A Bradburyan Nighmare: The Shunning of Intellect

I'm... unsure.

Not when they're in your head... they can do weird stuff, like give you autonomic training... other things that I won't talk about. They can also help you with math problems, sometimes.

So... Nietzsche and Jung reviled each other? For being nerds? Or was Nietzsche just oblivious?

Do some kinds of nerds unite with the common herd in their revilement of other nerds? Do the Shakespeare buffs turn up their noses at the pinball machine collectors?
This would tend to suggest that nerd-dom isn't just from the crooked communication that you mentioned before; rather, it's about personal habits?

 

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RosaMagika:

Too slippery and far too flattering a description of 'society's bias.
Meaning- you are saying that our poor nerds are scorned because their coping mechanisms are snubbed by the masses as not creative enough or too creative.

I am saying that our masses don't give a fuck about Creativity.

Explain yourself- self esteem is not as general as you'd like to think it is and nor are a Man's problems with it as generalized as the next Man's.
The feeling, however, is universal. The response to it is what distinguishes.

(Man geht an seiner Interessantheit zugrunde oder man wird ein Meister. BAH! Translate.)

Bigblue:

Uhm. No. Think of Jung and think benchwarming, soft, loony, fucked. Benchwarming softy, loved everybody.

Really, all it is is that he happened to study in the same place Nitzsche was professor in- Basel. Naturally, he knew people that knew him and considering the man was dead already by the time he wrote this he's only going by ear.
And no, Freddy was not as much oblivious as he was asshole.

But you've brought up a good point:

Methinks ditto and we ourselves are not immune.
We do this shit to each other here as well- comb through the threads and you will notice posts condemning another's use of a citation or 'big words'. The most reviled person here is [deleted] for his many references, scholaticism, and rabid persistence.

Now, considering that the boy has a knack for making one want to boil his nuts off I will say there is a shitty personality to account for the ridicule he receives. He's the resident pedant.
However, his complete opposite is the imbecile who has never contributed anything to this place other than his stupid noise and banality. [deleted].

Yet the latter suffers less the 'torments' of ridicule, despite the fact that others knew them, too, as nerds.
Is it only because [deleted] has no sense of humor? Oh?

If that is the case, then why am I unliked?

 

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Why do you think that? Despite the lack of logically coherent content in your posts, the sheer artistry and flamboyance impresses.

I for one, do not dislike you. Consider me.....a fan.

 

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Gendanken,

I'm working on it.

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Hm? "Too flattering"? :bugeye:

To some extent, this seems to be the case.

It doesn't matter what the "masses" think about Creativity -- what matters is that they recognize it, take notice of it.

It sounds like shit when you say "masses". Aren't people good enough for you, huh?

How do you mean that self-esteem is not as general as I would like to think? Whenever someone seriously feels that he is less (or more) than other people, and also acts in accordance with that, for whatever reason this may be, he has a self-esteem issue, at least that's how I see it.

The contents of these problems may be different (not intelligent enough, not educated enough, not beautiful enough, not rich enough, not likable enough, not interesting enough, not cool enough, ...), but they work by the same principle of a twisted perception of oneself.

I hypothesized that the manner in which they deal with their self-esteem issue is *non-typically creative or overly creative* -- this is the response that distinguishes them from the "masses".

That's a quote by Thomas Mann, it means something to the effect of "Either your own interestingness destroys you, or you become a master."

Being "interesting" can be a dangerous thing. Think Rimbaud. Think Byron. Think Mozart. They were all regarded as extremely "interesting", but eventually, the stuff they did in the name of this interestingness destroyed them.


To go to some real and present examples of reviled nerd-dom:

You posed this question, see it answered -- and you can hate my guts for it:

1. It is not that you would be unliked. You are liked. It is just that not all that many people like you. Maybe you *wish* that *more* people would like you. Maybe you wish that people would like you in another way.


2. You are usually not nice. As ridiculous as this may sound to you.
I'm not saying that you are bitchy -- but to me, you seem somehow edgy and uptight.

The overall impression I got is that your humor is satirical and sarcastic to an extent that it ceases to be funny.
You have a very stern and critical attitude towards things, but the way you express it is not very appealing for most people -- like "I hate mothers". You cannot condemn the world and then expect it to like you.

If you really wouldn't give a fuck about what the world thinks about you, you would never even start this thread, you would never even ask "why am I unliked?"


Well, like I said: Hate my guts for speaking with such candour. But if you really wonder why, you, a nerd, are reviled, I listed some characteristics that trigger that negative response at people.

 

Tiassa is most reviled around here because of the coke addict thread, I think. In any case, he has such a chip on his shoulder that most people consider any attack on him to be a preemptive strike at best. He is... the bellicose nerd.

