Takes One To Know One

Along with the fact the overwhelming majority of them are male, there are various problems associated with working with a bunch of nerds.
For example, there are the gamers, the people who play games like “Everquest,” or “World of Warcraft,” or any one (or more than one) of the multitudes of online, multiplayer, immersive games.
These games have a tendency to completely take over the lives of many of the people who play them, and nerds, quite naturally, are especially susceptible to the allure of these virtual worlds, devoting every available minute to playing the games, foregoing real live human contact for the simple elegance of packets sent over data networks and on-screen avatars.
That people are dropping out of society and neglecting their friends and family would be a real concern…but we’re talking about nerds here, so they can pretty much drop off the face of the earth without causing any sort of shockwaves within the various social circles that make up the community at large.
I mean, we’re not talking about social butterflies suddenly becoming pinned to the wall. Even when they’re not escaping into fantasy worlds - which they’ve been doing for a long time anyway; it’s just that the technology has improved – nerds pretty much might as well not be around anyway. The only people who are really likely to notice that they’re not around are other nerds, who are just as likely to be off playing one of the nerdish high-tech versions of heroin themselves.
So really, that nerds are playing these game in and of itself wouldn’t be a problem.
Except that they can’t play them 24 hours a day. Every so often they have to come up for air and go to work in order to make the money they need to replenish their supplies of Jolt Cola and Twinkies.
That’s where the problem arises.
Almost as much as they like playing these games, nerds like talking about them.
They’re especially inclined to talk about their latest Orc Raid or whatever to fellow players, and they will do so loudly in discussions that can become quite heated, particularly if the people they are talking to are from a different guild, or believe that a particular server is better than another.
However, total ignorance of the game will not save you. They will just as happily talk, at length, about how many charisma points their Mercenary earned when they were up until 6 am playing the game to anyone.
In fact, people who don’t play the game make better audiences because they give the nerds the opportunity to provide a “history lesson,” explaining the intricate background details of whatever game they happen to be talking about.
You can come right out and tell them, “I don’t give two shits about your stupid-ass game; stop talking to me about it,” and most nerds will just shrug it off and continue talking to you about it and sending you links to screen shots and “funny” videos that they don’t realize have no humorous value outside of the context of the game.
In a sort of “open room” setting like the one I work in, which is full of nerds and weird acoustics, I end up hearing this stuff all of the time, though the anti-social “vibe” I give off prevents most of the people from talking directly to me, so I generally only catch the fallout.
And if it isn’t some game that the nerds are talking about it can be any kind of obsession: TV shows, movies, books, comics, anything. There are even some “faux-cool” nerds who are obsessed with seemingly non-nerdy things like cars or motorcycles, but the fact that the obsession is all-consuming and that they can’t stop talking about it pretty much marks them as nerds despite their lack of pocket protectors.
For the record, yes, I do recognize that I myself am a nerd, and that I will talk, at length, about the things that interest me. Really, that’s what gives me the ability to provide such insight into the habits of nerds. As they say, “it takes one to know one.”
However, my generally anti-social nature prevents me from deliberately subjecting uninterested people to never-ending anecdotes and lectures on my particular obsession.
Sure, there are the victims of “drive-by nerdings” who get caught in the crossfire when Scott and I talk about comics, or the shows on Adult Swim, but that’s a far cry from me going up to, say, Brian, and trying to tell him all about what happened in “Crisis on Infinite Earths” and all of its crossovers, along with a lengthy explanation of the fifty years of comic book history that led up to it.
That’s what distinguishes me from the nerds I’m talking about; I have enough sense to know better than to think that every random person I see cares about what I care about.
And it’s not just an awareness of the fact that Brian will insult me or, quite possibly, take a swing at me if I were to try something like that, it’s an awareness of the simple fact that he’s not interested and that it would be rude for me to try to force my interests onto him.
Of course, nerds tend not to be too big on social graces, hence the inability to see (or care) that no one is as interested in…well, anything as they are.
But hearing about gaming, cars, movies, and whatnot isn’t the most irritating part of being surrounded by nerds.
The thing is that most nerds are pretty smart. They know a lot of stuff, and despite the fact that their looks and social awkwardness might lead to low self-esteem issues, the fact that they are so smart can make them kind of arrogant.
Because they do know so much they tend to think that they know everything, and that, with the proper application of their intellects they can, while at work, solve all of the world’s problems.
That’s the part that kills me: their endless yammering about politics, religion, economics, and whatever other issues happen to pop up in the course of a day, or over the course of months (they will endlessly revisit various issues from the past as well).
Basically, nerds have opinions about everything, and they’re not shy about sharing them, because they’re convinced that they’re right.
After all, they must be right because they’re so smart.
I posted a link to Slashdot earlier today. If you’ve never checked it out before, try it sometime and you’ll see what I mean.
Just look at Slashdot’s tagline: “News for nerds. Stuff that matters.”
That’s the kind of arrogance I’m talking about.
