[quoderat]

This writer is really clueless as to what high school is like for those on the bottom of the heap -- I mean, really, no idea at all.

For that reason, it's hard to listen to what else he has to say, no matter how relevant or (potentially) awesome.

Obvious that he's never been the low end of the totem pole. It may be different now, but when I was in high school, geeks and nerds got shit on by every group -- the jocks, the actors and actresses. Everyone.

[tylermenezes]

It seems to be different depending on where you are. The geeks at my high school (myself included) are, at least respected, and in the cases of many of my friends actually have a social life. (I'm too busy with the internet for that.) On the other hand, I know some people from other places who've had terrible experiences, so it's really hard to generalize.

[njoubert]

It definitely varies. I was not all that invested in programming at all, spending most of my time biking and playing music, but as a "smart kid" there was lots of ostracizing going around, just because I didn't play the main sport that everyone plays.

What I take away from this is the importance of growing up - you get through those stages and move into a more nurturing community of people that support what you create, not the details of how you created it.

[eru]

"Sir Michael Marmot, of University College London, and his intellectual successors have shown repeatedly that people at the bottom of social hierarchies experience much more stress in their daily lives than those at the top—and suffer the consequences in their health. Even quite young children are socially sensitive beings and aware of such things."

Growing up is important. But early stress does have long-term consequences.

[endlessvoid94]

I thought that was the point of the essay. We're all old (and hopefully mature enough) now to accept that maybe it wasn't completely the jock's (or whomever's) fault that the nerds were unpopular.

An outside perspective is almost always useful in figuring things out. I found this essay hit home. I was definitely in the nerd group, and if I had read this in high school, it would've helped.

[chairface]

> maybe it wasn't completely the jock's (or whomever's) fault that the nerds were unpopular.

I can agree with this to a point - by the time high school rolls around, yeah, the unpopular kids probably have adopted a set of behaviors that contributes to them being unpopular. However, those behaviors are probably defenses developed against some early damaging experiences. And who is responsible for those experiences? In my experience, it was those same jocks (or whatever) inflicting their damage all the way up.

Personally, I find it much more helpful not to worry about who to blame for unpopularity itself, and to focus more on what is _done_ to the unpopular. And the responsibility for that is much more clear.

[rorymarinich]

To be completely honest, if I were to go back to elementary school and look at when I first started being divided from other kids, I'm almost certain it would have begun with me being an arrogant brat because of my intelligence. When you're bright, it's too tempting to try and rise above teasing by claiming superintelligence. I'm not saying that arrogance is a bad thing, but I feel that people who are persecuted for arrogance should at least admit that their own attitude is partly at fault. Of course, such an admission makes persecution less likely to happen. It's a nice circle.

Personally, I find it much more helpful not to worry about who to blame for unpopularity itself, and to focus more on what is _done_ to the unpopular. And the responsibility for that is much more clear.

To discuss a problem, you need to get to its root. The root of the problem is twofold: people on one side are too willing to ostracize themselves, and people on the other side don't want to spend time learning about people. My belief is that it's not the responsibility of others to spend time trying to understand you. I think that bullying is a problem, but frankly, if nerds were ostracized but not actively bullied I would find a hard time blaming the other kids and not the nerds. I actually discussed this problem with a professor: my solution to this problem would be twofold. First, get the other kids to realize why nerd things are cool. If people think programming is really super neato, then suddenly programmers are neato too. (It worked with math in my school: once you like math, then math geeks are pretty awesome kids. By my junior year all of the math kids hung out with the jock/class clown group.) At the same time, though, you've got to do the same in reverse. Teach the nerds to appreciate the non-nerds. Intolerance works both ways, and there are a lot of people willing to dismiss sports players or actors or musicians or artists or preps as stupid and meaningless, and what this essay's all about is that in my experience, the nerds are usually a lot less tolerant than the other people. My first day in college, when my roommate arrived, I was unpacking a virtual library, and he was carrying a volleyball, and my first impression was that we wouldn't get along because he wouldn't "understand" me. This year's taught me a lot about how you can be smart and not be a nerd, and I honestly think that the nerds are less aware of this than the other groups.

[chairface]

> I feel that people who are persecuted for arrogance should at least admit that their own attitude is partly at fault

Again with this theory. Should battered wives admit that they are partially at fault because they annoyed their husbands? Should rape victims admit that they are partially at fault because they led a guy on? People are responsible for _their own actions_. No more, no less. If this means that the people you're talking about are guilty for being arrogant and annoying, then fine. I have no problem with that. But they are not responsible for the crimes committed by others.

