Anti-patterns for Geek/Non-Geek interaction
So, I’d like to open up a bit of discussion here. What are some of the anti-patterns that are commonly seen when geeks and non-geeks interact?
Here are three I’ve come up with:
Too much information. Geeks tend to over-share about the topics of their own obsessions.
The best is enemy of the good. Geeks often seek perfection, where non-geeks are more prepared to accept “good enough”. Lots of arguments occur around this.
Relevance mismatch. Geeks think some things (eg. how someone dresses) should be irrelevant, and largely disregard them. Non-geeks tend to place greater emphasis on personal grooming and dress codes. Conversely, non-geeks might think that something like desktop operating system is irrelevant, when it’s highly important to geeks. Either group will disregard what they consider “irrelevant”, not realising it’s relevant to the other party.
What other anti-patterns happen when geeks and non-geeks interact?
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Non-geeks tend to place greater emphasis on personal grooming and dress codes.
I see my problem is 2 fold:
a- I’m not very good at dressing well; I few years back I was in contact with several african immigrants. I noticed these folks could be well dressed at the least provocation. They were always the sharpest at the party. The counter realisation was that this was a skill I lacked. Even when I make an effort to dress “up”, it will still come off as scruffy, disheveled. My teenage years as a punk (when I assume most folks pick up this talent) probably didn’t help.
b- I far to often forget; just last week, while in a code crunch, I realised I looked the prototypical nerd: smelled bad, food stains on my clothes, beard unkempt. Grrr.
Many geeks I’ve worked with are prone to interpreting someone’s statements (written or verbal) excessively literally. Certainly I’ve been guilty of this myself!
I’m not sure why this is; sometimes it’s geek humour, sometimes it seems a stubborn reaction to imprecision of expression. Is it because coding requires unambiguous statements, or simply that people who (try to) think this way gravitate towards disciplines which encourage it? Maybe it’s purely a geek culture thing, although I think it goes deeper than that.
John: ah yes, “Literalist Fuckhead Mode”, as Schwern puts it.
One of my biggest frustrations with many geeks is that they often have trouble understanding typical “polite” body-language and verbal-cues that the topic should change, and as such they can end up discussing topics that their conversation partner cares nothing about. These cues can include:
* Looking at one’s watch
* Glazed eyes, or extreme interest in mundane objects like the salt-shaker
* Minimal, unemotional, monosyllabic answers
* Attempts to move the conversation to a different topic (“That’s nice, have you heard about…?”)
* Attempts to close the conversation entirely (“I’m very sorry, I have to leave and…”)
Sometimes “not getting it” can be taken to the extreme.
The fairly definite cue of leaving one’s seat, making use of the bathroom, and then returning to a different seat with different people for a different conversation is *not* a sure-fire way of losing a geek who wants to give you a byte-by-byte blow of how they disassembled a printer driver on their C-64.
This isn’t a problem for people who are willing to flat-out say they’re not interested; but the polite non-geek pattern of feigning interest and then steering the conversation elsewhere can result in disaster.
Paul: yeah, that’s a good one. I have a mild case of it myself, but I hope I’m not *that* bad.
Paul: I’d bet that some of the problem is coming from the fact that in geek culture not all of these signals *do* indicate disinterest — it’s not considered impolite to multitask in the middle of most conversations or to stare fixedly at some ordinary object while mentally composing a response.
Just to be absolutely clear, none of my comments were directed at anyone in particular. Skud, you’re definitely not that bad at all; in fact I consider you to be a delightful conversation partner.
Cmshaw actually hit the nail on the head: many of these signals don’t actually mean anything at all for some geeks. Looking at your watch may mean that you have a train to catch. Short answers might mean that you’re thinking hard. I know plenty of geeks who just don’t feel comfortable with extended eye contact, so of course they look elsewhere, even when they’re clearly interested in the conversation.
The list I provided pretty much goes from “most subtle” (glance at watch) to “least subtle” (attempting to terminate the conversation). While the subtle cues can have many meanings, the unsubtle ones don’t. If someone does tries to terminate the conversation, it almost always means (for whatever reason) they don’t want to be involved in it anymore.
