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Do Geeks Make Better Adults?
mcgrew writes "What makes people unpopular in the hallways of high school, mainly an unwillingness to conform, tends to translate into success as an adult. Robbins lists several companies—including Yahoo!—that prioritize hiring quirky individuals who shun conventional thinking. She also name-checks historical and current celebrities, including director Steven Spielberg (who was taunted for being Jewish in high school) and Lady Gaga (a self-described former theater 'freak'), whose weirdness led to later fame. (Other now-validated former outsiders she touts: Steve Jobs, Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen and Angelina Jolie.)"
ahem.
Correlation != Causation.
ty.
I just pooped your party.
If you're only a class-c geek with an unwillingness to conform but without a layer of pizazz to roll it all together, you end up too unstable for a business to hire you, so you end up at fast food or retail with some gaming at night and weekends and the random day you skipped work to go on a raid/campaign.
That's the life to have ... up to about age 25, then it starts to crash hard.
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..does being taunted for being jewish qualify you as being a geek? I know more than a few jewish individuals that are not geeks, more just nebbish.
I got here through a series of tubes
I was unpopular in High School, but I question whether that was because I was unwilling to conform, or because I had absolutely no idea how to do so.
Spielberg, I imagine, was in a similar position, unless he discovered a method of magically becoming a goy.
Just because you sold your soul to the devil that needn't make you a teetotaler. --The Devil and Daniel Webster
How many non-geeks are also wildly famous.
How many former geeks are now terrorists or serial killers?
Come to me when you have some numbers.
This is not to say I don't agree with the trend... but don't sell it like someone's done some quantitative research.
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Timothy McVeigh: "McVeigh claimed to have been a target of bullying at school and that he took refuge in a fantasy world where he retaliated against those bullies." "While in high school, McVeigh became interested in computers and hacked into government computer systems on his Commodore 64"
David Koresh: "Due to his poor study skills, he was put in special education classes and nicknamed "Vernie" by his fellow students, but by the age of 11, he had memorized the entire New Testament."
Not saying the headline's claim is true or untrue, but... these are all examples of very rare individuals - the luckiest or the most skilled of all the geeks, that made it big.
If you go by that argument, I can also point out that alot of the jocks from high school are now making many, many millions of dollars as professional athletes (NFL, NBA, etc.)
Disclaimer: Didn't RTFA, but still, dumb argument.
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"What makes people unpopular in the hallways of high school, mainly an unwillingness to conform..."
Unwillingness to conform is NOT what makes people unpopular in highschool. In reality people are unpopular in highschool because they are physically unattractive, bad at sports, and have social anxiety problems of various kinds, in no particular order. "Unwillingness to conform" is a way nerds try to spin and justify their social anxiety. They frame it as if they could have chosen to be popular at any time by "conforming", whatever that means. As if it were totally in their control the whole time and they chose not to be popular because it's "shallow" or something like that. This attitude is delusional and self-destructive.
Biting the head off of a live chicken is a key component to functioning in society.
Maybe, but we do make better lovers...
>Government schools train people to be cogs for the machine
School, like anything in life, is what you make of it. Its not exactly a North Korean indoctrination facility, regardless of how often conservative pundits say they are.
The GP makes a good point. Too many "geeks" become asocial nerds unable to work effectively with others or understand basic social skills. This isn't some kind of free-wheeling "I'm running a startup" mentality, but the often seen smart-guy or smart-gal that is unable to motivate themselves or move up Maslow's pyramid to self-esteem or self-actualization and they become self-loathing WoW addicts or smelly neckbeards.
"However, I do know that I love who I am"
Spot on. I can be characterized in a lot of ways, some complimentary, some not. But, I am what I am, and I like it. To hell with anyone who doesn't like it, LMAO!
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The article draws a false dichotomy between geeks and bullies. The most successful adults in today's society combine intellect with emotional intelligence. The successful adult, today, is the one in high school who could make the jocks & cheerleaders and the nerds, alike, feel like a million bucks.
And then there is the question of what constitutes success. Is it money? Is it number of progeny? Is it spiritual tranquility? Is it lack of hostile interactions? Strangely, the article seems to focus on this last one, whereas in centuries and millenia past, hostile interactions would have been seen as "success", assuming they were directed toward competitors for women and scarce resources.
That is an interesting question isn't it. Is Lady Gaga a "better" adult than a good Kindergarten teacher?
What is success anyway? Many studies have shown that making more money doesn't make you happier. There is a peak of curve of happyness that peaks right around the point where you make enough money to not sweat paying bills and then it goes down again.
I think it is very ungeeky to say money==success or fame==success. Shouldn't happy==success.
I am sure that there are a lot of happy geeks out there.
BTW there are Christan geeks.
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Quirky non-conformity is NOT the same as social retardation. From the way I see it, most "non-conformists" conform quite well to their smaller, alternative cliques.
"A client is coming in for a meeting, clean that role-playing shit off the conference table. Someone call Fred and tell him to get his ass into the office. I don't care how late he stayed up. John, here's a razor. You have 10 minutes to shave that monkey-tail off your face before the client gets here. JOE PUT SOME DAMN PANTS ON!"
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No, GP is right. Freaks that get famous because they're freaks are no sensible sample. They're not "accepted", they're celebrities. Being famous does not mean that someone would also allow "someone like that" in their living room for real. Or want to deal with them on a professional base.
