[derefr]

> Cheerleader come over and ask about programming? Shot down. Invitation to a study group? Rejected. The most bitingly ironic comes when a person in a group of nerds gets an invitation to a party. If you’re one of the more social people in your scene, try it. Invite an anime person or a programmer - one of those people - out to an event. Chances are you’ll be declined. There’s every possibility you’ll be rejected impolitely.

I agree completely that nerds do this. I did this. But I never did it to be "elite", or to keep the other person "below" me. Instead, I always assumed that the cheerleader (or whomever it was) was playing a very nasty practical joke on me—that if I accepted, they'd laugh in my face and wander away, or worse, I'd show up at the party to find myself a scapegoat for some random act of civil unrest previously committed that night by the partygoers. And yes, I even made friends only with other nerds—but only because I could tell, by the fear they showed toward the other groups, that they were a prey, not a predator, species, and were thus unlikely to harm me if I associated with them.

(If you can't tell, I was bullied for my entire elementary school life before entering high-school; I imagine I would have had quite a different outlook otherwise. Thankfully, by grade 11 or so, the concept of "clique" had dissolved in my high-school, so I did get to discover what a mentally-healthy high-school experience was like.)

[dkarl]

I think my group of friends prided ourselves on being a little more inclusive, an easy distinction to achieve, but we still followed the same pattern the popular people did and the same pattern followed by HN: we valued the current state of our group and wanted to protect it. We knew we could drive out most people just by being ourselves, but more desperate people had to be sent social cues saying, "You're welcome once in a while, but don't push it." I don't remember us being overtly rude, though.

I remember being particularly mortified about a retarded kid who kept coming and talking to me about his chances of getting into "Hahvahd." I don't know who was messing with his head, but he honestly thought that being an Eagle Scout (honorary, I'm sure) gave him a a good shot at getting into Harvard, and he wanted to talk to me about it. The retarded kid was a bit slower with the social cues. I hated him for that. And I was smart enough to know that's how normal people felt about me, which made me hate him even worse, but I never made fun of him to his face.

[rorymarinich]

But I never did it to be "elite", or to keep the other person "below" me. Instead, I always assumed that the cheerleader (or whomever it was) was playing a very nasty practical joke on me—that if I accepted, they'd laugh in my face and wander away, or worse, I'd show up at the party to find myself a scapegoat for some random act of civil unrest previously committed that night by the partygoers. And yes, I even made friends only with other nerds—but only because I could tell, by the fear they showed toward the other groups, that they were a prey, not a predator, species, and were thus unlikely to harm me if I associated with them.

I was going to elaborate upon that but decided against it. Yes: nerds don't do things to be exclusive. They're not particularly snobby people. Their reactions tend to stem from alienation and paranoia: they act like that because they either don't think that other people like them at all, or because they want to maintain an image of some exclusivity on their own part.

The problem with that attitude is that it encourages people to be nasty back and to avoid your social group. And the people in a group of nerds that do notice that tend to start getting negative attitude from the rest of the group. I wasn't alone in this. One of my friends was part of the bookworm group of pretty people who studied too much, and I thought he was a twofaced backstabbing liar. That was eighth grade, and I'd like to think I've matured since then, but I certainly understand where you're coming from.

[amalcon]

Indeed.

I'd also done things that might appear like this on occasion, even though I trusted that the person asking wasn't playing some sort of practical joke or simply trying to get me to do their work for them. The reason is that the questions were often things like "How do I make a web page on geocities?" or "How do I program DOS?"

In the former case, after establishing that they didn't want me to actually sit down in the computer lab after school and give an hour or two of instruction, all I could really say is that "It's really not something I can just explain in ten minutes." That comes off as a bit of a brush-off.

In the latter case, the question actually doesn't make sense. One can't "program DOS" any more than one can "perform a photograph". People became offended more than once by my genuine attempts to figure out what they were actually trying to ask. When I do get down to it, it seems they're usually asking "how do I make a game like Wolfenstein? That's kind of an old game so it should be easy!". That is just a more egregious example of the first case.

But yeah, this is the reason geeks don't accept invitations to parties. They've been burnt by requests like this before, and are worried about being burnt again.

[derefr]

Just because the person didn't know enough about the domain to use the correct terminology is no reason to belittle them by thinking they "want to do something stupid," though (and yes, that's why they're angry); half of software engineering is figuring out what the heck people mean with their requirements, and the usual best first assumption, no matter who your client/student is, is that they want to do something cool :)

I like to give anyone who asks me to teach them "to make games" or anything similar this test first, though: I take a pen and put it down on a page of paper, and tell them to tell me to draw a happy face on it, without expecting me to know what a happy face, or even a circle, is. I take everything they say literally, and tell them "this is how the computer would react to that." Clears up any misconceptions pretty quickly. :)

[amalcon]

My problem is that people often think you're trying to belittle them when you're just trying to figure out what they want to do. Maybe this is because people do belittle each other for not knowing proper terminology. It still causes problems.

I have had people ask me "how do you program DOS", when they were in fact looking for (among other things):

- How do I write a batch file (easy to explain)

- How do I make a simple console program (slightly tougher, but I could at least point them in the right direction, or show them if they are willing to take the time)

- How do I program my calculator to do trigonometry for me (This was my absolute favorite one, because I could actually show them the basics on the spot! Back in the day, I showed a few people how to do this, who actually turned out to really enjoy doing it!)

- How do I make a game (this is the worst one)

[Tichy]

You had a cheerleader ask you about programming? Cool ;-)