I, Neckbeard
At some point in my childhood, I remember suddenly realizing that it was weird not to look people in the eye while speaking to them. From that point on, I studied how other people made eye contact, and attempted to mimic it. I tried to learn how to do it just enough, without doing it so much that it becomes creepy.
I still can’t make eye contact when I’m thinking hard, though.
Without going into too much personal detail, I’m fairly certain I have autism spectrum disorders in my family. And I believe I inherited them to a small degree. There were times in the past I probably could have gotten myself diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. But I was only ever affected to a small degreee, and through a series of conscious choices, like that choice to learn to make eye contact, I’ve arrived at a point which at least appears relatively “normal”.
It’s a strange thing, though… I can feel it in my blood. It’s like having a kooky uncle living in the attic of my own head. Being socially appropriate is still an act of conscious intention for me sometimes, and I don’t always succeed.
The connection between the autism spectrum and the field of computer science & engineering is pretty well established by now. I think we’ve all either known, or been, That Guy: the guy that just doesn’t get social interactions the way most people do.
Hell, a decade or two ago we were all That Guy, as far as the rest of the world was concerned. Then something remarkable happened: the world learned to respect us geeks, and we got better haircuts and better t-shirt and got laid.
Well, at least some of us did. We’re all rock stars now. Except the ones who aren’t. And I worry that in the rush to hipness and relevance, some of us nerds have tried to distance ourselves from That Whole Scene; that scene being the one where people with acne and very bad hair obsess over technical minutiae to the exclusion of all other concerns.
I don’t think everyone has the opportunity to make the same choices I did; nor do I think the choices I made were objectively “right”. It’s not wrong to be socially inept. But it can make life a lot harder.
The thing is, the true neckbeards are often also the true innovators. By all accounts Steve Wozniak was/is in that category; fortunately for him he had a good friend and business partner who was more than able to do the talking and glad-handing and occasional ass-kicking.
For every hundred lifelong dorks obsessing over something that no one else will ever care about, there’s an RMS writing the next GNU system.
I guess the point of all this is that sometimes I see someone technically brilliant say something incredibly socially inappropriate, and I think “that could easily have been me”. And I worry that some of my other fellow geeks are so eager to distance themselves from the “bad old days” that they’ll (rhetorically) throw him under the bus just as readily as a jock laughs at an awkward kid with a pocket protector.
We can’t all be cool kids. Some of us can’t even manage acceptability. I hope when I’m old and my brain has crusted over and say loud and insensitive things without realizing, or talk over and over about that one technical breakthrough I had that no-one ever appreciated, or otherwise make a nuisance of myself, that there will be a few people willing to shake their heads and smile and hang around me anyway.
