Quote:
Originally Posted by Cinisajoy
Great post. I try to remember to apply outgoing tact. Note: it works about 10% of the time. Now in here, I don't worry about applying it.
|
No worries, a recipe for trouble when jocks invade the land of the nerdly hacker geeks...
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-....html#keepcool
Quote:
Much of what looks like rudeness in hacker circles is not intended to give offense. Rather, it's the product of the direct, cut-through-the-bullshit communications style that is natural to people who are more concerned about solving problems than making others feel warm and fuzzy.
When you perceive rudeness, try to react calmly. If someone is really acting out, it is very likely a senior person on the list or newsgroup or forum will call him or her on it. If that doesn't happen and you lose your temper, it is likely that the person you lose it at was behaving within the hacker community's norms and you will be considered at fault. This will hurt your chances of getting the information or help you want.
On the other hand, you will occasionally run across rudeness and posturing that is quite gratuitous. The flip-side of the above is that it is acceptable form to slam real offenders quite hard, dissecting their misbehavior with a sharp verbal scalpel. Be very, very sure of your ground before you try this, however. The line between correcting an incivility and starting a pointless flamewar is thin enough that hackers themselves not infrequently blunder across it; if you are a newbie or an outsider, your chances of avoiding such a blunder are low. If you're after information rather than entertainment, it's better to keep your fingers off the keyboard than to risk this.
(Some people assert that many hackers have a mild form of autism or Asperger's Syndrome, and are actually missing some of the brain circuitry that lubricates “normal” human social interaction. This may or may not be true. If you are not a hacker yourself, it may help you cope with our eccentricities if you think of us as being brain-damaged. Go right ahead. We won't care; we like being whatever it is we are, and generally have a healthy skepticism about clinical labels.)
|
That part in parentheses confirms my understanding of Asperger's based on all the research I have done on this subject. And yes, aspies are geeks are nerds are hackers at least to some degree, in almost every case. Though because of negative social stigma, some of us deny it in public (and perhaps even to ourselves). But reality is what it is, and it speaks for itself.