Comment by nobinstok | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nobinstok | Hacker News Reader

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This reminds me of one of the more embarrassing episodes of my life. My friends and I (pretty nerdy types) were at a bar with an amateur MMA fighter. Guy was like 6'10", covered in huge muscles and tattoos. One of the nicest guys I've ever met, but you definitely wouldn't want to get on his bad side.

Anyway we didn't know the guy too well, lots of getting-to-know you type stuff. The MMA fighter after a few hours mentions that he was really into Starcraft, Age of Empires, and other RPS.

You could have knocked me and my other friends over with a feather. This ripped "jock" likes Starcraft! Oh my god! We were so surprised and just went on and on about how impressed we were like idiots.

A year or two later one of my friends who was there (a little more balanced guy who played more sports and hung out with more varied groups of people) told me that he and the MMA fighter had been talking as we walked back from the bar. The MMA guy was apparently like "so I guess these guys have just never hung out with any athletes?" Turns out it isn't that abnormal for them to like cool and nerdy stuff.

Even though I felt pretty dumb, that was a good experience for me as a person. My whole life I've been a pretty accepting and nice person, and my intelligence has never really made me feel superior to other people. I guess to that point those qualities made me feel like I couldn't possibly be prejudiced or biased because hey, I don't actively hold any hostile or condescending beliefs. But that showed me that my own ignorance was sufficient for me to classify some guy I knew almost nothing about and put him in a box, a guy I liked perfectly well and never had a bad thought about. It's a tough thing to be aware of but I think has made me a little more skeptical and humble, which I'm glad for.

Yeah, stereotypes are a bitch. BUT - if one gets stereotyped enough, after a while s/he’s probably developed some coping mechanism to actually leverage it into an advantage (I know I do). So don’t feel too bad - it might well be that the guy uses that sort of conversation precisely to gauge his audience.

(It makes a lot of sense that pro athletes are in gaming, btw: it’s competitive and it’s something that can be done during long downtimes between training sessions, or lonely hotel nights away from home. If you follow any twitter feed of pros, from football to f1, sooner or later you’ll see plenty of posts about games.)

With games its been ubiquitous culture for a couple of decades now. It frankly staggers me that stereotype is something people actually still think is a thing.

Just for context this was about a decade ago. Games were definitely more popular than in that past, but I remember it was well before the time I first remember seeing League of Legends on ESPN and being like "ok nerds are unequivocally mainstream now." But yeah it was pretty silly even by the standards of then.

I'm on the cusp of 40 and even in my youth (in the UK) videogames were ubiquitous. LoL appearing on ESPN is basically that ubiquity catching up with people no longer watching ESPN.

How do you leverage your stereotypes? I assume the stereotypes you leverage are the positive ones?

You can leverage the negative ones too. They can be used to let people underestimate you, gaining the element of surprise at later stage; or to look more threatening than you actually are.

It's not a moral thing. It's called inductive learning. We classify people and things based on our past experiences. The more experiences you have the better the inductive method works.

It's good to learn about black swans, else you might make the incorrect logical conclusion that swans are ALWAYS white. And more importantly learn that "black swans" is not only about swans. There can be sports-types who also like intellectual activity

>> The MMA guy was apparently like "so I guess these guys have just never hung out with any athletes?" Turns out it isn't that abnormal for them to like cool and nerdy stuff.

> "black swans" is not only about swans. There can be sports-types who also like intellectual activity

The gp's experience taught that such sports-types are not black swans. It's not just that the stereotype had exceptions; it's that the stereotype wasn't even accurate at low granularity.

> the stereotype wasn't even accurate at low granularity

In this single case. This was the first and only sports-guy they had met that was interested in computer-games.

"stereotype had exceptions". Well not really, for these observers, at this point in time, the stereotype had ONE exception, this particular guy.

Personally I don't think it surprising at all that a sports-guy would be interested in computer games. They are games after all :-)

Maybe the quote I used was too long. I'll shorten it to just the part that shows it's more than a single case, and add caps to emphasize it was more than ONE exception.

>>"so I guess these guys have just NEVER hung out with ANY athletes?" Turns out it ISN'T THAT ABNORMAL FOR THEM to like cool and nerdy stuff.

Yeah I wasn't really trying to cast it as a "moral" issue, so sorry if it came across that way. I guess my point is that in general, to the extent possible, I'd like to get to know people for who they are and not the pictures I have in my head. I feel like my thinking will be more accurate and my life experience more rich that way. I oversold a little bit how "embarrassing" it was. I wasn't deeply ashamed or anything, like I had done something unforgivable, it's just a little embarrassing to lose your mind with excitement about something that actually isn't all that rare. Rather than sharing an enthusiasm I kind of just exposed my own ignorance. I also think it created a tiny wall between me and the MMA guy because I'm sure on his side it's like "ok these guys don't get it / think I'm some kind of weird anomaly, maybe we should move on to something else." I still hung out with the guy a bunch of times after that so it's not like there were bad feelings, but I still feel like it would have helped the conversation and friendship if I had been a little less credulous towards my own assumptions.

As someone who did sport and hung out with sport types a lot, they always played computer games. I mean, you have to be deep in a bubble to think that people who do sport are either a.) invariably dumb b.) do not play computer games.

> There can be sports-types who also like intellectual activity

Quite a lot of them, to the point of such people not being exceptional black swans at all. That is what the MMA fighter commented on - the only way to be surprised over him playing computer games is that you dont talk to athletes at all.

I agree, what is nerdy has changed since last millennium. It is not nerdy any more to use a computer just for fun, because everybody is doing it. Social media, online SPORTS-gaming etc.

I am older then you think.

People are complex. For example, Carmack is a high level Judoka. Half the people in my BJJ classes work as programmers, and would be considered ‘nerds’.

Lovely anecdote. Thanks for sharing!

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