Five Geek Social Fallacies
Within the constellation of allied hobbies and subcultures
collectively known as geekdom, one finds many social groups bent under
a crushing burden of dysfunction, social drama, and general
interpersonal wack-ness. It is my opinion that many of these
never-ending crises are sparked off by an assortment of pernicious
social fallacies -- ideas about human interaction which spur their
holders to do terrible and stupid things to themselves and to each
other.
Social fallacies are particularly insidious because they tend to be
exaggerated versions of notions that are themselves entirely
reasonable and unobjectionable. It's difficult to debunk the
pathological fallacy without seeming to argue against its reasonable
form; therefore, once it establishes itself, a social fallacy is
extremely difficult to dislodge. It's my hope that drawing attention
to some of them may be a step in the right direction.
I want to note that I'm not trying to say that every geek subscribes
to every one of the fallacies I outline here; every individual
subscribes to a different set of ideas, and adheres to any given idea
with a different amount of zeal.
In any event, here are five geek social fallacies I've identified.
There are likely more.
Geek Social Fallacy #1: Ostracizers Are Evil
GSF1 is one of the most common fallacies, and one of the most deeply
held. Many geeks have had horrible, humiliating, and formative
experiences with ostracism, and the notion of being on the other side
of the transaction is repugnant to them.
In its non-pathological form, GSF1 is benign, and even commendable: it
is long past time we all grew up and stopped with the junior high
popularity games. However, in its pathological form, GSF1 prevents its
carrier from participating in -- or tolerating -- the exclusion of
anyone from anything, be it a party, a comic book store, or a web
forum, and no matter how obnoxious, offensive, or aromatic the
prospective excludee may be.
As a result, nearly every geek social group of significant size has at
least one member that 80% of the members hate, and the remaining 20%
merely tolerate. If GSF1 exists in sufficient concentration -- and it
usually does -- it is impossible to expel a person who actively
detracts from every social event. GSF1 protocol permits you not to
invite someone you don't like to a given event, but if someone spills
the beans and our hypothetical Cat Piss Man invites himself, there is
no recourse. You must put up with him, or you will be an Evil
Ostracizer and might as well go out for the football team.
This phenomenon has a number of unpleasant consequences. For one
thing, it actively hinders the wider acceptance of geek-related
activities: I don't know that RPGs and comics would be more popular if
there were fewer trolls who smell of cheese hassling the new blood,
but I'm sure it couldn't hurt. For another, when nothing smacking of
social selectiveness can be discussed in public, people inevitably
begin to organize activities in secret. These conspiracies often lead
to more problems down the line, and the end result is as juvenile as
anything a seventh-grader ever dreamed of.
Geek Social Fallacy #2: Friends Accept Me As I Am
The origins of GSF2 are closely allied to the origins of GSF1. After
being victimized by social exclusion, many geeks experience their
"tribe" as a non-judgmental haven where they can take refuge from the
cruel world outside.
This seems straightforward and reasonable. It's important for people
to have a space where they feel safe and accepted. Ideally, everyone's
social group would be a safe haven. When people who rely too heavily
upon that refuge feel insecure in that haven, however, a commendable
ideal mutates into its pathological form, GSF2.
Carriers of GSF2 believe that since a friend accepts them as they are,
anyone who criticizes them is not their friend. Thus, they can't take
criticism from friends -- criticism is experienced as a treacherous
betrayal of the friendship, no matter how inappropriate the criticized
behavior may be.
Conversely, most carriers will never criticize a friend under any
circumstances; the duty to be supportive trumps any impulse to point
out unacceptable behavior.
GSF2 has extensive consequences within a group. Its presence in
substantial quantity within a social group vastly increases the
group's conflict-averseness. People spend hours debating how to deal
with conflicts, because they know (or sometimes merely fear) that the
other person involved is a GSF2 carrier, and any attempt to confront
them directly will only make things worse. As a result, people let
grudges brew much longer than is healthy, and they spend absurd
amounts of time deconstructing their interpersonal dramas in search of
a back way out of a dilemma.
