GeniesLoki

(I do think there's an actual asshole problem in some rationalist spaces, especially SSC comment threads, but it's mostly rationalist-adjacents and even there it's closer to an asshole presence than an asshole problem per se)

AFAICT mostly people just really don't like nerds, but it became unpopular to say so overtly once nerd culture was coopted by the mainstream, so they had to hide their dislike by labelling nerds as problematic first and *then* make fun of them for being nerds.

I mean, this is a nice just-so story, but as a nerd there are definitely problems in nerd culture that got worse as it accumulated market share

somehow I doubt that the peaked-in-highschool types who would shove people into lockers are reading a bunch of theory and writing articles about how nerds are problematic, instead of going to the local bar & grilling with their buddies or whatever normies do these days

Oh there are huge problems with nerd culture, I just find most of the attacks on it don't really seem like good faith criticisms, or especially grounded in theory.

e.g. This gets especially knives out when e.g. journalists write about rationalists, or tech people. Often they're pointing out real problems, but a deep contempt for the nature of the person they're writing about tends to shine through all of it.

Are journalists nerds? Yeah, some of them, but there's a pretty huge gap between "nerd" and "peaked in high school" and it contains a lot of very educated people.

And some of them are nerds or nerd-adjacent who don't want to be lumped in with the other nerds so work extra hard to show they can pick on nerds with the best of them.