Geek Community: Path to Self-Actualization or Pit of Unproductive Negativity?
Comments(12) 
I firmly believe that the answer to this question is…yes.
A Little Background (a.k.a. My Hermit Roots) – Like most geeks, I’m an introverted fellow by nature. I’ve never had trouble mustering the requisite polish when it came to interacting with clients and executives on the job, but when given a choice I would always rather be absorbed in code with my headphones on and a ‘do not disturb’ look of concentration on my face. Until recently, I preferred keeping to myself when it came my professional development and problem solving endeavors and routinely chose thick technical books, laser-focused research, and solo debugging efforts over blogs and community forums. I didn’t really see the point of developer communities and I doubt that I had a single person in my professional contact list that I didn’t know directly through a current or prior work experience.
The Slippery Slope into Community – I didn’t start to change my solitary ways until a few years ago when I finally decided to start subscribing to blogs in earnest (I know that I was extremely late to the game on this one). Before long, I graduated to leaving comments and then eventually to writing posts on my own blog, thus firmly entering into the realm of geek community by publicly exposing my own thoughts to the world for examination and potential (…ok probable) ridicule. Finally, through the magic of Twitter, OpenSpace conferences, and social networking sites, I began interacting with my fellow kindred geek spirits on a more informal basis and getting to know many of them personally. At the last conference, I was shocked when I realized that for the first time ever I was more excited to meet and interact with the other participants than I was to listen to the content of the sessions. That was the moment I first started to realize that my understanding and appraisal of geek community had significantly shifted.
A Place of Extremes - In the short time that I made the journey from geek hermit to neophyte community member, I have experienced the following highs and lows.
First the good…
- Real World Experience over Theory – Most of the content I see in traditional articles, books, and Knowledge Base entries seem overly theoretical and shallow because many are often based on idealized vendor technical specs or the author’s limited experiences with pet projects and demo applications. By contrast, many of the blogs or twitter rants I read are from people on the corporate front lines who are constantly dealing with the edge cases and pushing the limits of the technology. Despite being less polished than their more formally published counterparts, community based sources of information often yield much more valuable hints, insights, and warnings.
- Analysis and Recommendations over How-To – While traditional learning venues almost exclusively focus on the HOW, community discussions are often centered around the WHY. In the age of google, learning HOW to use a new tool, framework, or API often borders on the trivial, but figuring out which one to use can become an overwhelming decision. This is where being part of a network of really smart people who readily share knowledge and experience can really pay off.
- Perspective – No matter how large your IT department is, your work will be confined by a particular culture and set of technologies and practices. By contrast, online communities are usually comprised of developers from all over the world and thus offer fresh ideas and needed reality checks that you just can’t get from your co-workers. While your co-workers may be fearful or too polite to challenge your latest dumb idea, you can rest assured that developers you interact with ‘in the wild’ will be brutally honest.
- Camaraderie – Besides being a source for excellent recommendations and discussions, I find Twitter and the comment sections of blogs to be a place where I can relieve some stress from the day by being able to joke or rant. Sometimes the lack of “face to face” social constraints has a very positive affect and allows people who are normally quiet and serious in a work setting (like me) to be much more light-hearted and humorous in a virtual community. The Canadian blogging circuit in particular (Justice, Donald, D’Arcy, Tom, et. al) has been a reliable source of comedy relief for me over the last few years.
Now the bad…
- Anonymity Breeds Meanness – If you haven’t been personally zapped by an unnecessarily rude comment, then you haven’t spent much time in online discussions. In a process that makes road rage look tame, the anonymous aspect of online interactions can turn normally sane people into ranting, frothing-at-the-mouth maniacs.
- The Need to Shrink the World – The first time I looked at the world map of my readership base in google analytics or scanned the diversity of topics available on reddit, I was struck with the uncomfortable realization that the world was unbelievably ginormous place. Unfortunately, the first reaction that many have to this psychological shock is to try to shrink the world back down to a manageable size by dividing it into a small select group of enlightened technical wizards (to which they belong) and a massive group consisting of the rest of the dimwits. This is the driving force behind the formation of so many identity cliques that divide people along otherwise trivial lines with a frightening religious-like fervor (i.e. Mac vs. Linux vs. PC, Microsoft vs. Sun, Dynamic vs Static languages, Mort vs. Einsteins, etc.). The world is just a more manageable place if you have justification to dismiss a large portion of it as irrelevant.
- Flame Wars and Twisticuffs – As egos collide and tempers flare, even the most reasonable discussions quickly degrade into purse fights, twisticuffs (twitter fisticuffs), and flame wars. When this happens, the geek blood lust takes over and the pursuit of knowledge takes a back seat to the all consuming goal of winning the argument. I have occasionally been sucked into these “Lord of the Flies” type spectacles and I’ve always emerged feeling drained, dumber, and ashamed of myself.
What to Do? I admit that I occasionally have days where I am tempted to crawl back into my introverted shell and seal myself off permanently from blogs, twitter, and all other forms of geek community. Despite the silliness, meanness, and time-wasting qualities that lurk behind some online community interactions, I still have to conclude that it is the only viable option for a geek looking for self-improvement.
Nevertheless, before diving headfirst into community, you’ll need to learn to recognize the potential pitfalls and devise strategies for avoiding them. This could be as simple as unfollowing, unsubscribing, or generally avoiding people who trigger your geek rage or it could involve a more radical approach of taking a periodic hiatus from the online world to recharge your batteries. Failure to do so could lead you down the path to the geek dark side and eventually turn you into one of those curmudgeonly old trolls that lurk on mailing lists waiting for their next unsuspecting newbie victims.
