[nvm0n2]

Luckily there's a website for that:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wordcel-shape-rotator-mathcel

Shape rotator = someone who can rotate shapes in their head, a proxy for IQ. Someone with good mathematical or STEM skills and who feels unvalued for it.

Wordcel = someone good with words/rhetoric who feels like their skill in this field isn't valued enough / it doesn't get them far enough.

[rideontime]

This whole time it was just about IQ? Are shape rotators just disgruntled Gifted Kids?

[pjc50]

Subset of IQ. You can find high-IQ people who struggle specifically with shape rotation. Not clear if this is an artefact of "what questions get deemed to be part of IQ" or not, but I wouldn't base a division of society on it.

[biomcgary]

I've never interpreted the distinction as being primarily about IQ, but about how that intelligence is applied. Rotators engineer physical reality, wordcels engineer social dynamics. I think the rotator disgruntlement comes from the fact that wordcels have the capacity to extract more value than they create. It is much harder for rotators to extract more value than they create. This is complicated by the fact that rotators, particularly in tech, are building systems deployed by wordcels to extract value from society (e.g., ad-tech).

[moron4hire]

It's not, really. It's more about a political divide, with STEM vs liberal arts being used as a proxy. There are some people who don't want to give up the chauvinistic, pre-#metoo era of the tech industry. Clinging to the meritocracy myth is a coping mechanism.

Ultimately, it's telling on one's self that one is a bad communicator. One might generally perceive any use of -cel neologisms to be a projection of the speaker's own feelings of impotence.