GEEK SOCIAL FALLACIES

The nitty gritty of the material I'm basing for this post was written by Michael Suileabhain-Wilson; please read the entire dissertation on his website.

Growing Up Geek would probably be just as apt a title for this blog as The M Files. My observations about life and the people around me are invariably colored, as are all people's, by my primary social upbringing-- in my case, Geek culture.

Michael Suilewhatsis has really put his finger on a word I've been yearning to use about the culture in which I was socially indoctrinated: FALLACIES.

Yes. For years I believed many of these erroneous, unhealthy falsehoods to just be the way things were. Let's have a look at them:

Geek Social Fallacy #1: Ostracizers Are Evil

Yeah. Start being the slightest bit discriminatory and suddenly YOU'RE the bad guy. It doesn't matter if every other person in the group can't stand the Cat Piss Man; we don't dare exclude him because, hey, that would be MEAN.

I spent a couple of years in a Star Trek club because they did fun things; however, there were some REAL doozies of (not just) social bombs, but actual, AGGRESSIVELY socially inept people. Like the guy who rationalized that if he didn't like the service at the restaurant we went to after meetings, that he didn't have to pay...for his meal. Cripes. But did the Club president do anything about it? No.

And what happens? Michael S. puts his finger on it: People start to clandestinely plan outings without telling so and so when and where it is. No, no, noone would ever just TELL the offender that he's unwelcome at future events. We'll just hide and do things in secret like we were all in grade school until he hopefully gets the hint; which really demeans the whole situation on both sides.

TO THIS DAY I have friends who won't put their foot down and tell a certain geek to STOP COMING to things he's not invited to. He KNOWS he shouldn't come to these functions, that they're closed, private get-togethers, but he comes anyway. And will continue to do so because no one will put their foot down and say, sorry, closed to YOU, pal. And so they all suffer.

I'm not saying OSTRACIZE. I'm saying DISCRIMINATE. I'm saying set boundaries. Not everyone has to be at everything. And I bet you'd find that your group is a lot happier.

Geek Social Fallacy #2: Friends Accept Me As I Am

Ah, the Friendship card. In Geekdom, it's just so much harder to point out to a FRIEND that they're being an asshole than it is to do so to or about a stranger.

This also carries with it the corollary that around your friends, you never have to try hard to improve or in any way change anything about yourself, because hey, you've got friends and they'll understand, right?

My friend Bruce ran up against that when he became a gamer; on his blog he tells about how he pretty much gave up HIS life to game with friends, and came out the other side wondering how he could have given up on all his interests.

Well, everyone else was gaming, and we're all friends here, right?

(Odd sort of backlash: Throughout my geek social life, I was the guy who really fell under this category; I would go OUT OF MY WAY to accept everyone as they were. I was the mediator, the "let's-all-get-along" guy. And yet, among my friends, I was the one always chosen to get snippy with. Social losers with no hope of any kind of interaction outside the Geek Bubble would actually try to put me down, cut me up, and not in a very gentle or kidding way. The hell is up with that? That is one of the reasons that I was able to see how dysfunctional the "We're All Friends" system was, Agents.)

Geek Social Fallacy #3: Friendship Before All

This is kind of a corollary to GSF #2, above. It basically states that Friendship must transcend even the most blatant of realities; a friend would do anything for you and if they don't, they're not a friend. In my experience this usually wasn't put to the test; Geeks I know are more passive than that. They'd never "test" a friendship for fear it would all fall apart.

However, Negativity Grrl would test it constantly; "I'm suffering and if everyone doesn't run to my aid, and PROVE that they would by coming over at 2 in the morning, then they're not real friends. If I were Evil Willow (from Buffy) no one would care enough to stop me from destroying the world." (Hint: If you can encapsulate your pain in a Buffy reference, you are well and truly deep into the Geek.)

That kind of shit just doesn't fly. Maybe I knew a better class of Geek than I thought; this kind of thing didn't happen too much around me. Once, I became sick as a dog at a geekmeet; would my friend please give me a ride home? No, he was busy playing videogames. It pissed me off, but it didn't destroy our friendship.

Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive

"Wouldn't it be great if I invited ALL of my friends over for one big party?"

I tried this twice. Once at my first apartment, and once on my birthday. IT DOES. NOT. WORK. In fact, it's a disaster. I mean, I actually saw the Dividing Line down the middle of the room; one group of friends hiding on one side, the other group plastered against the other, and only I had the POWER to cross the line. Truly fearsome.

This fallacy states that if all your friends like YOU, they must therefore all like EACH OTHER. If you have two friends that don't get along, then one of them must not be your friend, because shouldn't everyone that likes you like each other? So you'll have to DROP one of those other friends because they're being unmutual.

Geez. It's no reflection on YOU if THEY don't get along. I suffered with this one once upon a time, and it's related to the whole "Mediator" thing I mentioned above.

Simple solution, kids: Different circles of friends don't mix. Period. I once wrote about these "Circles" on my old website; if I ever can find an archived copy I'll re-post it here.

Geek Social Fallacy #5: Friends Do Everything Together

God forbid someone you know should go out and do something without you. I'll admit that when I moved into my current neighborhood, seven doors down from Agent ACK, I worried about the social etiquette of two friends living so close together.

Would we be expected to do EVERYTHING together? Would one of us be pissed off if the other was home, but didn't want to do anything that night? [BRRRING!] "I can see you through your living room window, M, you bastard! You're just watching TV! Get your ass over here now...!"

...as it turned out we were ADULTS so everything turned out just fine, but you can see how Fallacy #5 stuck with me even into adulthood. I'll tell you this: From the ages of 16 to about 20, I spent EVERY WEEKEND with the same group of friends. We did EVERYTHING together. It was euphoric; like I got a high off of just being with these folks. It was a sudden, tragic realization to me when I figured out that I didn't have a lot in common with them any more, one fine day during a group picnic when I looked around and thought, "What am I doing here?"

Wake-up calls like that can be scary, Agents. But it was for the best. How does one grow as a person unless one gets little hints every now and then?

Beware the Fallacies, Agents. They're subtle and, if you're surrounded by them on all sides, it may take you quite a while to realize that this isn't the way the world should work.

I'd like to thank Cargoweasel for pointing Michael S's website out to me. Putting into concrete terms what I have been observing my whole adult life really helps put things into perspective.

Posted by Agent M at December 10, 2003 04:08 PM