Honestly, listening to them babble on endlessly as if they were Nobel Prize-winning economists, experts in sociology, or Constitutional scholars rather than just a bunch of nerds killing time at a rather boring job isn’t all that different from sitting in a bar and listening to a bunch of drunk construction workers talk about what they’d do if they were in charge. Most of the differences stem from the differences in vocabulary.
However, listening to the nerds is more annoying mostly because, as I most likely would be if I were sitting in said bar listening to the construction workers, I’m not drunk, but also because, as the extremely cliché saying goes, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
These nerds are considerably more well-informed than our hypothetical construction workers, but they’re not the experts they believe themselves to be, which makes their arrogant assertions that much more irritating to hear.
I don’t know everything, but at least I know enough to know that I don’t.
Unfortunately, that’s a lesson many of these nerds have yet to learn.
What makes things even more irritating, though, is that these are nerds who are my age and older, making decent salaries, many of whom, have – inexplicably – managed to mate, and so they’re making the rapid transition to Conservatism that so frequently accompanies the process of aging, having kids, and settling into the upper echelons of the Middle Class.
Basically, it can be like being forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh for twelve and a half hours (after all, at his core, Limbaugh is just a nerdy fat kid who embraced Conservatism and radio as his obsessions rather than D&D and computers).
Most of the time I can just tune it out, but sometimes it gets to be a bit much.
The main reason it annoys me so much, though, is that it all hits kind of close to home. There are still times when I’m convinced that, because I’m so smart, I know how the world ought to be run.
I suppose that’s a natural way of thinking, for nerds and non-nerds alike, but it’s bothersome to me. After all, I don’t want anyone telling me how to live, so I have no business telling anyone else how to live either.
In any case, there’s no real point to any of this. I just wanted to vent a little about one of the more irritating aspects of my job.
Though the fact that my workplace is such a total sausage fest is probably the most irritating one…
Today was largely uneventful. I stayed up pretty late last night watching this documentary about burlesque called “Pretty Things,” which I had recorded a bit ago, so I ended up sleeping in fairly late (for me) today.
Once I got up I didn’t do much. I basically sat around until it was time for me to go in for a dentist appointment.
The appointment involved taking impressions for making my partial plates. I don’t know when they’ll actually be done; he told me they’d call when they come in.
I’m maxed out on my insurance for the year, but he’s going ahead with making them anyway and deferring billing until after January 1st.
As for paying for my out-of-pocket costs, he told me that could wait as well, saying, “You’ve been coming here for a while, so I trust you.”
Sucker!
It’ll be nice to get the partials, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the shape of the new crown coupled with all of the missing teeth leads me to keep biting my cheek.
It’s getting really damned irritating. I’ll be very carefully chewing, mindful of my cheek, and then I’ll let my guard down for a second and suddenly there’s a painful crunch followed by the taste of my own blood.
The best part, though, will be that I won’t have to be so self-conscious about my teeth any longer, allowing my bright, cheerful disposition, which I’ve kept hidden for so long, to finally shine through in the form of a brilliant, happy smile! No more “Mr. Negative” for me. Everything will be rainbows and kittens and unicorns and half-full glasses!
…
Sorry about that. I think my brain tumor just kicked in for a second there.
Back in reality, while I was waiting at the dentist’s office I had time to sit there and stare at this big picture of a bunch of pretty people with perfect smiles that’s hanging on the wall.
I hate that picture.
I especially hate the people in it, smiling, always smiling their perfect smiles with their perfect, even white teeth, taunting me, staring out at me with their dead eyes as they smile their endless, perfect smiles…
The junk he used to take the impressions for the partials is this really nasty-tasting gel that hardens into a kind of wax around your teeth.
The horrible taste is bad enough, but as it hardens and the dentist tries to pull it away it clings to your teeth like some sort of horrible Butterfinger candy bar, and given some of the experiences I’ve had with my teeth I’m always concerned that it’s going to pull something loose (he uses the same stuff for getting crowns made, so I’ve experienced it many times).
Another drawback to it is that it tends to drip and splatter as he puts the tray full of it into my mouth, getting all over my lips and face, then hardening and sticking to my face.
As I said, it’s extremely sticky, so it takes a lot of work to get it off of your face.
When we were all through the dentist gave me a mirror and a piece of paper towel to use to try to clean it off, but eventually I got tired of messing with it and said, “Screw it; I’m just going straight home from here, and there’s nobody there who’ll see this on my face and care.”
Still, I did get it all cleaned off once I got home.
And that was pretty much my day.
A bit ago I just made my first crack at making Chocolate Mousse. It needs to set up for a couple of hours yet, so I’m not sure how it’s going to turn out.
Last night I finally finished drawing the last of the characters from Scott’s D&D group. All that’s left is to draw a background and put them all together. Ideally I should be able to accomplish that before bedtime Thursday night.
Of course, my secondary computer hasn’t arrived yet, so if it comes tomorrow getting that set up will take up a good chunk of time, so if I want to finish the picture, I should probably do it tonight…