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Comment by good_vibes | Hacker News Reader

I find it depends who I'm around. When I'm around people are geeks like me, who want to make things better/simpler, we just have fun talking. No one is seriously competitive, it's playful at most, it's just science nerds talking about their projects.

Today I was around a group of people who play this game called 'dick swinging', where they try to prove to the others how much better they are than the others while the others act like they don't notice while they think of a way 'get the high score'.

I'm not good at games like that. I just like to talk about science, tech, music, economics, food, etc.

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That sound like a not very fun game, and I'd try and find other people to hang out with.

Honestly, this is one of the things I didn't realize when I was younger. There are lots of people in the world, the majority of them I probably wouldn't like to hang out with (at least in a social group). It takes time and effort to find people who you like and want to be friends with.

In this case, it's family so I really can't. I get the feeling that they feel intimidated by me by the fact that I am a dropout with better career prospects than them who have degrees and can't get an interview. Life is full of irony.

That sounds like a tough situation.

Even with family, I don't think I could engage with a game like that. I guess in your situation I'd try and be friendly and kind to them but also try and find friendship/support outside your family.

Just because they're family doesn't mean you have to fully engage with everything they do.

I think we all have topics that are taboo around family. Perhaps career achievements are one of yours, as unfortunate as that sounds.

I just turned 40 and in those 40 years, I have never gained a single thing from dick swinging. Rather, in that time, I have learned that the kinds of people who want to play that kind of game are completely useless to me and the path that I want to follow.

Simply put, dick swinging comes out of place of low self esteem and a serious lack of confidence. We should feel bad for those kinds of people while also realizing that they are emotional vampires who will make us feel bad about ourselves.

Invest in high quality relationships with humble, mature people. As you get older, this will become more important because it gets harder to find time to invest in personal relationships.

> Today I was around a group of people who play this game called 'dick swinging'

I haven't had this experience since I was in college with a bunch of rich, entitled douchebags who went on to work at Wall Street. Perhaps they matured later on. I don't know.

My point is that it's possible never to be in this environment. Maybe if you're in SV, NYC, or one of the big tech companies, you can't avoid it -- I don't know. But I'm not in any of those places and only work with people (across the country and in Canada) who are humble and mature (or at least know enough to pretend they're mature).

Well with the beeing a dick game I can't help, maybe just stop playing that.

Other than that, for people not in the field:

- keep it short

- if you want to tell more, pick something easy to explain, maybe even relatable (you can build a bridge with some comparison for that) and rather interesting (most things are interesting in some details).

I don't play, I just stand there.

I've thought about it some and the only real thing to do is 'show HN'...go from something I'm working on to a viable company. Done.

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