Ironically, GSF2 carriers often take criticism from coworkers,
supervisors, and mentors quite well; those individuals aren't friends,
and aren't expected to accept the carrier unconditionally.
Geek Social Fallacy #3: Friendship Before All
Valuing friendships is a fine and worthy thing. When taken to an
unhealthy extreme, however, GSF3 can manifest itself.
Like GSF2, GSF3 is a "friendship test" fallacy: in this case, the
carrier believes that any failure by a friend to put the interests of
the friendship above all else means that they aren't really a friend
at all. It should be obvious that there are a million ways that this
can be a problem for the carrier's friends, but the most common one is
a situation where friends' interests conflict -- if, for example, one
friend asks you to keep a secret from another friend. If both friends
are GSF3 carriers, you're screwed -- the first one will feel betrayed
if you reveal the secret, and the other will feel betrayed if you
don't. Your only hope is to keep the second friend from finding out,
which is difficult if the secret in question was a party that a lot of
people went to.
GSF3 can be costly for the carrier as well. They often sacrifice work,
family, and romantic obligations at the altar of friendship. In the
end, the carrier has a great circle of friends, but not a lot else to
show for their life. This is one reason why so many geek circles
include people whose sole redeeming quality is loyalty: it's hard not
to honor someone who goes to such lengths to be there for a friend,
however destructive they may be in other respects.
Individual carriers sometimes have exceptions to GSF3, which allow
friends to place a certain protected class of people or things above
friendship in a pinch: "significant others" is a common protected
class, as is "work".
Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive
Every carrier of GSF4 has, at some point, said:
"Wouldn't it be great to get all my groups of friends into one place
for one big happy party?!"
If you groaned at that last paragraph, you may be a recovering GSF4
carrier.
GSF4 is the belief that any two of your friends ought to be friends
with each other, and if they're not, something is Very Wrong.
The milder form of GSF4 merely prevents the carrier from perceiving
evidence to contradict it; a carrier will refuse to comprehend that
two of their friends (or two groups of friends) don't much care for
each other, and will continue to try to bring them together at social
events. They may even maintain that a full-scale vendetta is just a
misunderstanding between friends that could easily be resolved if the
principals would just sit down to talk it out.
A more serious form of GSF4 becomes another "friendship test" fallacy:
if you have a friend A, and a friend B, but A & B are not friends,
then one of them must not really be your friend at all. It is
surprisingly common for a carrier, when faced with two friends who
don't get along, to simply drop one of them.
On the other side of the equation, a carrier who doesn't like a friend
of a friend will often get very passive-aggressive and covertly
hostile to the friend of a friend, while vigorously maintaining that
we're one big happy family and everyone is friends.
GSF4 can also lead carriers to make inappropriate requests of people
they barely know -- asking a friend's roommate's ex if they can crash
on their couch, asking a college acquaintance from eight years ago for
a letter of recommendation at their workplace, and so on. If something
is appropriate to ask of a friend, it's appropriate to ask of a friend
of a friend.
Arguably, Friendster was designed by a GSF4 carrier.
Geek Social Fallacy #5: Friends Do Everything Together
GSF5, put simply, maintains that every friend in a circle should be
included in every activity to the full extent possible. This is subtly
different from GSF1; GSF1 requires that no one, friend or not, be
excluded, while GSF5 requires that every friend be invited. This means
that to a GSF5 carrier, not being invited to something is
intrinsically a snub, and will be responded to as such.
This is perhaps the least destructive of the five, being at worst
inconvenient. In a small circle, this is incestuous but basically
harmless. In larger groups, it can make certain social events very
difficult: parties which are way too large for their spaces and
restaurant expeditions that include twenty people and no reservation
are far from unusual.
