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Comment by xlnt | Hacker News Reader

If you're so shy, how'd you manage to post personal information in a public forum, like this?

It may be similar to the "its easier to be an asshole online than in person" phenomenon. It's easier to talk about personal things online than in person, or so my experiences show.

Somehow I feel comfortable here. Not sure why. I wouldn't have posted this anywhere else.

I understand completely. I'm here every day, reading and posting all the time. I do this nowhere else. No facebook, no friendfeed, no twitter, just this and email.

Then I go to a cocktail party or happy hour and stand in the corner.

Why do you go to the party or bar? I don't attend such things.

I don't. I go to events (usually business related) that I've been invited to. The more geeks in the room, the more comfortable I feel. The more MBAs, the less.

The more _____ in the room, the less comfortable I feel. For me, the operative word would be suits.

Suits are what make me uncomfortable. Any events that encourage wearing of clothes that require dry cleaning, formalities, pretentious things of that nature are right up there.

Thus says the MBA geek: It's actually possible to have an MBA and to still be a geek. It's not a cure-all or indication of social aptness. I don't know why some people insist upon their stereotypes about that particular degree of education.

Actually it's not the "clothes" as much as the "content" on the conversation.

One of my most interesting memories from Startup School in April...

I had 2 days where I was totally in my element talking about cool stuff with cool people the whole time. This rarely happens in my regular life. The time flew.

On the flight back, I sat next to 2 women who were reading "People" and emotionally discussing it's content. All I could think was, "Welcome back to the other 99% of the world."

Good points. I guess I just meant that some people don't tend to take seriously an MBA who doesn't dress the part, especially when business is the reason for a schoozefest.

I've actually had much better luck being taken seriously as a techie when I don't dress the part of an MBA. Probably one of the most difficult things is being taken seriously as a techie when people first get to know me for the MBA (prime example, employment interviews). It's really quite the conundrum.

congrats on the gmail!

I had a very poignant moment when I started forwarding my Pitt email to gmail and realized it was the email address I was going to have for the rest of my life.

I was going to have for the rest of my life

I hope so. That's what I thought when I switched to yahoo mail.

But when you start missing emails because you're getting thousands of spam per day, it's time to move on.

You'd think someone smarter than me would have fixed this scourge by now.

Absolutely, this is the first and probably the last website where I post. No facebook, twitter, orkut and etc. Even, I've hard time speaking up in meetings because most of the time I hear "Work as designed", "We've got more important things in the plate", "Cool idea, we'll come back to this later" and etc. Also, I always find a corner in social meet-ups. Don't know what's wrong :(

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