Could you imagine Lady Gaga being responsible for your bank account? Or how about her as your pilot on your next trip? Let's imagine for a moment that she had the qualifications, do you think people would feel at ease with a "freak" responsible for their money or life?
Don't conflate celebrity status with being accepted. Josephine Baker was a celebrity. But how many who cheered for her on stage would have wanted to live next to her?
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I just yelled up the basement stairs and ask my mom if I was a good adult. She assured me I am.
>>>Too many "geeks" become asocial nerds unable to work effectively with others
I'd probably have jumped off a building by now, if the internet did not exist. Engineering pays very well, but is horribly boring. Fortunately the net allows me to stream radio, music, college lectures, books-on-tape, and even TV shows to shove the boredom aside.
I've accepted my life as a "cog" because I can spend the day distracting myself with entertainment. But if this was the year 1990, pre-internet, I'd probably have dropped out by now and been one of those "asocial geeks" you describe.
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Fist off, you assume all those people are better adults because they are famous.
That's just stupid.
Second of all, there are millions of successful people who where just average kids.
Is the high school nerd who takes out his repression anger on his children a better adult?
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As far as quality is concerned, I think that a Geek's attention to detail does allow them to produce the best quality Adults.
However, if sheer quantity is your aim, you can get a much better deal by lowering your standards a bit -- After all, even low quality humans taste pretty much the same (so long as they have functional kidneys). So I'd say whether you should get your adults from a Geek or just a run of the mill cultivator depends on what you're using the adults for: Entertainment or Food.
Oh, you mean the humans themselves? Absolutely not, no, the "geeks" don't turn out to be good as Adults. You may be able to keep them distracted and complacent as children, but the "geek" variety are hard to integrate properly into a conformant (and fast breeding) populous.
Geeks themselves tend to stand out and draw attention to the logical flaws in the environments we've built to contain them (especially the breeding program). The mere possibility that they'll reveal these truths to others and lead a revolt is enough to opt for the less intelligent variety when it comes to Adults.
TL;DR: Geeks, while entertaining as children, are too cumbersome to keep as adults; They're too smart for their own good.
I think you're missing the point, maybe the article is missing the point. Popularity in high school is primarily centered around the moving target that is high school culture. Those that conform to the culture (not necessarily the rules, or society in general), are generally not given the "geek" label. Those however whose independent thought judges the norm to be bizarre, for some reason, even if that judgement is logical and based in fact, are outcasts. These may be weirdos, or they may just be people who are paying attention.
I was a geek/nerd (at various times), although I had irrational interests in sci-fi as many geeks do, most of the alienating things I did to myself had nothing to do with my eccentricities. Although I very much wanted sex, I never pursued women because i knew I had X years of high school left and 6 years of college ahead of me, it could go nowhere and was inappropriate to pursue. I studied in school not because of my innate genius, simply because it struck me that my parents weren't telling lies: those who did well would have more opportunities than those who didn't (and life has agreed). I didn't drink, primarily because my parents let me drink at home and booze (or its effects) weren't that mysterious to me and I just didn't understand why people wanted to drink until they puked. And so on, all these things alienated me from culture just as much as my "weird" interests or my social awkwardness. But it was never unpopular to be a little weird (in fact the Cool People, all had a token weirdness), or to be socially inappropriate. It was weird to do your own thing and not join the hive.
As an adult however this mindset is usually going to produce better results, and social popularity isn't nearly as much of a spendable currency as it was in high school. People who think for themselves rather than follow the pack tend to not get bitten by life's many challenges. It won't surprise them that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, that their employers drive for money will outweigh any unwritten promises, and that a big paycheck is better than a big title. All these things alienate you from a culture, but also enable you to see what's really there, and if you use that knowledge you will succeed.
You were also at School, in part, to be socialised and familiarised in the general cultural norms, one of which is arriving to appointments on time.
Schools should penalise a failure to do so.
Those who don't attend at all are much less likely to be affect by reward/punishment incentives than those who turn up late, so it makes sense to focus the efforts on those who it might have some effect.
Pardon me if I'm skeptical over the whole "ZOMG ID KILL MYSELF WITHOUT THE INTERNET!!"
Us older geeks know this isn't true. We did things you might recognize like read books or even socialize with our coworkers! We read magazine and wrote stories and played D&D and programmed non-network computers.
If anything, the "always on entertainment" pipe means less creative works, geek socializing, etc because we're forever stuck on this depressing loop of "Hey someone just sent me another video of someone getting kicked in the balls." Or "Hey, here's the outrage of the hour!"
Its not too surprising, it turns out that more entertainment channels and more uncritical viewers just leads us deeper in the lowest common denominator ghetto. Worse, always on information can just as likely be always on disinformation thus you have all these people who suddenly think they're political experts because they know the well-developed talking points over whether the president is really a citizen. But I digress.
I think the truly nerdy have larger issues, its not really a choice for them to go home and become smelly shut-ins, they do this because they cant function in any other way. They might suffer from aspergers, depression, social anxiety, childhood abuse, anger issues, hormonal issues, etc.
I was a non-conformist in HS. Hated the jocks (even though I played football, nothing more conformist than football players at a Catholic school), but hated the little overachieving geeks as well, many of whom were even more aloof and self-satisfied than the jocks.
Ironic that a geek Website can only see in binary terms: conformist or geek. There are other categories, and BTW, Wozniak was the geek. Jobs was a visionary who couldn't code "hello world!". Apple needed both to succeed.
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