they like and
the acceptance of obsessive liking of an idea, not by any other "kind of
person".

> I see the author's point in the way people with more social power than
> myself ask for my conformity, to their benefit and my cost. It's framed so
> politely, everything is these days, but sometimes I don't want to adopt
> another persons standards.

That's usually fair. But what happens when what people are pointing out is
that your standards are unjust and are harming them? It is one thing for
people asking you to, say, dress in a suit and a tie (an arbitrary imposed
standard that really couldn't matter less unless you want to impress the
people who like suits). It is another when the standard they are asking you to
adopt is "don't grope us, don't assault us, don't insult us, don't provide
cover or plausible deniability to those who willfully grope us or assault us
or insult us.". Taken to the hyperbolic extreme, if someone imposes on me from
the outside the standard that I should not kill people (assuming it weren't
already within my own personal standards), it is still an imposition, but one
they are within their rights to make.

Social justice advocates really are as transparent as the name: they advocate
for (social) justice. If your standards are unconventional but just, go ahead:
you can be into D&D and feminist, you can be a furry and feminist, you can be
an otaku and feminist[1], you can be into BSDM and feminist, you can be as
weird as you wish to be and still treat people well even if awkwardly. You
don't even need to be an advocate for gender equality, just do a good faith
attempt at not perpetrating or upholding injustice. But if your standards are
unjust or they facilitate injustice, why wouldn't people be allowed to point
that out to you and request that you change them?

Keep in mind that often, nerd feminists are not insiders encroaching into the
outsider's safe space, but outsiders within a larger group of outsiders,
trying to avoid being harmed by manipulative people skilled in the culture of
the larger outsider group. They are often those of us, that we are allowing to
be bullied, by others "like us".

And, do people do unjust oppressive things in the name of justice and anti-
oppression? Sure. Mob-mentality online shamming campaigns often are such
injustice, at least when focused on individuals who are not powerful public
figures (be it DongleGate or GamerGate, and I think there is still one of
those that is far far worse). We should mention and call this out as well, but
that doesn't mean that the points about there being injustice in nerd culture
(as in pretty much any culture) are invalid.

[1] Do I even need to mention you can be a brony and feminist? ;)

~~~
forgottenpass
_And, do people do unjust oppressive things in the name of justice and anti-
oppression? Sure._

So you're obviously aware why conversations about where the line between
activism and asshole-ness is always turns to shit. You'll understand why I'm
gonna bail on this conversation.

~~~
pseudoplatypus
Ok, I don't need you to or expect you to reply. Just, consider this if you
wish: when you are told that people are harmed by things other people in your
community do, or things you might be doing without thinking, is it not
worthwhile to listen?

Take this whole discussion, for example. My takeaways are that:

1) There is a group/generation/subset within nerd culture that has had "social
norms" and "proper conduct" used as a weapon against them, in order to attack
them over what they feel is unintentional social clumsiness or voluntary
disregard of norms they don't agree with, without intent of harming anyone. I
tend to trust what people tell me, so I now believe this is a significant
grievance for a number of people. It was never quite as large a part of my own
experience with nerdyness, but I acknowledge it has been for others.

2) Public shamming is an effective tactic (in pointing people to the existence
of a problem), but also a terribly aggressive one towards the person being
named. Specially if they are only been picked as an example of what is
considered bad only because of how common the behavior is and the toll it
exerts on people in aggregate, not just that particular instance. This is, by
the way, a point I have seen made before, _within_ activist communities. I'd
still argue naming and shamming is a valid response in cases of obvious ill
intent _or_ physical harm (e.g. rape), but not for all types of "inappropriate
behavior" (in which I am including unintentional or miss-measured
psychological harm).

Could you, reciprocally, consider giving some though as to whether some of the
things people label as unwelcoming, harmful or oppressive within a subset of
nerd culture might be real grievances as well? How about considering whether
the people exposing these grievances really come from outside the community,
or from within? Or whether or not, if the grievances are real, they are right
to demand that the culture addresses them?

And, while I stand by the point you quoted, I'd still wager more oppressive
things happen in the name of "this is how we always have acted" and "you are
not _really_ part of this group", than in the name of anti-oppression.

------
normloman
Since when is there such a thing as "weird nerds" and "cool nerds" ? I've
never heard people identify as such. Methinks it an arbitrary distinction
invented by the author, to support his argument. I'm still not sure what the
argument is.

Also, since when do you have to join a nerd subculture to be accepted as a
programmer? Since when is being a nerd and being a feminist mutually
exclusive?