As for condemning a citation - I am guilty of this a thousand times over, and a hypocrite to boot. However, in my defense, I usually accuse people of not being enough of a nerd. Perhaps that is paradoxical in the present form of our conversation. I have not, to my knowledge, ever accused anyone of using "big words" unless their usage was incorrect. However, my memory is short and my invective long, and it may be that someone will show me where I did.

When someone like Spookz (or The New Spookz or whatever) goes all flamey, people don't usually complain or revile because it's entertaining, even if it's "dead raccoon" entertaining...

But, we can't spot nerd-dom immediately here on the board - it's not quickly diagnosed like "pseudoscientist" or "troll" or "gun rights activist", which may be why nerds tend to hang here. Carriage can't be seen on the screen.

I don't think a forum is a good place for nerd examples, which is too bad, since it's our common context here. Now, who is the biggest nerd in the history of the planet?

(BTW, IM ur fanz 2 gendy! u roxxor! Lolzor!)

 

Byron is an example of reverse nerd-dom in this sense I think. For some reason, even as the presence of homophobia in society has been prevalent for many years, Byron/Shelley porn movies just keep getting made. Why do otherwise stuffy and self-absorbed literary types have private fantasies of Byron up their asses?

 

ROFLMAO

Goddamnit BBH you kill me man.

Gendy you're more liked that you want to take credit for but if you are reviled, it's likely because of that which you share in common with our dear Xev - with the dismemberment and the violent fantasies and the willingness to indulge said fantasies for all to see, oh well that and you HAVE noticed how you speak to people who write stuff you don't like right? You are uhm.. quite liberal with your disapproval. I think Dale Carnegie would be dissapointed.

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Failure to see value past something that turns someone off to you results in dislike. I'd guess it's probably usually fairly simple like that.

 

BBH,

It is ROMANTIC -- and I mean in the historical, literary sense: masochistic, living off of one's own suffering, trying to feel each beauty, and each pain in its fullness.
The artist as a hero: adoring the artist.
Wertherianism.


A sentence from "Sense and Sensiblity" comes to mind:

"They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future."

Similar are the literary self-absorbed types -- the above quote goes for them, as well as such a modification:

"They gave themselves up wholly to their [love of books, idealism, foreginess to the world, ...], seeking increase of [wretchedness, idealism, pleasure, sarcasm, ...] in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting [consolation, reasonability, simplicity, ...] in future."

 

Is gendanken saying tiassa is not liked because of how intelligent he is?
I could actually vomit right now, oh wait, too late, I am vomitting. I'm litterally vomitting all over myself as I type. Thanks alot gendanken.

 

Rosa, I understand what you're saying, but I'm not talking about a stuffy literary type getting his mope on because of a sore Byronized backside, I'm talking about a stuffy literary type bending over so Byron can get all over them, and with a big thumbs up too. They're just crazy about him.

 

BBH,

It all depends on how far one's adoration for someone (an artist) goes -- depending on the adorer's personality, wretchedness, all that emotional stuff.

Yeah, laugh at me, but there are passages in Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony where I thought "I could marry you for that passage, Peter Iljitch."

I think the process works thus:

First you get to know some of the work of an artist. You like it. You are moved beyond "reasonable measures" ("normal" people are never moved beyond reasonable measure). Then you get to know more of his work. You love it even more. Then you read the artist's biographies and all that.

From here on, you have confused the singer and his song. Which isn't all that strange, as it takes many many hours and much much money to get "close" to your adored.

You fall in love with them -- or more correct: you become infatuated with them, as the relationship is typically one-sided.
In such a state, you'd do pretty much anything.

NB: The "you" in this text is someone with nerdy predispositions.

***
Infatuations and falling in love are processes lead by subtle and subconscious mechanisms, esp. projection and idealization.

People must fall in love or become infatuated in order to be able to deal with that part of their personality that leads them to falling in love or infatuation.
In the state of being in love or infatuated we are in contact with our idea of our right partner. The person we fall in love with or become infatuated with has certain smiliarities with our idea, and it is for this reason that we fall for that and not some other person.
The cycle of falling in love and being disappointed causes us to begin to know ourselves, and it causes us to begin to know that what we expect from the ideal partner is not realistic.
***
So much for the theory. Let's apply this to Byron lovers -- similar goes also for other infatuation cults
(I haven't seen any Byron or Shelly porn films, so I can't speak for them, but I can speak for the Rilke adoration and Byron's probably isn't much different):

1. Byron is dead. This has many romantic consequences:
a) He is practically a myth, a legend: he is the perfect object to adore. In the course of time, this mythicalness has been elaborated, even into a cult.
b) By being dead, he poses the opportunity for an infinite infatuation. Byron can't step in and say "Hey you, stop it, it's sick. I don't want you to do that." And even if an unpublished text where he had written that would be found, it would immediately be devoured by those fans as -- "Oh, he was so modest an honest. Let's love him even more!"
To stop this infatuation, the infatuated must realize what he is actually doing.


