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Comment by pgbovine | Hacker News Reader

this is the author here ... yes, i know this article sounds half-retarded, but let me try to provide some context: i'm not saying that you should always be a phony and hide your true self --- these so-called 'tips' are only for when you have to attend some boring but mandatory social occasion and don't want to stand out in any way.

obviously it's stupid to try to purposely get yourself invited to posh parties and then follow these 'tips' and remain stone-silent.

Edit: and then there's the issue of whether you actually want to stand out or to blend in ... i have friends in both categories: some are willing to be more quiet and blend into the background in these occasions, while others are ultra-proud to display their geekiness and don't give a crap what other people think. i suspect many people here fall in the latter category, and thus are gonna think my article is utter trash :)

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Hi pgbovine. Thanks for your post and thanks for your visit here to the discussion. I sure wish more authors would engage us like you are doing now.

I do not think your article is utter trash, I just disagree with much of it. I was one of the first to pounce on it with my other post in this thread, which I have since editted to show you the respect you deserve even though I still fundamentally disagree with your premise.

A few additional thoughts:

No one is "just a geek". We are all very complex beings with lots of other ways to describe us. Following a list of "rules for geeks" drops us to an unnecessary lowest common denominator.

Sometimes, the only difference between "surviving this social function" and "learning something in the next hour that may change my life" is mindset. A postive mindset is often best achieved by ignoring many of your rules.

Nothing is mandatory. No one really has to do anything they don't want or go anywhere they don't want (with a few obvious exceptions). It's a stupid waste of everyone's time to go somewhere you don't want and then, to make matters worse, not be yourself.

No one should mask themselves or adopt alternate personas. You only get one life so that's the one you should live.

I suppose one of the reasons I feel as strongly as I do is because I was once an isolated geek who adhered to many of your rules. Once I stopped doing that and just allowed myself to be myself, social situations didn't seem that much different from engineering problems and now I'm equally comfortable with either. I have a feeling I'm not the only one.

thanks for the compliments!

it's good to see people on HN reading my articles, because the meta-level thing i'm learning about my own writing style is that many of my articles take on one extreme and over-simplified POV and just run with it.

for instance, in this one, i take on the POV that there is a sharp divide between geeks and non-geeks, which as you pointed out, is far from true in real life. my other articles take on a similarly 1-D POV, mostly because it makes the writing process simpler ;) i find it pretty difficult to weave in all the subtleties of real-life into a page-long online article; it would just sound like a lot of "not wanting to step on anyone's toes".

i suppose in the end it all comes down to whether readers agree with my (over-simplified) premise or not --- if so, then the tips somewhat make sense. if not, then there's no point in reading further :)

actually, you gave me a good idea that i might incorporate into future articles. maybe i should always start with a "Premise" line, which would be something like a hokey version of software preconditions.

This is an interesting idea, but realize that people will dispute your premise.

yup, that's totally okay. it's better to lay out the premise up-front, though, so that my articles can be fail-fast ;)

Those who don't care what other people think only attract antagonism. Those who are liked (and, consequently, invited again to such social events) are those who make other people feel good, and the best way of making other people feel good is to make them feel important. This works for office politics, and it works for dates, as well.

Personally, I think your article is quite good. Maybe some on HN think it's crap, but this forum is populated by people who (wrongly) think they're too smart to have to play petty politics...

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