I have been having an issue for a while now and I have been trying to deal with it in a way that is simply not working for me. I’m about to drastically change how I deal with it and it seems reasonable to let people know what I will be doing and why.
I love my friends–I really do. I don’t put up with people I don’t like/love very much. I have, however, gotten to the breaking point on geeking. I understand that my friends are all very fascinated by their technical gizmos and programming and whatever else stuff ya’ll are into. I do not share this fascination, not even slightly. In general I understand that my lack of technical interest is fairly uncommon in my group of friends so I just kind of tune out when the conversation gets very technical. Unfortunately it has gotten to the point where I have started timing the portion of geek talking to conversation I am able to participate in and many gatherings are 2/3 conversations I can’t be part of. Given how little time I actually spend with people this is pretty unacceptable to me.
The thing that is bothering me the most is when I manage to start having a non-geeky conversation with one person and someone else joins the conversation and within five minutes they have steered the conversation to where I am completely excluded. I am not saying anyone is awful and horrible for this, but I do think it is thoughtless, inconsiderate, and rude. It is rather difficult to get most of you into a non-geeky conversation at a group event and it is hard for me to keep putting energy into a losing battle of trying. I feel very demoralized and rejected at most group events and that is a big factor in why I have just not been going. I don’t think my friends realize how much you are rejecting my participation in a conversation when you spend hours talking about things I have absolutely no interest in or knowledge of. You might as well switch to German for all I understand.
And I’m done. I’m sick of feeling like that at group events. I’m not going to sit there and feel like shit anymore. I am going to start getting up and leaving. If I am going to be ignored and exluded from conversation I would rather do that in a different place so it doesn’t feel like such a slap in the face. I understand that no one is really consciously trying to hurt me–I do understand that. However knowing that people aren’t trying to hurt me doesn’t change the fact that it hurts me.
I am completely uninterested in being told that I should listen and try to learn from the situation and I would greatly appreciate it if no one gave me such advice. I will in fact be very angry if anyone tells me that I should get over my feelings and try to be more accepting. This is about setting boundaries and I have that right. Once upon a time I used to go to a munch and the boys liked to talk about guns, cars, and computers. Guns and cars are both more accessible topics for me as I have a fairly significant level of understanding of both, however I have no interest. The boys learned that they were free to talk about guns, cars, and computers but I would walk away from the conversation. I am not saying people shouldn’t talk about things I have no interest in, I am saying I am not going to sit and listen. It isn’t that I can’t understand it is that I don’t care to.
Not that we tend to run into each other at gatherings much, but if I ever do that, you have permission to call me on it. I’ll deal… 🙂
As for what’s going on, often times the other person, whether they realize it or not, they’re intentionally trying to steer the conversation to something they want to or feel comfortable talking about… and yes, it’s kinda rude.
As someone who hosts parties you occasionally make it to, I have a host-y question: what overall subjects are you interested in discussing with random people? I can’t do anything about the WoW discussion tendencies of my household, but I can attempt to make sure there’s people that share discussion topics that you are interested in.
I like talking about lots and lots of things. (Many sentence fragments coming up.) People and their lives/feelings/backgrounds top the list. Really anything about psychology/anthropology/sociology is interesting. Education in its myriad forms. Costuming/clothing/historical reenactment stuff. Dancing. Babies/kids/teenagers and all the stuff surrounding developmental stuff. I’m pretty thrilled to talk about my job but I understand that most people aren’t interested so I generally try to be courteous about not dominating a conversation. Religion. Politics in a non-argumentative sort of way. Food–cooking/eating/restaurants. Travel. BDSM in many forms (personal favorites include: M/s, D/s, bondage, and specific technical stuff about single tails and canes). Books! I’m not super into sci-fi or fantasy books, but most other genres are very interesting to me and I can handle a little bit of sci-fi/fantasy. Childrens books are a favorite (though I haven’t read Harry Potter) and I am a closet historical romance reader. Anne Rice is a favorite and most anything that goes through stuff about people. WoW isn’t thrilling to me, but I like some conversation about RPGs.
