Skip navigation

Monthly Archives: July 2009

Extrovert Critic: “You’ll Never Get Laid If You ____”

How many times has any male introvert nerd been told “If you like (DandD, klingons, magic cards, x…) you’ll never get any girls”?
The aim of this criticism is to point out the superiority of the accepted orthodoxy over the divergent path. The argument is that “You will not be rewarded with social approval for your actions, therefore you are foolish, wrong, and irrational.”
After a lifetime of receiving such criticism and mockery, it becomes easy to start accepting such views as truth. However, the way people and societies work is considerably more complex than extrovert critics care to realize:

Girls aren’t usually interested in dungeons and dragons but neither do they tend to be terribly interested in the intricacies of professional sports, fighting wars, or entering blazing buildings. A pro athlete, soldier, or firefighter tends to attract women not because women share their interests but because of their:
-high social status
-high level of congruency with the orthodoxy.

Many women in the West see sci fi/fantasy fandom as a negative trait because such interests are associated with low social standing and low levels of congruency with the larger society. The general perception is that Nerddom is a zone for beta males who can’t compete in the ‘real’ society.

Thus, if D and D repels the typical cheerleader or sorority girl, it is not because of any inherent property of the game itself. It is about the social meaning attached to the game by any given society. There is no inherent reason, as extrovert critics love to assert, that nerd games ought to be unappealing to women.
The extrovert critic represents the limited perspective of but one of the world’s many societies:

South Korea is a country that treats real time strategy as a professional sport, the players enjoy a great deal of prestige and have no problems with opposite sex. One top protoss player named Bisu is renowned for his good looks and has countless adoring female fans. The players get supplied with pretty ‘booth girls’ who serve them drinks or take care of their needs during the course of a match. The studio audiences at these starcraft matches are composed of people of all ages and contain a high percentage of women.

Thus, if Dungeons and Dragons were on national television and the football team was an underground movement of social outcasts, the roles would be effectively reversed. It is simply a matter of social values.

Thus, if outcasts formed a cohesive new order with their own values installed as the orthodoxy, one need not worry about girls. There would be plenty of prestige and social congruency attached to previously derided and undesirable activities.
Yet another aspect of absolution!

Unity Without Uniformity: The Implications of Wikis

The internet has resulted in forms of collective human association without any individual being crushed by the collective.

One form of such an association has come to be called a ‘wiki.’ In the implementation of wiki projects one sees the result of a collaborative effort in which each participant was an independent agent. There are no deadlines(other than death itself), there are no mandatory office hours. One can contribute when they want, how they want, if they want.

In terms of accuracy and quality of content, wikis compare favorably against traditional encyclopedias. In terms of sheer volume, Wikis can cover a much larger variety of content than an encyclopedia ever could and keep constantly up to date all the while.

Such a high quality public resource results from the efforts of many individuals who never even meet one another. A wiki is a product of an environment with very low friction of association.

As such it enjoys certain advantages over a highly regulated structure:
-People acting on their own don’t have to be motivated or compelled in any way. None of the actors are formal associates in any way, thus there is no reason to try to ‘get the most’ out of the labor of each individual. If one lazy person leaves an article half complete, someone else will finish it. There is no urgency because such an organization passively collects contributions as a leaf collects rays from the sun.

-Those who contribute tend to do so in their area of expertise. Individuals know more about their strengths and their interests than any manager ever could. A non-interventionist system results in everyone working on what they’re best at, what they most enjoy. When personnel distribute themselves on tasks according to their interests and strengths, standards of quality are maximized. Not only is higher efficiency achieved, the cost of an authoritarian manager is eliminated.

The whole thing causes me to reflect.
It becomes necessary to have a hierarchy and highly specific goals with deadlines when running a business or a state.
But when organizations with the loosest of ties regularly churn out an outstanding free product I have to consider:
Compelling, allotting, scheduling, and assigning people to tasks while accounting for every second of available work time per employee is an extremely maintenance intensive process. At a certain point the cost of governing one’s employees must exceed the benefits of governing them.