When everyone in a group is a GSF5 carrier, this isn't really a
problem. If, however, there are members who aren't carriers, they may
want occasionally to have smaller outings, and these can be hard to
arrange without causing hurt feelings and social drama. It's hard to
explain to a GSF5 carrier that just because you only wanted to have
dinner with five other people tonight, it doesn't mean that your
friendship is in terrible danger.
For some reason, many GSF5 carriers are willing to make an exception
for gender-segregated events. I don't know why.
Interactions
Each fallacy has its own set of unfortunate consequences, but
frequently they become worse in interaction. GSF4 often develops into
its more extreme form when paired with GSF5; if everyone does
everything together, it's much harder to maintain two friends who
don't get along. One will usually fall by the wayside.
Similarly, GSF1 and GSF5 can combine regrettably: when a failure to
invite someone is equivalent to excluding them, you can't even get
away with not inviting Captain Halitosis along on the road trip. GSF3
can combine disastrously with the other "friendship test" fallacies;
carriers may insist that their friends join them in snubbing someone
who fails the test, which occasionally leads to a chain reaction which
causes the carrier to eventually reject all of their friends. This is
not healthy; fortunately, severe versions of GSF3 are rare.
Consequences
Dealing with the effects of social fallacies is an essential part of
managing one's social life among geeks, and this is much easier when
one is aware of them and can identify which of your friends carry
which fallacies. In the absence of this kind of awareness, three
situations tend to arise when people come into contact with fallacies
they don't hold themselves.
Most common is simple conflict and hurt feelings. It's hard for people
to talk through these conflicts because they usually stem from fairly
primal value clashes; a GSF3 carrier may not even be able to
articulate why it was such a big deal that their non-carrier friend
blew off their movie night.
Alternately, people often take on fallacies that are dominant in their
social circle. If you join a group of GSF5 carriers, doing everything
together is going to become a habit; if you spend enough time around
GSF1 carriers, putting up with trolls is going to seem normal.
Less commonly, people form a sort of counter-fallacy which I call
"Your Feelings, Your Problem". YFYP carriers deal with other people's
fallacies by ignoring them entirely, in the process acquiring a
reputation for being charmingly tactless. Carriers tend to receive a
sort of exemption from the usual standards: "that's just Dana", and so
on. YFYP has its own problems, but if you would rather be an asshole
than angstful, it may be the way to go. It's also remarkably easy to
pull off in a GSF1-rich environment.
What Can I Do?
As I've said, I think that the best way to deal with social fallacies
is to be aware of them, in yourself and in others. In yourself, you
can try to deal with them; in others, understanding their behavior
usually makes it less aggravating.
Social fallacies don't make someone a bad person; on the contrary,
they usually spring from the purest motives. But I believe they are
worth deconstructing; in the long run, social fallacies cost a lot of
stress and drama, to no real benefit. You can be tolerant without
being indiscriminate, and you can be loyal to friends without being
compulsive about it.
Hey, Are You Talking About Me?
If I know you, yeah, probably I am. It doesn't mean I don't love you;
most of us carry a few fallacies. Myself, I struggle with GSF 1 and 2,
and I used to have a bad case of 4 until a series of disastrous
parties dispelled it.
I haven't used any examples that refer to specific situations, if it
has you worried. Any resemblances to geeks living or dead are
coincidental.
Thoughts
November 16 2010, 18:42:48 UTC 10 years ago
True.
>>In some rennie circles, however, Geek Falacy $2 has a converse; if someone does the slightest thing wrong, they are automatically ostracized, shunned and/or expelled. It's weird and may be a local phenomena.<<
I've seen this in a few other places, but it's not as common. I think it relies on some kind of "stuffy" factor. Hence the SCA joke about "Society for Compulsive Authenticity." Reconstructionist Pagan groups get into it occasionally.
Re: Thoughts
November 16 2010, 18:53:06 UTC 10 years ago