A while back, Fark posted a link to an MSN Dating article entitled Loving your geek, tolerating his hobbies. Fark readers are suckers for this kind of stuff, so it's only natural that such a link submission would get posted. I checked out the article with a bit of skepticism. Was the article written by someone with one foot in the geek kingdom or is it just another dating "how-to" that purports to have the inside scoop on the mindset of the elusive geek?
I found it to be a little bit of both. I agree with some of the points brought up in the article but I'm also a bit annoyed at other parts of it. One area of the article that I take issue with concerns social skills. The general consensus amongst the public is that geeks lack normal social skills until the tender age of 30. The article doesn't attempt to deny this, instead pointing out that we "grow out of it". My experiences have taught me that within the geek community, there are no more people lacking basic social skills than from any other sampling of society.
I think that what most people believe to be a lack of social skills is really the manifestation of something else that describes more geeks than the average person: introverts. Geeks tend to be more of a thinker than the average person. We are observers of all things that interest us and tend to remain that way until we feel we have something to contribute.
Another area of the article that I feel is a mistake concerns the writer's recommendation about what to do when confronted with some of our more esoteric hobbies. He feels we should be left to our devices so that we can indulge in our geekdom free from the possiblity of causing our loved one to see just how weird we can be. He adds, "(t)his conveniently frees you from having to be part of it." I think that's a terrible recommendation to anyone looking to have a healthy, lasting relationship. I don't mean to say that you should attempt to assimilate your significant other in to the Geek culture, but to say that leaving us on our own while maintaining that social divide is convenient is silly.
Having said that, there are points where the author hits the nail on the head. Namely, I'm talking about letting us have our own space where we can indulge in our hobbies and "geek out". My wife and I have previously lived in apartments where space was limited and I wasn't able to have "my" space. I didn't have a lot of spare time during which this really mattered, but now that we own a house, I have a corner of the basement where I can spread out hardware, build computers, listen to music, code, and game to my heart's content (although my time to do this is still severly limited). The funny thing about this is that geek's aren't the only ones who can benefit from such an arrangement. I think the reason geek's are more eager to have their space is that our hobbies tend to require intense concentration. You can't socialize while coding or painting the beard of a dwarf unless you want a dozen errors or brown fingers.
I think the thing that bothers me about the article is how he uses stereotypes to describe himself and other geeks early on while pointing out in the end that most geek stereotypes are no longer applicable as a generalization. Perhaps that was his intent from the start, but since he uses the stereotypes to justify several points of the article, I doubt it. I'd be curious to know the author's age as it seems he came from an earlier era of geeks where all he said was true. But today's world is full of geeks from all walks of life. We're as much an active part of society as the valley girl, socialite, and athlete. And I think we like it that way.