Minimizing friction of association seems to be the obvious means of improving effectiveness.
A society or organization founded on compulsion and uniformity is still attractive because such an approach ensures a certain outcome. However, such a highly structured structured system must consume a large portion of its output just to keep itself running. Such a system has little potential to outperform what is expected of it. It performs very like a computer program, doing only exactly what it is told.

As for the possibility of a cohesive Subtle organization that minimizes friction of associaton, consider the attributes of Subtle persons.
They are:
-Knowledgeable, skilled, imaginative, critical thinkers.
-Introvert outcasts who have little stake in any existing order. This makes them highly versatile agents who can serve their function any place, any time, and under any circumstances.
-Highly accustomed to functioning as independent self-motivated agents. Minimal if any maintenance or supervision required.
-Highly desirous of a niche that satisfies their basic human need to belong.
-Often unemployed or unusually low in the employment hierarchy for their ability level. No one is presently making good use of their potential, nor is anyone likely to do so. They are lying around in a salvage yard, readily available to anyone who wants them.

The trick is finding them within the vast orthodoxies that have swallowed them up.(or in which they’ve hidden themselves!)

How to Find Fellow Introverts In College

College is very much a socialite environment.
It’s hard to get admitted without lots of clubs and extracurricular activities on your record.
It’s tough to be socially accepted without getting drunk and partying like everyone else.

If looking for true friends, watch closely for people who:
-avoid the party scene
-spend more time in their dorm room than out of it
-bear the marks of eccentricity when you talk to them (unusual mannerisms or word choice)
-are quiet and go out of their way to appear very ordinary, who would escape your notice if you weren’t watching for them.
-aren’t very expressive when you first meet them.
-always keep their drapes/blinds shut

These are hallmarks of someone who might be living under the surface.
Of the candidates you find, a couple might be what you’re looking for. College is ruled by extroverts. True introvert friends, unfortunately, are hard to find.

One way I check for people with compatible interests is to make a joke or in reference about something only someone who spends lots of time around books will know. Social people shrug it off as nonsense and soon forget. The right sort of person gets it and responds at once. It is a means of broadcasting.

Why Introverted Nerds Like Fantasy and Sci Fi

Builds Upon: The Anthropology of Nerd Societies: The Formation of New Group Identities Within Western Industrial Society

It’s perfectly Ok and respectable to have seen some trek and wars. However, you’re crossing way over the line if you know who Salacious Crumb is or know just how Shaka felt when the walls fell.
The new Battlestar Galactica is borderline respectable because of its general lack of aliens and elaborate makeup. You’ve probably gone too far though if you know the model number for each of the skinjobs.
You might possibly be able to pass yourself off as a semi-acceptable citizen even if you watch Stargate.
If you’re into firefly, B5, or Earth final conflict, forget it. It’s too late to save you.
If you:
-Consider yourself a member of clan Malkavian
-Have killed an ancient netch with the fork of horripilation
-Know the significance of the phrase ‘hello sailor’ or have been eaten by grues
-Have ever saved against death
-Know that every point of S after 3= -1 to armor save
-Have ever put a saproling token into play or accumulated poison counters
-Could swear Washington D.C. was founded in 4000 B.C. and believe Elvis has existed since ancient times
-Know the significance of the line “My shoes are too tight and I have forgotten how to dance.”
-Can sing ‘the man they call Jayne’ by heart.

then you have become indescribable in the horrific Lovecraftian sense of the word.
Yet there are lower levels still…

Some moderate exposure to fantasy and sci-fi is deemed to be an ordinary part of pop culture, but there’s a certain point where you’ve crossed the Rubicon and entered into Nerddom.

