I always put up a mental barrier when reading articles such as this as I am of the opinion that it is difficult to successfully produce generalities about a subset of people unless you are quite intimate with their idiosyncrasies.
Philip Guo overcame this barrier in his article looking at the conversational behaviours of “geeks, nerds, and other highly-smart technical people”. These behaviours:
- Struggling with turn-taking.
- Obsessing over correctness and completeness.
- Preferring exact numerical responses.
- Using technical terms without checking for understanding.
- Focusing on the how rather than the what or the why.
- Favoring complexity and detail over simplicity in descriptions.
- Rapidly enumerating long lists of items.
- Showing a lack of interest in outward appearances.
- Evangelizing their favorite technologies.
The Hacker News thread discussing this article is also worthy of a casual look.
Comments
3 responses to “Conversational Mannerisms of Geeks”
‘Preferring exact numerical responses’ is something I recognise in both my father and boyfriend, should I be worried?
@Kimberly, Sorry to break it to you but your boyfriend is definitely a geek.
Kimberly, I fear that Andy may be right. However this is definitely not something to be worried about.
Geeks are a catch. Or so I tell myself.