Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.I think it was said best by a troll named Boney. The topic was What the Bleep? He more or less pulled the "square" doggerel, and to provide evidence I had a creative side, I mentioned I played D&D. His reply:
"i can't believe i spent time discussing ANYTHING with someone sitting at home in their chainmail and cloak, concerned over their diminishing hit points..."Yeah. Because I have a geeky hobby, my comments about quantum mechanics, his logical fallacies, and the scientific method are invalid.
As you can probably guess, a lot of my friends are also nerds, geeks, and weirdos. We've all got our hobbies of varying levels of social stigma... But seriously, what does that have to do with anything? I don't see how playing football instead of Mega Man would make my points more valid. I mean really. The woos who use this doggerel must be really desperate.
No matter how stigmatized a hobby is, or how big a fanboy a person is of such a hobby, two plus two will always equal four, like EM charges will repel, Batman will be awesome, and a closed-minded, cynical woo will remain a closed-minded cynical woo. I don't know how else to put it. It doesn't matter how geeky someone is. If they've got a sound logical point, it's still a sound logical point.
13 comments:
Actually, I'd argue that geeks and nerds are more likely to be well informed than most people since folks like that tend to be intensely interested in how things work, and often have a good grasp of math and logic. It's still no guarantee, but I'd say it improves your odds.
I dunno. I've met lots of assorted geeks, nerds, and dorks who think that because they have a geeky hobby, they're necessarily smarter, more rational, and more well-informed than everyone else.
Of course it's mostly dorks, as I use the term, that demonstrate this quality. In fact, it's almost how I define dork: a person with geeky hobbies (gaming, video games, comics, what have you) who isn't smart but thinks that because they're associated with sci-fi and/or fantasy (or what have you) that they are smart by virtue of that association alone. They also tend to be lacking in social skills, personal hygiene, and are likely to self-diagnose Asperger's Syndrome as an excuse for their failings.
^^
Oh yawno, another Aspie backlash meme.
You guys all sound like an identical broken record
At least you got a point, in saying that having a nerd hobby doesn't automatically make one smarter either.
Please lay off that strawman. I never said that everyone is a self-diagnostic faker. I said that they exist. It's naive to pretend that anyone who claims to have AS actually has it, and it's silly to attack anyone who points out that not everyone who claims to have an issue or disorder actually has it.
The reason, you see, that I didn't say "AS isn't real and they're all faking it" is because I don't believe that. You'd rather I believe it though, far as I can tell, because it makes it easier to be indignant. There is no "Aspie backlash" here.
Getting on a high horse anytime points out that there's a difference between willful social ineptitude and AS is rather tiring. If anything, I'd figure that people with AS would resent the lazy fuckers who use their real syndrome as an excuse to act like obnoxious assholes.
It's funny that the first time I ever mention AS online anywhere ever, in a random offhanded comment, I get lumped in with some enigmatic group of "all you guys" and called a broken record.
Yeah it gets annoying. Being a computer geek it always amazes people that I was a chef for 10 years and have a decent photography business on the side.
But I like people not getting it.
TheGonzoGirl's link is to a comment with a similar reactionary tone to someone who was (again) not, in fact, claiming that all AS diagnoses are illegitimate. Although the commenter she responded to was a little careless in the original post, it seems TheGonzoGirl's MO is poor reading comprehension.
Also, retroactive diagnoses? I'm not sure about the reasoning involved, but that seems like bad psychiatry, where contact with the patient is more or less necessary for a valid diagnosis. To say that Lewis Carroll was "obviously autistic," with all the other problems the man is known to have had and is suspected to have had (hallucinatory migraines, drug use, potential pedophilia, math) seems a real stretch.
Akusai, well, my comment was about probability. Probabilities are not certainties after all.
Unless it's a 1 in 1 probability.
Are there really still people using nerd as an insult in all seriousness?
It's telling the guy knew what a hit point actually was though.
Some. Though, like "square," this entry is more about the sentiment than about the precise word.
Fark, why is my tone reactionary?
I never claimed that those fake aspies do not exist, I just question, whether lay people can tell so easily, whether someone has AS, or not, because despite my official diagnosis, I've also been accused of not being autistic.
I also don't diagnose anyone retro-actively, and I'm generally against that, since those are just speculations.
That was also my point in that comment, that it doesn't even matter, whether Einstein, or whoever was autistic, or not.
Maybe I should've said "probably" instead of "obviously", English is not my mother language and to quickly assume my awkward writing must mean I can't comprehend, is rather reactionary, too, don't you think?
-GG
I don't believe that's what Tom meant by "Poor reading comprehension." I think he meant that you find reasons to be offended in posts and accuse posters of saying things they did not say so you can feel offended.
You do have a point, though, in that it's probably difficult for a layperson to know the difference between someone with AS and a willfully socially inept meatbag who only claims AS as an excuse to act obnoxious.
I know people with AS, though (official diagnosis), and they do not act like the people to whom I was referring. Does this make me an expert? Of course not. But I've been to many and more gaming/anime/geek-type conventions, and the dork I describe above makes up an extremely large proportion of the attendance of such affairs. They do not act like the aspies I know, and quite frankly I have a hard time believing that such a large proportion of that population has AS. It simply seems more likely to me that they're a bunch of self-obsessed dorks who want to be justified in their willful social laziness, and so play the Asperger's card in an effort to deflect criticism.
In one of your posts on the thread that you linked to, you said something along the lines of "Nobody likes being smelly." Well, I don't know that these guys necessarily like it, but they're certainly not against it, either. If they were, they'd shower. Instead, they think it's a mark of pride to attend an entire four-day convention without taking a single shower. That is not AS; that is obnoxiousness.
You know, I just remembered that my therapist thought I had Asperger's Syndrome at one point. I'm not entirely sure why.
Where's your picture of Animal from Revenge of the Nerds?
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