> my solution to this problem would be twofold.

I think it's funny that you think you can solve this problem, and that we can all live in egalitarian bliss.

[rorymarinich]

I think it's funny that you think you can solve this problem, and that we can all live in egalitarian bliss.

You know that you're the reason I wrote this article, right? This is exactly the HN attitude that made me freeze my main account away. People who take things that other people say and extend them to drastic proportions just so they can be dicks about it.

No, we're not going to have egalitarian bliss. We're human beings. We have flaws. Those flaws won't go away. My "solution" is one that I think would work better than the endless "be diverse" speeches kids get. I think that it might make a lot of smart people a lot happier. It won't fix everything, but it might at least help. But no, you won't address the ideas I put forth. You'll nitpick. You'll be an absolute snot just so that you can gain the upper hand in an argument. And so you might reach a point where I and people like me get tired of your bullshit and walk away, and then you'll declare yourself the victor because you were the last person to make a post in my comment thread, but all you're doing is making the person on the other side want to punch yourself in the face. In a microcosm, that's my essay: you're probably not a stupid person, but you're deliberately avoiding facts to paint a one-sided portrayal of what I'm saying, and it's pissing me off. If we were having this argument in real life and I was a more naturally violent person, I'd probably hit you, and then in your eyes I'd become the bully and you wouldn't be guilty of anything. That's the problem here, and it's incredibly common amongst programmers, and it sucks.

I have no problem with that. But they are not responsible for the crimes committed by others.

They're interconnected. You're like the American attitude after 9/11 that terrorists were wholly evil Satanic creatures with no motive. I'm arguing back and saying that the people on the other side are doing bad things, but that that's a separate issue from what I'm talking about. If you're guilty about being arrogant and annoying, then when you get teased and beaten up it's not causeless. You caused this. And the other side is more at fault then you are, but don't act like you're a saint.

Should battered wives admit that they are partially at fault because they annoyed their husbands?

If you get beaten and do nothing about it, it's your fault that it goes on. See, two sides of the same struggle can both be guilty. The husband is more at fault, but if the battered wife acts like there's nothing she can do then she's to blame for it going on.

Same with rape. If you get raped and do nothing about it, you're letting the other guy get away. The other guy isn't innocent. This isn't a blame game where it's the victim's fault entirely. But the victim does not exist in a vacuum, and the fact that the problem still exists suggests that in some way the victim is complicit about the problem.

Is McDonald's to blame for making people fat? Partly. But they exist to provide something for people who are asking for it. Fat people are to blame for their being fat. Perhaps not entirely 100% to blame, but they can stop themselves, and they're not, and so it's partly their fault.

One day I might write something about how much bullies suck, but other people are already doing this. I don't like being generic. So I thought I would write a little thing about how nerds are often partially to blame for their oppression, and that they refuse to take responsibility for themselves, not expecting anybody to submit it to a place where people like you would get to spray their spittle around without ever once addressing what I'm saying.

[zedshaw]

I never comment on HN. I just observe. But what you just wrote above deserves a response, and much more to come.

First off, on what planet do you think it's alright to hurt someone physically for anything they say? You'd actually punch someone in the face who's arguing with your stupid comments?

Second, if you get raped and do nothing about it that's your fault? I think Andrea Dworkin just ate her fist. One of the most vile offensive acts a person can do to a weaker person and you say it's the victim's fault? That they're somehow complicit?

Third, battered women deserve their beatings? Didn't you say that you wrote your stupid poorly written blog post in response to the whole Porno Ruby Conference Offending Women news lately? How in the _hell_ can you even pretend to claim you give a rat's ass about women if you think any of the above?

Alright, I gotta stop before I step into territory where I get banned from HN. However, I have one statement I'd like to see you fumble a reply to:

I can fully understand your hatred of geek arrogance, since I can't stand it myself, but even at my most obnoxious I never said that rape, beatings, torture, and abuse of the weak were defensible.

Every person who has been abused never deserved the _level_ of abuse they received. Whether it's children, or women, or just someone who's different, the abuser is always more powerful and enjoys hurting people weaker than them. Because of this, they take any tiny little offense and turn it into a reason to nearly kill another human being. Even if the victim changes every single thing about themselves to please the abuser, it's not enough.

The abuse continues, not because of the victim, but because it satisfies the abuser.