I am a second-generation geek. I just realized that I grew up with a father and mother who were extremely prone to “Literalist Fuckhead Mode” and “ignoring topic-change cues”, respectively.
I see both of these problems in myself, now. I have to remind myself in “polite” company that excessive literalism isn’t a good way to make jokes, and I should stop talking if someone is walking away from me.
Related to ‘the perfect is the enemy of the good’, some geeks seem to believe that the ideal outcome of all conversations is complete agreement by all participants on some proposition “that X”. Anything short of everyone agreeing on X, such as someone holding out for “not X” or “in at least one case not X” but also “not interested in X” or “can’t say much about X” isn’t a sign that the conversation is over, it’s a sign that increased effort and heightened conflict is needed.
Alternatively, related to Paul’s point, geeks may mistake silence for agreement/consent, rather than other things: disagreement but disinclination to engage in conversation about it, or disinterest. (This trait is really a ‘confident, opinionated person’ failure mode though.)
There’s another anti-pattern, which is mistaking lack of interested in your geekiness du jour for the conversational partner being a boring person. My mother went to great lengths to try and drum into me that the point of small talk is really to gently explore the space of possible interests… so that you can discuss what the person is interested in and therefore likely to be interesting to listen to. (Very few people, geek or not, are really good at finding mutually agreeable topics of conversation though, which is why you always get people being bored silly by anti-Windows advocacy or stories about Baby’s First Steps, depending on which parties you go to.)
Yesterday I came up with a good one. I’ve undergone some serious parental training to talk to people by asking them questions about themselves and what they’re doing and to never talk about myself or my interests unless asked.
The result of this when interacting with geeks is that they then proceed to talk about themselves and their interests and do not tend to ask about mine, I believe the assumption is that if I’m sufficiently interested in something then I don’t need prompting. This has led to a number of acquaintanceships (friendships get past this) where I know a lot about Geek X, and Geek X feels that I’m a great person to share their interests with, yet I feel if you asked them what I do with my time and what my interests are, they’d have very little idea.
Mary: ooh, yes, that’s a good one!
I was just re-reading this the other day and thought of another one, although perhaps this is a geek-to-anyone anti-pattern: being technically correct and complete at the expense of being useful.
I have seen this specifically on user mailing lists when someone names something that is pretty obviously the easiest way to do something in the most common case and someone else feels compelled to add all the other more difficult ways to do that thing, or the not immediately relevant scenarios when doing such and such would be a problem and such and so should be done instead.
I can name more than one occasion when I’ve been egregiously guilty of this myself.
As with a lot of geek behaviours it can be argued that this is simply the geek way: other geeks would find this useful input. But this one is quite often a pretty transparent attempt to show off: even other geeks find it pretty annoying to specify that they want to accomplish task X and have someone insist on generalising to task Y and taking a detour through task Z for the sake of completeness before specifying a solution to task X. (There’s a second case, where someone is compulsively helpful: it doesn’t matter that you asked how to do X in Perl, they’ll provide the answer in Python if that’s what’s needed to get that I-answered-a-question buzz.)
It’s true that there are occasions when someone thinks they want to do X but on further questioning it turns out that their real goal should be accomplished via Z instead, but this happens less often than many geeks think. (I have a suspicion that my obviously female first name encourages people to take this “let me just make sure we’re not barking up the wrong tree entirely, shall we…” approach with me though.)
Mary says: “But this one is quite often a pretty transparent attempt to show off”
Actually, when I’ve been guilty of this I think it’s because I hate being incorrect (either out of shame of being mistaken in public, or the shame of telling a deliberate lie), not because I want to show off. So I struggle to give just a not-100%-technically-correct answer even when that’s all that’s needed to do the task at hand.
My solution to this is to make sure I include enough qualifiers like “more-or-less” or “(that’s not quite right, but close enough for what you’re doing)” in lieu of going into irrelevant details.
Mary, wrt your last point, it does happen more often than you expect, and it happens to everyone.
It has nothing to do with your gender, it has everything to do with geeks trying to save themselves from being bugged by non-geeks who think they have chosen the best way to do a task.
It’s even an irc.freenode.net#perl factoid: xy problem
They ask how to do X, but that’s because they really want to do Y but think X will get them there and most of the time they are WRONG