Five Geek Social Fallacies

[amul]

http://sean.chittenden.org/humor/www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html

ganked from soulkry

Within the constellation of allied hobbies and subcultures collectively known as geekdom, one finds many social groups bent under a crushing burden of dysfunction, social drama, and general interpersonal wack-ness. It is my opinion that many of these never-ending crises are sparked off by an assortment of pernicious social fallacies -- ideas about human interaction which spur their holders to do terrible and stupid things to themselves and to each other.

Social fallacies are particularly insidious because they tend to be exaggerated versions of notions that are themselves entirely reasonable and unobjectionable. It's difficult to debunk the pathological fallacy without seeming to argue against its reasonable form; therefore, once it establishes itself, a social fallacy is extremely difficult to dislodge. It's my hope that drawing attention to some of them may be a step in the right direction.

I want to note that I'm not trying to say that every geek subscribes to every one of the fallacies I outline here; every individual subscribes to a different set of ideas, and adheres to any given idea with a different amount of zeal.

In any event, here are five geek social fallacies I've identified. There are likely more.

I think I've probably got a strong case of #3, and the counter-fallacy discussed at the end. I've probably had all five at some point in my life or another. Definitely an interesting read.

Comments

[curtis-lemay.livejournal.com]

Nice article.

GSF4 is kinda funny. I don't think my old roommates and I really had it, but it did occur to us one day that we had a whole mess of gay friends and whole mess of gamer friends, and no crossover. So, we decided to throw a party, with no real event to celebrate (we joked it was our housewarming, 3 years after we'd moved in) but the unofficial name, which went down in the history books, was "Gamers and Flamers." The party was a huge success, and once everyone started mingling got really hopping. Lots of cross-cultural contacts exist to this day because of it, although I kinda suspect it was more a function of everyone just being really good people. "Furries and Skinheads" may not have gone down as well.