Comment by s1300045 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by s1300045 | Hacker News Reader

It is sort of related. It's a rant. I have many friends in the STEM field, or friends I play video games with. And I simply cannot introduce them to any of my females friends, or any friends from different social circles for that matter. They are a special breed of people, brilliant and quick, and they are also egotistic and mean.

They are very quick to make jokes of your mistakes or shortcoming. The way they pry and tease is the manifest of how exceptional they think they are. They believe they are above social norms. Being nice is for the weak and unenlightened mass. They have an opinion, they will have you know.

They deliberately choose to ignore and not understand why making certain remarks and some conversation topics make people uncomfortable. And when they want to insult you, they will insult in the most uncivilized way. When they want to hurt you, they simply do not understand when a line is crossed.

And I am sure they are not the minority. Even if they are, they are the loud and obnoxious minority that gives everyone a bad name. I absolutely understand why people decline to be part of that community, why there aren't as many females in that workspace. Stigmas and stereotypes are for a reason.

There's a name for people like that: assholes.

There's also a lot of insecurity going on there, but that's true of most people. The difference is in how we deal with it. Some people do so by trying to become kinder and more decent people, which has an amazing effect on your own level of social comfort. Others try to bring the people who threaten them down to their level (or beneath, if possible). Oddly enough, this strategy does not improve the underlying level of social ease.

Quite the opposite. I mean, these are people (a) who act like assholes specifically to (b) lower those around them so they don't have to (c) do the hard work of making themselves better. It's a triple play of shitty behavior stemming from a toxic combination of fear and laziness on one hand, combined with sickening disregard for others.

The result is clear. You don't introduce them to others. In other words, you specifically and deliberately limit their social horizons, having (correctly) judged them as unfit for decent company.

This could be an addressable problem if the people in question had a baseline of personal integrity. But as you noted, they can also be willfully ignorant when convenient. Aside from being intellectually dishonest (which is maddening in its own right), it's also a major barrier to personal development. Self-reinforcing assholedom, essentially.

So, uh, maybe you need other friends?

I'm not sure what should one expect from people dedicating high percentages of their life in front of a computer in an activity that does not enrich your personality in any conceivable way. Killing digital zombies is just that. Do you expect empathy? Self-control? Being ideological about it, as in threat women equally, is a far fetch. Gaming industry is a smaller sister of a bigger one, and there, I assume, no one expects their clients to stay away for sexism. Yes, porn. Teenagers, in age or spirit, have a combination of hobbies.

My point. As a woman that works in an industry that cultivates a-social behaviour, lack of empathy, egotism, and so on, don't expect utopia like social orders. It's just unrealistic. Same goes for porn, movies, fashion, gaming. It's like fighting the symptoms but ignoring the causes. It's like trying to cool down the air around your town to fight global warming.

All stereotypes and stigmas, or only those that fall disproportionately on the White and male? Are women hysterical, Blacks lazy, and gays promiscuous as well?

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