In Nerddom a movie, show, book, or computer game goes beyond mere entertainment. It becomes a subject of scholarly zeal and nationalistic devotion. In Nerddom one:
-Memorizes geographical features on fictional maps.
-Memorizes the specs of fictional weapons and vehicles.
-Masters a large body of spoken or written material to the point where they can quote from it at will.
-Knows details that are not actually divulged in the original work.
-Knows the customs, histories, or languages of fictional peoples…

To those who live on the surface, these behaviors are completely irrational and bizarre.
Acceptable people wonder why anyone would be so fervent about such obscure information.
Obscurity and exclusivity is precisely the point! Far from being insane, it’s a ritual of distinguishing those who belong to Nerddom from those who belong on the surface of society.
When people do not identify with the culture they were born into, surely it is no stretch of the imagination that they would invent a new culture.
Every culture has its lore and mythology. The culture of Nerddom is no different. A denizen of the surface might say ‘OMG WTF, why would anyone ever learn that?’
One could just as easily ask the same thing of conventional pop culture with its emphasis on frivolous details from the personal lives of countless ‘celebrity’ strangers.
In any given society, shared lore is hugely important. All those small details help bring members closer together while simultaneously keeping outsiders in their place. The small details are difficult to learn properly unless one is genuinely enthusiastic about the values held by the group. It is a means of quickly filtering out impostors.

Among surface dwellers, nerdly scholarship is at best regarded as an amusing and pitiable curiosity. At worst, it is seen as a symptom of derangement and an attack on traditional society.
Those who belong notice a pattern:
Nerddom attracts lots of people who just can’t seem to fit in.
This observation only reinforces the disgust of Accepted observers. Nerddom is the place where rejects go and hide from ‘reality.’

Why does this phenomenon exist?
It ought to be obvious!

When one grows up as a misfit and shares few interests with their peers, one undergoes regular bouts of social censure from an early age.
All one gets from the ‘real world’ of the conventional social environment is negative reinforcement. The every day experience is one of alienation and humiliation.

Why then is it a surprise then that those who are rejected should turn to fictional worlds?! Fictional realities in which all the traits that merit rejection are accepted. Fictional worlds far away from the order that judges and condemns.

These fictional worlds are an escape and separation from a hostile society, but that is only the beginning.
Having been thrown away like garbage by one’s birth culture, it follows that one ought to actively distance oneself from the conventions of one’s oppressors. By doing this one moves from a land and culture associated with shame and loneliness to new lands that promote pride and serve as a means of group bonding with others who have been cast out.
Before long, you have a black market of social belonging operating under the surface of the ‘Legal’ order. I suspect a lot of conventional resentment comes from the fact that the orthodoxy’s monopoly on acceptance and rejection has been effectively broken. Seeing Fracture in progress is inherently disturbing to those who believe there is only one Correct social order.

Far from being crazy or a curiosity, Nerddom is the understandable easily predictable result of the present system. Why on Earth would someone reviled by their fellow Earthlings stay on Earth when it is so easy to emigrate?

To sum it all up, emigration to Nerddom is a means of:

-Declaring independence from a hostile society. Unable to succeed and too isolated to bring any change, the best solution is to secede from a harsh and abusive organization.
-Including those who fail to identify with the conventional ways
-Excluding one’s persecutors.
-Finding pride and belonging when one’s birth culture gave only shame and exclusion
-Escaping to a place where it is not necessary to constantly be on guard. It is a way of releasing accumulated tension and stress.

In time, what started as a temporary shelter becomes more of a home than the birth culture ever was. In a sense, all of those fictional worlds are more real, more genuine than ‘reality’ ever was. From a shameful beginning characterized by being a sin, absolution follows.

Introverts and Sports

Sports in their most popular form are just another social venue. The minority players are involved in an intricate group activity and the majority spectators are involved in a mass cult of fandom.

A Subtle person tends not to fall into either of these categories. The wide world of sports is merely another obstacle in the way of belonging to the surrounding society. Attending team rallies and wearing team paraphernalia seems exotically tribal and altogether incomprehensible.

Why?