There are other things, but I’m running out of steam on listing them off. I like stories about people. I’m interested in most everything that is about humans rather than about a machine.
Politics in a non-argumentative sort of way
Last time I was at your house you called me out for having exactly that sort of conversation. I was, and am, more than a little confused.
Your definition of non-argumentative and mine are different. Thus, in my home I asked for the conversation to stop. It may be as simple as tone of voice differentiations. And when I have to ask multiple times for something to stop I get pissed off.
Oh, and thank you for asking. I appreciate you caring enough to ask more than you know.
As someone who also throws parties which you, RKoM, also have attended, I also appreciate the question.
I’m rather in the same boat with you, sweetie, though I suspect I don’t find myself in groups with the same high levels of geeks that you do. It’s not just concentrated geekery that creates this kind of conversational exclusion. If you’re in any social situation where there is a high concentration of people who share a special interest, the odds that conversations will center around that special interest are high. And anyone who isn’t in the special interest group will either have to spend a high proportion of their time sitting the conversations out, or asking a lot of “I’m clueless about this” questions. It’s nice to have that as an icebreaker to new conversations, but it does, indeed, get old after awhile — especially if you decide that you aren’t really interested in taking on that particular topic as an interest of your own.
In general social interactions, it’s considered polite to try to say things to include everyone in the conversational cluster you’re in — even asking pointed questions to bring in those who are standing quietly, not contributing. Unfortunately, that common social nicety seems to get forgotten when you have the aforesaid concentration of Common Interest Folk — and I’ve often heard it said that geeks aren’t high on the social skills performance scale to begin with.
That is something I’ve consciously improved on – not getting stuck in the conversational black hole of geekery. Basically, it’s boring. It’s boring for me even though I am a technogeek myself, and it’s even more boring for people who aren’t, on top of being rude, like you pointed out in your post.
Of course, I think that what you said could apply more generally to anyone who tends towards single-track conversations. The problem isn’t always the topic so much as some people’s obliviousness to good conversational dynamics. Geeks are particularly bad about it, though, because when you get a bunch of us together, it’s one thing we have in common. (And maybe because we’re sometimes not so socially ept.) Another related problem is people talking about shared social background when not everyone has that background. The worst of this, and the one I’m most prone to, is college stories.
So anyway, I think your post was a really useful thing for people to hear, and it’s a good reminder to me to pay attention to the dynamics of conversations I’m in.
(I think the problematic conversations are the detailed “I used this obscure tool to fix this wacky problem!” war stories that mean nothing to people who aren’t experts (but can be really fun to discuss with fellow technogeeks). I like to talk about science more generally, because I think science is damn cool. That can work well in non-geek conversations, but I have to be careful. So if I’m ever at a party with you and I start being too narrow in my conversations, I’d appreciate hearing that from you.)
I think you pinned it down: obliviousness to conversational dynamics. Noticing who is interested in what you’re saying and who’s engaged or not engaged, leaving space for other people to talk, that sort of thing.
At the risk of stating the obvious, there’s a fine line between the (reasonable) observation that being an audience to a conversation that bores you is not something you’re likely to have much tolerance for, and the (unreasonable) demand that people only talk about things that amuse you. And, also, “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”: people drivelling on about the fabulosity and general wonderfullness of their blasted offspring is terminally tedious to me (whether the sprog(s) under discussion is/are at the noisy formless lump stage or the PhD-with-super-job stage — sheesh, you’d think that having a kid is some act of amazing brilliance on the part of the droning producers!)
Still, the good news is that in my experience, the geek conversation thing is largely age-based. Maybe people need to spend a particular number of (tens or hundreds of) hours rambling on about it?