[dkarl]

You crossed a line here. A woman who annoys her husband and is beaten as a result is guilty of being annoying. She is not guilty of domestic assault, not even a little bit. A woman who leads a man on and is then raped by him is not a little bit guilty of rape. She is guilty of leading a man on. I agree it's important to focus on things under our control, but there's a difference between taking active control over one's life and taking moral responsibility for other people's actions. The fact that we use the word "responsibility" to refer to both these things -- the common aspect being an attitude of initiative and self-reliance as opposed to helplessness and blaming -- confuses rather than clarifies the issue.

Using the dual nature of the word "responsibility" is a common ploy to distribute blame to everybody equally when discussions of blame become counterproductive. That can be appropriate in some situations, especially team situations, but applying it to rape and domestic abuse is way over the line. It's repellant.

[chairface]

> You know that you're the reason I wrote this article, right? This is exactly the attitude that made me freeze my main account away. People who take things that other people say and extend them to drastic proportions just so they can be dicks about it.

Look man, you said you had a solution to the problem. What I said is hardly a leap. You have a funny definition of "drastic proportions".

> But no, you won't address the ideas I put forth. You'll nitpick. You'll be an absolute snot just so that you can gain the upper hand in an argument. And so you might reach a point where I and people like me get tired of your bullshit and walk away, and then you'll declare yourself the victor because you were the last person to make a post in my comment thread, but all you're doing is making the person on the other side want to punch yourself in the face...

You're descending into ad hominem territory here. Please don't.

I didn't address your solution because I don't think there is one, and I don't see value in arguing about it. Perhaps I misunderstand the problem you're trying to solve.

> They're interconnected.

I never said they weren't - I limited my discussion to the assigning of blame, which I took to be your primary subject as well. But now, it seems to me that you are not separating the issues of "cause" and "blame" the same way I am.

To be clear, of course the victims are part of the cause of any particular confrontation. It couldn't happen if they weren't there, so there's at least that. What I object to is assigning _blame_ to them. Causes for these things are shared - blame is given to one side or the other for their own actions.

Your commentaries on battered wives and rape focus on what happens _after_ the incident. I am asking about the incident itself. The blame for the raping and the beating lies solely with the aggressors.

> Is McDonald's to blame for making people fat? Partly.

No. McDonald's is to blame for making fatty food. There's a difference.

[dkarl]

For fairness' sake you should also focus on what the unpopular do to other people: how they bring down a conversation, unwittingly sabotage their friends' efforts at looking sane and approachable, pick the wrong moments for racy jokes, and hijack conversations towards topics they find interesting but nobody else does. In hindsight, I can see that I wasn't always a pleasant person to be around. High school kids don't feel like they have a lot of social capital to blow on dorks.

[chairface]

The entire article and most of rory's comments in this thread are about what the unpopular do to other people. I'm balancing that.

[dkarl]

I'm pretty sure it was already balanced by the preponderance of extended meditations on the indignities suffered by nerds. It's not like jocks blog insightfully about their social anxieties. Hell, I don't think most popular kids understood what was going on at all. They were just going on instinct. It's nice to see some actual analysis about the other side of the equation for a change, and it seems like a bad idea to immediately swing the focus back to the side that we already understand.

[chairface]

Well, that's what discussions are made of. I think it's silly of you to suggest that I shouldn't say anything without making sure to reiterate the original author's points.

[andreyf]

It may be different now, but when I was in high school, geeks and nerds got shit on by every group -- the jocks, the actors and actresses. Everyone.

Everyone's mileage varies. I went to a decent public school in the suburbs, and most people in my social circle belonged to a couple of others tribes as well - I was pretty active in the business competitions (as well as programming). Most other "nerd elites" were in marching band, actors, singers, swimmers, fencers, jugglers, etc. Sure, there were plain old jerks, but they were a certain a minority, and easy to ignore.

[rorymarinich]

I spent all my time on computers, I played Dungeons & Dragons. I spent all my time up until I was about 15 being shat on, and being incredibly angry because I thought I was being persecuted for my intelligence. Then, in my sophomore year, I took a drama class, realized that people didn't care what kind of person I was as long as I was an interesting person who wasn't too obnoxious, and began to move away from my nerdier friends and towards a much more cosmopolitan group of kids that included film buffs and stoners and snarky hipsters. I'm still friends with a lot of my old friends - I go to college with one - and there's still a latent exclusivity where the group of anime/computer people act pretty rude towards people not in the group.

As was said by another commenter, perhaps it's different everywhere you go. I was in a place where I realized later on in high school that all of the torment and suffering towards nerds had some sort of a logical pull. And my school wasn't some sort of utopia: one dweeby kid in marching band had a bag of shaving cream smashed against his face during lunch as part of a hazing routine. What I noticed from that incident was this: while perhaps that one thing was inevitable, a lot of the sympathy I had towards that poor bullied kid dissolved away when he turned that one single incident into a sort of theater for discussing how unloved he was - particularly since that was the sort of thing I did when I was younger, too.

