Links: badgers, subcultures, have you tried solving the problem...

[flexagon]

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?

Comments

[drwex]

I adore that badger comic because I am TOTALLY the one on the right. Pygment has remarked multiple times about how peaceable I am, right up until I perceive something as threatening her at which point I get incredibly snarly and hostile.

The spectrum thing is somewhat true for me, but very not true for others on the spectrum; it's not as generally applicable as sometimes made out to be. I think the underlying principle (which Pygment calls "speaking Hintish") is right. But the specific cases are hard(er) to navigate.

The MOPs thing sounds like a lot of sour grapes; I have no cred for claiming hip or (sub)cultural but it doesn't align with my experiences. It also ignores both the cyclical and migratory nature of these things.

I still have the last one open to read but must do Actual Work today...

[flexagon]

MOPs describes the acroyoga scene around here with all too much accuracy, and apparently some other scenes too (see other comment on this post). I took it as trying to explain the cyclical nature of things rather than ignore it... but, yeah, I'm sure it's not universally applicable or a complete explanation of why things come and go.

[drwex]

Thanks for the response. I can see that scenes do have some of these problems and they sure do move through cycles.