Dev Imperium

I came across this several months ago — and being a geek that socializes with geeks, I recognize all five of the Five Geek Social Fallacies:

#1: Ostracizers Are Evil
#2: Friends Accept Me As I Am
#3: Friendship Before All
#4: Friendship Is Transitive
#5: Friends Do Everything Together

These fallacies don’t start off as something that is necessarily bad or wrong, but when made into an absolute bad things can happen.

I am not very social. I have friends and I’m happy so I won’t rock the boat. So I am a carrier of a corollary of #1 — avoid conflict that might lose you friends. I hate personal conflict, and will most likely just ignore it or maintain blissful ignorance of the issue. And my lack of social interest turns me into the curmudgeon at the parties where someone with #4 is trying to get me to be friends with their better friends(*) — which causes tension that I don’t want to deal with. I have gotten a bit better … but that isn’t saying much.

* better friends: another person’s friends or family that aren’t part of my core group of friends.