I wish I'd focused more on the programming aspect of this thing, though, because to be honest high school isn't worth talking about in my mind, not in this context. This was a response to an article titled "Rails is (still) a ghetto", where the author took a similarly hyperobnoxious approach to looking at a problem that didn't require anything obnoxious, and the larger problem is that the world of programming is highly inaccessible to non-programmers.

[jimbokun]

I just want to know how you can hold up the "Rails community" as a positive example of socially well adjusted people, when their acknowledged leader just explicitly approved of a presentation that would obviously result in complaints of sexual harassment in any normal workplace setting (and did result in such a complaint, although given in an almost apologetic tone because she knew that her complaints would not be well received by the Ruby community, and was proven right).

[rorymarinich]

Because the Rails community understands that they are not a community for any other reason other than Rails.

Do I approve of nudity in a presentation? No. But at the same time, even if I found it offensive, I wouldn't turn it into a huge argument and the focal point of a rant against a community.

I'm really, really in the minority with this statement, but I find it very easy to deal with intolerant people. I have friends who are almost certainly racist. A lot of the people I know are casually homophobic. I think that's sickening, but I don't turn that into a rallying point of a campaign. The attitude that I was taught as a kid was that the best way to change things is to lead by example.

Now, being upset over using nude women to draw attention, that makes sense. Voicing displeasure makes sense. But there's a line between that and turning that issue into one that directly attacks the community. When you're part of a community about coding, you'd best be focused on the code. If you don't like DHH, you ignore him. If you don't like Obie Fernandez, you ignore him. The language is what matters, and it's a large enough language that if you know what you're doing, you can find people who are willing to help.

Now, look at the attitude of the Rails community towards beginners: they are incredibly kind and cool and open about it all. (This extends to what parts of the Ruby community I've interacted with.) If you don't know a thing about programming, they'll help you, and they usually come across not as nerds but as socially normal people. I don't know if they really are, but their leaders certainly are: they have their priorities straight. I've never been party to a group of programmers that seemed as normal as the Ruby bunch.

So when DHH applauds the presentation, the message he's giving isn't "RoR approves of this." He's just saying this as a leader. He's saying this as DHH, a rude dude who loves to be crude. The fact that he's the leader is entirely apart from the fact that he's saying this. That's why he's so interesting to read. That's why 37signals is such a good blog. It doesn't matter that they're rich and successful and in charge of stuff: they're a good blog because they write good posts, and all that other stuff is an aside. Meanwhile, in the rest of the programming world people are all-too-quick to judge a person as a single, solid entity. Steve Jobs is evil because iTunes has DRM. Bill Gates is stupid because Windows is ugly. Jason Fried is a jackass who never does work because other people waste their time reading SvN archives. Ruby on Rails is bad because their developers are immature. It's the same approach of solidarity that leads nerds to decide all jocks are stupid, all different people are meaningless, and anything that looks nice can't be nice because it's coming from non-nerds.

[jimbokun]

That was actually a pretty good response. :)

I would say, though, while you are deliberately choosing not to ostracize the Rails community, they are deliberately ostracizing people who don't like porn, or at least people who don't like porn at their tech conferences.

Is this any better than a nerd insulting a cheerleader for asking an unsophisticated programming question? Implicitly, they are saying if you aren't cool or hip enough to not be offended by a pornographic presentation, stay away from our conferences.

A little elitist, no?

[rorymarinich]

I think that the porn thing was pretty tasteless on the part of the presenter. But a part of being civil is avoiding confrontations that you don't have to be in. I used to feel really uncomfortable attending religious services because I was an atheist, for instance, but I've come to the conclusion that while it's awful to lie about what you believe, it's pretty icky to force your beliefs on other people. So while I think that the presenter and DHH are being kind of obnoxious, I accept that DHH's good traits stem from that obnoxious attitude, and I can like his product without necessarily liking that attitude.

It also depends on what you mean by "insulting." Frankly, if a cute girl asks me to program, then I will almost certainly tease her as I help out. I think the porn thing was an attempt at tease that ended up being a bit too insulting. There's definitely a line, but usually if you cross that line people will understand so long as you do.

[bena]

The problem is that it was also the programming community that is pointing out that the guy was being kind of a douche. You are taking a very small portion of the community and extrapolating extremes from that. The plural of anecdote is not data.