Someone who tends to feel out of touch with the group mentality is unlikely to feel drawn to team sports and probably even less so to the idolization of team sports.
Participating in a team sport is a ritual of belonging and being part of a social machine. It is about achieving victory by taking the ‘I’ out of team and subordinating oneself to the group for the benefit of all. A career outsider naturally doesn’t perceive the appeal of engaging in team sport. Why contribute to a ritual of social endorsement when one has never felt a part of society? Why make a dramatic display of submitting to a collective when one has never felt a part of the collective?
Adulation for athletes is distasteful to the outsider. Athletes’ enormous social status gained by playing a mere game seems artificial and shallow. Those who belong by participating in and promoting a hostile social system are more enemies than sympathetic heroes or ‘role models.’ To bow down to and give the gift of adoration and loyalty to a stranger who will never know or care about you seems the lowest and most abject form of subservience.
This lowest subservience would be given to the very people who in our youths stood at the top of the pyramid in which we never had a place.
-They were the enforcers and preservers of a hostile system.
-They were the arbitrary masters of our world for no real reason that anyone could figure. The parents, the newspapers, the ‘community’, everyone seemed to place them on a pedestal for no particular reason. They were the physical manifestation of everything the system selected for. They were the nobility of social Correctness.
To article: ‘Sports Do Not Belong In Schools’

From my personal experience:

I am actually a fairly athletic person and have been involved with cross country and track and field. These are not exactly team sports, but people from the same school do work together to win. I found that I never really belonged socially even in these lower key environments because any sport overwhelmingly seems to attract those who have a collectivist mindset. Most of my teammates had exceptionally strong ties to the popular culture and saw sport primarily as a social activity

I repeatedly found myself an outsider in these organizations.
Only in cross country did I really stand a chance. This sport tends to be the lowest in terms of social prestige and it has the potential to attract nerds who have neither the coordination or the keen feel for group dynamics required to excel in team sports. Unfortunately, even cross country was not exactly a safe haven. For most participants, the sport was their cardio social session between a sedentary summer break and the popular winter games– volleyball and basketball. Members of the chess club were still in the minority. Even on the extreme, where Subtle folk could exist in the world of sport, it was still a contentious border zone whereas the classic team sports were entirely within hostile territory.

What are some of the reasons I did not quite fit in even in the friendliest possible sports environment?
Most of my teammates saw it primarily as a social activity. ‘Stretching’ often lasted half an hour to an hour. Not only do I lack shared interests with most athletes, I was seething the whole time as I thought of how I’d have time for nothing but homework by the time I finally got home. Furthermore, I approach exercise from a rationalistic perspective. Physical fitness and self improvement come first. I joined a running club so I could get better at running.

This brings me to consider:
Why is the Subtle ethic opposed with the world of sport?

Opposite values and life experiences:

The Subtle are those who have been in conflict with their social surroundings since an early age.
For some of them, lack of athletic talent/coordination have been contributing factors to their present situation of social otherness.
Society has shown itself to be an arbitrary, capricious tyrant. As such it has no legitimate claim on our lives.
A personal system of values is above the values that we are taught. Progress is achieved by progressively improving oneself.
One can always find new ways to achieve progress.
Those who are subtle cultivate a tight inner circle. They relate to and give themselves only to a few. One ought to recognize their human limits and focus on those who are most important.
Countless millions of dollars go into charity and yet world hunger is rampant: food aid only worsens the situation by spurring additional unsustainable population growth.

Athletes are those who have seamlessly integrated with their social surroundings from their earliest years. For many of them, outstanding coordination and athletic skills combined with excellent social skills have catapulted them to the heights of the orthodoxy.
Having fit in by their very nature, it seems as though society is all encompassing with a place for everyone. Those few who have difficulties just need to put in a little more effort and ‘get out more.’ The legitimacy of their society is taken for granted by virtue of its mass acceptance and their personal success within it.
To make one’s own values is a destructive departure from the group. Progress is achieved by improving the prestige of the team to which one belongs.
Progress has a tangible goal. Progress ends at the top of the pyramid whether one is trying to win the state championship or become the CEO. Outside of established structures, there is only the Void.
They sincerely believe the best way of ‘making the world a better place’ is cleaning up trash from the roadside on Sunday afternoons and giving money to monolithic charity organizations.
World hunger would disappear overnight if only more people engaged in such ‘service projects.’

Sports culture is a manifestation and promotion of Loud values. Those who excel in the world of sports naturally tend to be Loud people.
Thus one who ‘doesn’t follow sports’ can never quite an insider among those who stand within the orthodoxy.
As a celebration of all that is social and socially accepted, the world of sports is at best an obstacle and at worst a menace in the life of a true introvert.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 40 other followers