In the spirit of community interaction, I leave you with the following questions for you to ponder and respond to:
- What are the other positive and negative aspects to geek community?
- Do you really think community is the fastest way to self-improvement?
- If you are a believer in community, how do you avoid all the negative aspects?
Popularity: 17% [?]
**I have occasionally been sucked into these “Lord of the Flies” type spectacles and I’ve always emerged feeling drained, dumber, and ashamed of myself.**
You’re not the only one! Every time this happens, I make a resolution not to let it happen again. But, these things can be insidious – what starts as an earnest attempt at debate can quickly devolve into bombastic stump-thumping and insult-flinging. The fact that these conversations are had in front of an audience of peers (and more) makes sensitivities higher, and willingness to concede far lower.
My new approach is to picture the people in the argument (including myself) alone at a podium in their living room, preaching to a menagerie of stuffed animals, meticulously arranged so that their eyes are fixated on the speaker.
The basic point is to try to step back and acknowledge when a “conversation” has left the productive arena, and devolved into posturing and egoism. Realize that nothing fruitful can come from further argument at that point. Neither you nor the people you’re arguing with are going to have the “last word” on the subject, and no real change is going to occur as a result. It’s often a more effective tactic to allow your “opponent” to get the last word, and let him be the last one to look up from the podium and stare into his silent audience of bears and bunnies!
At least, that’s what I tell myself to make myself feel better
It makes for a nice story.
> What are the other positive and negative aspects
> to geek community?
I like being exposed to a large community because it is a daily reminder of all the things I have yet to learn. There is always someone out there that knows more than me on a given subject, and that motivates me to continue learning.
Part of being a _professional_ software developer is staying abreast of the industry at large, and it’s hard to do that when you’re isolated from that industry!
> Do you really think community is the fastest way
> to self-improvement?
I don’t know about it being the _fastest_ way, as each person is different. I do feel that self-examination and critical thinking are critical components of the self-improvement process, and contributing to the geek community encourages both of those.
Communty in general is a “good thing”, geek community is no exception. However too much of anything becomes bad, and a time sink.
The problem with our (geek) communities is that they are such a rich community you could easily get sucked into the community itself and never accomplish what you need to do.
As to anonymous issues, I agree the ability to hide ones identity often leads to keyboard road rage. My answer is not to participate. If an inflammatory comment is made I may respond once, thanking them for their opinion, but I refuse to get drawn into those types of black hole discussions.
As to is a community the fastest way to self improvement? I would say no, but it can sure help. The fastest way to improve is as it always has been. Hard work. But a community can help by providing feedback, assistance and information.
Nice post!
Cheers,
Robert Porter
@Brian
“My new approach is to picture the people in the argument (including myself) alone at a podium in their living room, preaching to a menagerie of stuffed animals, meticulously arranged so that their eyes are fixated on the speaker.”
At first this image creeped me out. I got a flashback to the Poltergeist scene where they show the clown at night during a lightning storm right before it pounces on the little boy.
Then you mentioned bunnies and bears at the end and all was well.
Either image seems like it would be an effective anecdote. Thanks!
@Seth – I agree that community content surfing is a very quick way for me to catalog what I don’t know.
Perhaps a good compromise is to use community content to figure out what to learn, traditional content to get a basic grounding in the material, and then go back to community content to get advanced tips and gotchyas.
Community (whether virtual or physical) is the only way for any of us to truly grow.
Like anything, the quality that you get out will be exactly what you put in. Engage in flaming comments that add no intelligent value, and that is all that you will ever get back out of community group think. Participate at a higher level (blogging, commenting, etc) and you will soon be at the top of your game.
@Robert – Good points. I constantly struggle with whether my participation in community is speeding up or slowing down my learning process. I can think of instances where it has done both. That gets back to my original project that I have for myself of devising a better personal strategy for recognizing when it is helpful and when it is unproductive.
Reading about your hermit era really sounds like me. Just in the past few months I’ve started keeping up with the dev community (previously my bookmarks were filled nearly exclusively with food blogs).
I think you hit the biggest benefit (IMO) with “Perspective.” I met a retired sheet metal worker recently, and he said their union required new members to change jobs every few months so they had a variety of experience. I’m still working at the place that hired me out of college, and after 4 years I realized I don’t want to be stuck only knowing how to do one niche of the trade (ASP.NET). The perspective you gain by trying something different isn’t just a novelty though, I think the things I’ve learned working with Ruby have improved by C# as well.
It’s possible that I could have learned all this in a more solitary way – books, etc, but I think the community aspect is what keeps my motivation up – seeing what other people are actually doing is certainly more inspiring than the demo project in a book.
There’s no need to waste time on negativity. The internet is full of anonymous jerks, and the last thing you want to give them is attention. I just try to ignore it.
I guess maybe I’m no longer a hermit, but still more of a lurker
Had to come back, as I just heard much more succinct words of wisdom from Randy Pausch’s CMU lecture (via JP Boodhoo and others) at about 25 minutes in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo
“It’s very important to know when you’re in a pissing match. And it’s very important to get out of it as quickly as possible.”
Wonderful post. That is all.
I really like what you’ve written here. Like most people I find my interests wax and wane, some weeks I’ll spend more time reading up on various blogs/articles/etc and some weeks hardly anything at all.
> Anonymity Breeds Meanness
Oh man, does it. I started posting articles quite recently, just a couple months ago. The negative, sometimes brutal comments are tough to handle. My upbringing was of the “if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all” persuasion, but that is clearly not the norm in online comments.
Russell, one day I swear to you I am going to write a follow-up response to this post. I have literally had it in queue for almost 2 months now! The geek community can be either of the above; it just depends on where you’re at. However, for me the geek community has been awesome – after all, would I have met people like you otherwise?