I don’t think I said that people must only talk about things that amuse me. I said that I am no longer going to spend 2/3s of social gatherings staring at the wall, instead I will leave. And I know I have never bored you with conversations about my children (given that I don’t have any) so I’m not really sure why your counter point is relevant to this post. I’m not endorsing anyone dominating a conversation with any topic that is uninteresting to people in the group.
I’m saying that if I spend four hours a month with you and you don’t want to actually talk to me in that four hours I will take them elsewhere.
Umm, I observed that there’s a fine line between two things; I didn’t observe that you fell on one or other side. That there is, if you like, a risk of falling on the wrong side…
I picked the kids topic (err, that would have been from your list) because it’s probably the single most prevalent “exclusionary” topic around. Pro-sports would likely be the next… (How about them Forty-Giniors?)
If changing the subject doesn’t work, your only option (as you wrote) is to change the company. And (as you wrote) that’s entirely within your rights and is really only common sense. Where it would get tricky — in my view — would be if you were to try to manipulate the company so that instead of them doing what they wanted to do, they end up doing what you wanted them to do.
But, as I opened with last time, that’s all at the risk of stating the obvious…
Of course, that fine line was crossed long ago if two people are having a nice conversation about topic ‘X’, and someone joins them and quickly changes the topic to ‘Y’ so they can join in… which is the situation she described.
In my case, I’ve gotten much better with that sort of thing by a) having an ex-roommate who will unconsciously turn every conversation into one about code or how his job sucks; and b) having a differently geeked GF. We share many interested, but don’t overlap much on the geek spectrum.
A massage party, you ask? Surprisingly enough, the theme will be
“massage.” Not “technogeekbabble.” Not “the seventeen start-up internet search engine companies for which I’ve been a sysadmin.” Not “The Cryptonomicon.” No, no. All will be passed over, in favor of rubbing yourhands all over each other.
Let me stress upfront that I am totally serious about this, the no-technogeekery rule. I’ve been at too many parties where the conversation tended rather inevitably towards words like “Unix” and “ftp” and “that monopolistic empire of Bill Gates’s.” All of these are excellent topics of conversation, but they won’t be present at this particular party. For a professional massage therapist and non-geek, it can be a bit marginalizing (read: boring) to be helpless to participate in such areas of conversation. If that offends your geek sensibilities or feels too much like censorship to you – really, there are probably nine other parties that weekend you can attend.
This person is now my hero.
Maybe an invite to one of those parties would be good.
Unfortunately, she is in Boston.
Hmm, maybes you could start your own. Or poke a friend to do so. Seems like a good thing worth doing.
Are you saying you’re leaving the event or the conversation? It would seem to me that it is perfectly reasonable to wander away from a conversation and look for another at a social event….I often find myself drifting in and out of conversations/groups already in progress at larger events. If, after some non-angry exploration of other conversation opportunities, you find none, I can see wanting to leave. I would point out that I have witnessed you become actively huffy/angry about a geeking, which is startling to say the least. I’m not saying you don’t have every right to choose not to participate, I’m just saying I don’t personally understand the *angry* reaction that ricochets into making everyone ELSE feel uncomfortable and unwelcome as well. I DO see the point of irritation if someone ELSE comes an geeks your ungeeky convo…that is clearly annoying.
Depends on the event. If there are five people in the room and four of them are geeking for more than an hour, I’m going to just leave. Many of the social events I go to are not large enough to support many concurrent conversations.
I’m ok with you not understanding all of my reactions.
If, after some non-angry exploration of other conversation opportunities, you find none, I can see wanting to leave. I would point out that I have witnessed you become actively huffy/angry about a geeking, which is startling to say the least.
I’m used to her becoming huffy/angry about geeking mainly (only?) when it’s the only thing in the room, or obviously crowding out other subjects. An example dynamic where she would become angry and (it sounds like) you might not agree with it: some geeking is going on in the corner, some non-geeky conversation is going on elsewhere in the room, and one person currently not geeking switches topics to how well laptops work with NetBSD.
