Culture

Geek As Citizen: Deep Geeks

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Pit Hole Ladder

One of the things that has troubled me about geek culture is that there’s parts of it that seem strangely alien and disconnected. I’m not talking the stereotype of the guy living in his mom’s basement (he’s probably busy with a startup these days). I’m talking the fact that a set of geeks can be both socially engaged, yet shockingly and even brutally clueless and insensitive.

It’s reading about women’s experience among Bitcoin enthusiasts or ignorant bro-geek activity at Dropbox. It’s wondering how people can spin weird techno-utopian political fantasies with no grounding in logic – because you’ve got the brains to at least spin these fantasies.  It’s every time someone in Silicon Valley says something clueless about the homeless and gentrification and I wonder if they even read the paper or watch the news.

And yet, some of the people I’m discussing seem to be more extraverted and socially engaged. We meet geeks who when they are insensitive, or bigoted, or clueless shock us because they’re the kind of people we don’t expect to be that way. How can someone be so smart and so bright and even social and yet still seem to live in their own world?

I’ve covered my suspicions that marketing has affected bigotry in geekdom. And I still stand by my theory geekdom in general is far more tolerant than its parent culture – but the depths can be just as bad as said parent culture. I just want to know why.

After some analysis, I’d like to propose there’s a subpopulation of geeks, mostly in the technology, media, and gaming sector that I call Deep Geeks. Read on.  I got a rabbit hole to show you.

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Lost In Catharsis

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(By the way if you think Catharsis is a city in Egypt, I am ashamed for you.)

So I’m hoping to get back to posting more than updates here, now that the book is moving forward (final draft coming, I hope . . .) and I wanted to discuss some of my recent observations on culture.

We witness a screaming match among friends, watch an internet discussion degenerate into (or start at) rage and bigotry, a friend or family member appears to start a conversation and then just rant about someone or something. Everyone seems to be busy shouting, yelling, and venting, and you’d kind of like them to shut the hell up (but don’t want to yell about it and add to the problem).

Lately, I’ve been wondering about the state of communication in America, originally centering on the internet and its notorious lack of dialogues and overabundance of flame wars. Having heard how Popular Science cut comments, witnessing sleazy click bait tactics to cause controversy, watching online conversations not be conversations, I began asking, basically, what the hell is wrong with people.  Where’s all the yelling coming from?

Then as I continued, I began noticing similar behaviors outside of internet discussions. Sure there’s the screaming on television, but there’s also the screaming face-to-face, politicians who appear to have their mouths wired to a random idiocy generator, emo posturing that’s more performance art, and columns that are just rants published “professionally.”

It made me wonder is anyone actually talking? Conversing, communicating, interfacing, changing, growing, something? Anything?

Well, of course they are, but it’s sort of easy to note when it’s not happening. So of course, I began developing a theory. A kind of theory.

The internet, and a lot of people and cultures have a catharsis problem.  I think America definitely does.  Here’s the conclusions I’ve come to:

  • First, a lot of people are seeking catharsis. They don’t want to talk, they want to vent their spleen, get it out of their system, and possibly get some attention to boot.  This is normal.
  • Secondly, catharsis is sort of enshrined in our culture, there’s supposedly something admirable about going on a rant/rampage/etc. (as long as it’s on the RIGHT subjects of course).  I think this may relate to anti-intellectualism, that somehow ranty anger is superior to thinking.
  • Third, catharsis is rewarded in attention – including ad hits, power over others people congregate around their own grievances, and even election to judge by some of our more insane politicians.
  • Fourth, catharsis tends to attract confirmation, so it just gets reinforced. Because the people disgusted with you either give up on you or begin venting themselves.
  • Fifth, catharsis is rarely challenged and is hard to challenge, so the mere act of ranting may confirm people’s own biases as no one “calls them” on it (or just calls them an idiot).

So, basically we’re in a society that encourages and even rewards venting over conversation.  A sort of Moral Hazard issue of a**sholeness.

Adopting that viewpoint has made things a lot clearer to me – asking when someone or some group is really talking versus just having emotional flatulence. It explains why many comments sections end up being depressing and unhelpful, or why I enjoyed my experiments in cross-blog communication because they were.  This is a pretty useful theory.

Ultimately this enshrining of catharsis is, obviously, destructive and self-amplifying. We’ve seen many an online meltdown I’m sure, and at times when we watch crazy politicians, pundits, and preachers, we wonder what real-life meltdowns are to come (or have occurred and will only pop up in an embarrassing and traumatic investigation).

But also catharsis occupies the mental and personal space that can be used to do something constructive. Yes, we need catharsis, but catharsis is lancing the wound or opening the door – it doesn’t actually achieve anything beyond the immediate moment. Beyond the moment is when we need to actually do things.

Enshrining catharsis pushes out getting s*it done.

Catharsis’ use in the realm of actually doing stuff is perhaps a purge or a warning sign that you better fix things, but it’s rarely productive.  When it’s encouraged and rewarded, it gets in the way of actually achieving something – like, say, fixing the things that make people so worked up they need cathartic moments.

Now when I look at internet arguments and the like I ask “what’s going to get done here” or “what solutions are proposed” or “what solution can I propose.”  It’s an interesting – and at times depressing – viewpoint.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Geek As Citizen: More On Writing And Reposting

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Paper And Stars

As I’ve hinted at before, once I finish rewriting Way With Worlds over at Seventh Sanctum (and republished here) I plan to wrap it up into a book. Admittedly this could be quite a ways away since it is not just a rewrite but adding everything I learned in the last ten-fifteen years, so my guess is I may be doing this for up to a year longer. However, at some point I want to take it, re-edit it, maybe add a bit more, and do it as a book.

(Also possibly to take a break as this is pretty intense).

Anyway the reason I plan to turn this into a book:

  1. I think it’d be pretty useful.
  2. People who read the column in the past had commented on the value they got from it, and one had even printed it out.
  3. It helps preserve knowledge, which I wrote about previously.

I was discussing this with Serdar, and mentioning some of his past reviews and writings, and future plans. He’s quite adept at reviews and writing, and I thought maybe he should consider something similar. He noted he wouldn’t, as some writing is appropriate for a book, some isn’t, some things are good to put in print, for others being on the internet is enough. Plus some things aren’t appropriate to charge for.

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