I don't get this article. And I don't get nerds.

~~~
TeMPOraL
As a "weird nerd", let me explain.

"Weird nerds" are the people who not so long ago were ostracized by society
for their interest in science and technology. They weren't "cool", they
weren't doing things that "cool" people do, so they were bullied. Many of them
indeed became programmers and laid foundation of what is now the IT industry.

Then, tech became mainstream and seen as a very good career path. It started
being "cool", so it attracted the "cool" people. As the nerd-type interests,
like sci-fi, became less shunned by society, the industry started to fill with
"cool nerds" \- people who are nerdish, but not to the level of not being
"cool".

You don't have to join a nerd subculture to be accepted as a programmer. On
the contrary, majority of programmers employed today are _not_ nerds or
hackers. What has once been mostly a hobby, became a profession.

\--

Or look at it in another way - "weird nerds" are usually the ones _in real
love_ with science and technology. "Cool nerds" are usually the ones for whom
science and technology is just an occupation, a job.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I don't agree that the "cool nerds" are impostors and only do it for the
attention. I think the difference is more a personality one - extroverts vs
introverts. The former in the 'nerd' subculture is the type that goes to ALL
the meetups, that likes networking, is highly active on social networking, etc
etc etc, while the latter prefers to be left alone with his (literal) devices.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I didn't mean to say that "cool nerds" are impostors - they have every right
and reason to be interested in technology, but the kind of deep love for
technical interests seem to correlate more with "weird nerd" character traits.
I might be wrong about the actual causation though. Introvert/extrovert seem
to be correlated too, but not perfectly.

------
jenkstom
I'm happy to see somebody discuss this on a deeper level. When one
underprivileged group meets another underprivileged group we should be able to
discuss what oppression is, how to relate these experiences to each other and
how to reduce oppression for everybody.

Current social trends allow and encourage women to raise their oppression
above any other form of oppression, as if no man ever got beat up after school
or ridiculed for "playing with computers". It's the same excuse that
marginalizes male rape victims if the perpetrator was male - or even if the
perpetrator was female because "men".

So it has turned into a war of privilege, rather than a discussion of
oppression. It's become "Feminist privilege" versus "Nerd privilege" versus
"Male privilege". The fact that most nerds are men is just a distraction from
the real discussion. The problem isn't the privilege - we're privileged to be
alive, and that's a good thing rather than a bad thing.

The problem is the oppression, and "donglegate" and "gamergate" have
oppression on both sides. Until we stop trying to raise any particular type of
oppression onto a pedestal we aren't going to make any real progress. Let's
stop talking about "privilege" and start talking about barriers to personal
fulfillment.

------
PebblesHD
This is a fascinating article! Fantastic

------
bsdpython
It's an interesting and complex subject but ultimately defining what makes a
"true" nerd is a never ending debate. My professor in college was incredulous
when he found out that I, a CS major, never watched Star Trek. The nerve!

------
mindslight
I think this article is fantastic in its framework, but it's ultimately aimed
at the wrong people.

The writer is assuming a powerful left-brain empathy that is characteristic of
hackers ("I'd lay better odds that he’s paying attention, watching your
actions and reactions to build a mental model of how it’s safe to interact
with you."), yet is lacking in the invaders. The invaders are running a much
simpler hardwired social strategy that assumes everyone is like them (even in
response, there are plenty of comments insisting that hackers still
unconsciously judge people by race _in spite of most of our judgments being
formed before we ever see someone_. it's simple projection), and are not setup
to understand those who are different. They _cannot_ change, and consequently
we will lose the social game of chicken every time.

What I'd really like to see/find/create/sustain is a community of people that
are able to resist being distracted by the narrow trap of the social hierarchy
- VC money, PR articles from companies, status-quo politics, proprietary
Appoogle product/tech announcements, mass media human interest stories, etc.
More similar to the Internet I grew up with, where objective technical merit
was the ideal to strive towards, and being told to RTFM resulted in someone
learning how to self-learn and ask intelligent questions rather than getting
attention from writing clickbait on how they were offended. Maybe this is
impossible because we've gotten too big/connected, or I personally could just
be pitifully stuck in the rut that is HN and myopic from falling out of more
specific technical tribes.

Maybe this is impossible and any such community is ultimately doomed to
entryism. But articles such as this that take a stab at reifying the qualities
of true hackerdom are necessary for us to reflect and understand exactly what
is being lost and perhaps come up with ways to defend it in the large, rather
than it surviving solely in narrow highly-technical communities.

(PS - a point i wanted to make elsewhere in the thread about the general
article, but I will do here instead because it applies to my comment as well:

It is easy to phrase this issue in in binary us-vs-them hacker or not-a-hacker
terms but the reality is continuous. So while it is nice to think in simpler
terms, the topic is actually graver because _any of us_ can be corrupted by
social influences as well. The lure of wider acceptance, attention, fame,
and/or money can lead us down the path of behavior that we despise - outrage
fanning, user-disempowering platforms, working on surveillance tech, etc. The
status quo's siren's song is becoming quite apparent right now as the
(de)centralization pendulum starts to swing back and the trajectories of
companies further diverge from those of free people.)

