flexagon | Links: badgers, subcultures, have you tried solving the problem... (Reply)

Sitting at the back of a classroom, having to be ready to help the teacher catch some dumb Javascript mistake at any moment while he's live-coding, I'm too jittery to do nothing but can't do anything too attention-absorbing, either. So, here are some tabs I've had open for a while.

Badgers in love comic, because it's adorable. "Offer's open." :-)

To my friends on the spectrum: covers the basic idea that if people ask you what you're doing, the meta-question is whether they can join you. In fact, a straight-up answer will turn people off. I've found this to be less true in adulthood, possibly because people are more into their chosen hobbies by now, and a lot of extreme activities aren't easily or safely joinable. But when I was younger I sure could have used this article.

Geeks, MOPs and Sociopaths -- about the typical rise and evolution and fall of subcultures. This was presented to me on FB, and rang dreadfully true to me in the context of the Boston acroyoga scene. Clearly I was a Geek there, and I could name some of the Sociopaths. I quote: Fanatics do all the organizational work, initially just on behalf of geeks: out of generosity, and to enjoy a geeky subsociety. They put on events, build websites, tape up publicity fliers, and deal with accountants. And then the "mops", or normal people, show up, and then... Fanatics may be generous, but they signed up to support geeks, not mops. Then the subculture dies, unless there's enough value for the sociopaths to show up.

Have you tried solving the problem? -- this just gets funnier the more I dip into it. Have you tried tying the problem to a stone altar, extracting its heart, and tossing its body down the stairs?