In that case, the room has just become significantly more hostile to non-geeks. There are two things worth pointing out about that subject… 1) it is impenetrable to non-geeks and many geeks, and of no importance if understood by same. If you do not wish to run NetBSD, now or in the future, it is a topic of no importance whatsoever. 2) it is a topic with a tendency to spill over into further geek conversation, both because it touches on many other geek topics, and because it is specific in a way that tends to expand into other laptop and free Unix issues.
In this case, a perfectly ordinary and common event (geek brings up geek conversation with other geeks and non-geeks during non-geeky conversation) becomes significantly more bothersome, in a way not obvious to the geek involved. In this case, is likely to become peeved for good reason (the room has just become much more hostile to non-geek conversation) for reasons not necessarily clear to the perpetrator of the offense, nor to those watching without an eye toward non-geek conversation.
I’m not trying to pass moral judgement on anybody involved — honestly, I don’t know what the right answer is to any of this, and it’s an offense I’ve certainly committed before. But the above is pretty typical of the times I’ve seen “randomly” become angry at geeky conversation. In my experience, there’s usually some additional reason why it’s especially bothersome, and that reason may not be instantly obvious on the face of it.
Your experience may or may not be similar.
One of these days I need to introduce you to my buddy Rachel, of Rachel and Loren fame (he being the geek who wrote Renderman, the program upon which most special effects is based). Loren is a very sweet man but getting him to talk when the talking is not geeking is pretty hard, 90% of the time he stands around very quitely is and is thrilled to have married a woman who can talk enough for both of them.
Rachel once wanted to kill me because on one of our group dinners at a con (CES in Vegas with my buddy Carmi whom you have also heard me speak of), I introduced him to Brett (my friend at apple, and is in charge of video architecture) who proceeded to spend all of dinner talking with Loren (i.e., Graphics god) what changes he would like to see in Apple’s video architecture — Brett then paid for my dinner (like $200 a head) and wrote the whole thing off as a business expense. This was not intentional on my part, it was just that I knew Brett had been DIEING to meet Loren, and I was really happy to finally have the chance to introduce them. Rachel was seriously NOT happy.
To quote her, “We’ve been married 30 years, do you know how many of them I had to spend training him NOT to have Geek conversations take over dinner parties?”
Rachel, also not a geek. Former teacher, More a new agyie type
I understand this. Good on you for taking care o yourself.
Personally I don’t do the geekmo think myself. Nor does it interest me.
Anyhoo, I understand.
You know you are always welcome out here, even if I do live in the sticks. I try not to bore you with any of those conversation points.
We cook, we have guest bedding for you and yours, and I and Guildmistress enjoy your company. Even if you cannot make it out here, at least you know.
I do try to make it out there. Life is just very incompatible with me going to many parties and even fewer that involve more than an hour of driving in each direction.
Right, hence the “I’ll cook, and have bedding, and a hot tub” part. I know full well it is tough to get out here. (*laughs*) When was the last time you saw me at the South Bay Pryankster Pryactice?
Nice to talk to you, though. Enjoy the rest of your week.
I’m with the fiddler on this.
I am also not into the latest tech. I have my geek moments, to be sure, but it tends to revolve more around analog stereos and medieval catapult designs, so it’s a bit rarer for me to go off:P
See, this is what I think people aren’t getting. It isn’t that I think people should never have a conversation in my presence that does not include me, it is that hours and hours and hours of conversations that don’t include me are over the top when no one wants to talk to me about anything I can understand. And there is also a big difference between someone sharing their interests with me when I don’t know much about them (Tom used to explain hardware stuff, Noah explains his job, you could explain catapult designs, DA told me about Physics…) and people having a conversation with other people “in the know” where they use lots of exclusionary shorthand. The former gets old after a time; the latter makes me angry.
It’s ok that people talk about things I am not super-into. I just think there are more and less polite ways of doing it.