2. Byron wrote some things that move certain people to the core of their being. They take him for their personal guru. And fact is, once you spend a lot of time reading someone's works (or listening to his music), you, in a way, spend time with this person.
"Frederic, that is a wonderful passage you wrote. And you, Ivo, played it beautifully," -- that's what I think to myself when listening to Pogorelic playing Chopin. The relationship becomes personal somehow.

It is just that certain people take this "personal relationship" waaaay further than it is still regarded as "normal adoration".


3. Apparently, it plays a great role whether the adored had a strong personality (" ") or not. People with strong personalities usually don't become the object of such adoration, at least that's the impression I got so far.
Goethe is adored, Beethoven is adored -- but in a mostly respectful way.

Take a sleazy thing like Rilke -- and you have people drooling over him, reporting of having been married to him in a previous life, making shrines to him -- to name the more nameable fancies.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To conclude: Some people live out their romantic fantasies in a manner that is usually regarded as abnormal. This manner is determined by these people's weak character, low self-esteem, ineffective strategies of solving everyday problems, personal insecurity, complexes, feelings of emptiness, low emotional intelligence. When these characteristics are combined with a sufficient IQ, education and a sufficient financial status or a status that allows some access to the adored (like being able to go to the library, concerts, ...), this can result in such a off-limits adoration for someone, preferably a dead artist.

 

Hathor:

And *who* the fuck are you? *grin*. I think I know.


Rosamagika:

True- but remember that issues with the self esteem however homogenous in principle differ in focus or reaction of and to those disturbances.
You've said this as well- and its this that disqualifies you from saying this:

"This "self-esteem issue" is to be understood in the widest sense of the term."- Rosa

...which I picked on. In my world, "widest sense" implies a generalization.

Yup- I'll take it back if you wish (I'm lying for I won't)
The majority's prejudices are based on boolean values- is this good or bad? nice or not nice? one or two? Which, which, which? Calling this simple practice in stupidity as 'creative' is flattering.

No shit- 'masses' is right up there with 'sheeple' and 'burgoise', but what's a girl to do?
Refer to them as the 'accumulations'? Dirty laundry? Proletariat? On a shitty keyboard, 'masses' is quicker.

No, you said our masses looked on and judged them on 'creative' criteria.

3 points:
One:

You're up a shit creek with that one and drowning- funny how a small comment snowballs into silly hypotheticals.
Wishing that people "like" you is for the kiddies, our elderly and humble- not to mention the mutant forms of canine, namely, women.
Gender is my only sin on that list, but its only biology.

Two:

This thread is, amazingly, 7 pages long.
Page one goes by with no self-reference.
Then page two.
Page three.
Page four.
Five, six and bingo- Gendanken refers to herself as something like a specimen for comparison to contrast with Tessie.
She is then accused of narcissim by a flower.
Oohh.Ahhh. Humans are funny.

The spirochetes on the petri dish- do they give a shit if the lab assist likes them or not?
And yes I'm very uptight and hopelessly critical. Eat it.

Three:

No, no, no- if you're going to refer to romance, Wertherianism is a bad example considering it was usually a corpse hanging from a roofbeam after reading Goethe.

If you wish to snide the artistic type, as is clearly your intent, then single out our Shcopenhaeurian pee-wees that:

"...demand not happiness but unhappiness (that) should approach from the outside and become visible; and their imagination is busy in advance to turn it into a monster so that aftwerwards they can fight a monster...at present they fill the whole world with their clamor about distress and all too often introduce into it the feeling (Gendanken: or illusion) of distress.
They do not know what to do with themselves- and therefore paint the distress of others on the wall; they always need others (Gendanken: need, need, need, wha, wha, what went the Goth boy and the metal head)! And continually other Others!"
- from la Sciencia.

Now, we see our tortured artists with their water paints drawing pictures on their prison walls with other's blood. This is their 'misery'. I just took what you, Rosa, were trying to say and made it gorgeous.


Bigbluehead:

HA!
Umberto Eco with Tartar blood and thin, ugly hair- 'tis Tessie.
On the serious though- I've seen him handled, and I daresay people are always THIS close to jumping through the screen and killing him, you can hear them dying to destroy him.
Wesmorris is one of these people.

A chip, yes. But so does Dr. Lou.
What's the difference?

This is what I was thinking- Spookz was comfortable.
Spookz speaks their language and smells of them- he is like the guy sitting next to you chugging beer who every once in a while says something midly intelligent. Its foreign but his background and history camaflouges it into something comfortable and acceptable.

However, I disagree with "nerd-dom" not being pounced on immediately. Make one esoteric reference too many and BAM one is labeled as highbrow and pedantic. I've done it to a fucktwit named Daphthar around here so I'm guilty of this as well.

Wes:
Dale Carnegie can suck my dick if he is offended by my lovely personality.

I understand that most find me offensive and/or arrogant- the point, however, is that Tessie is also, the difference being he lacks humor.
This absence in our Pedant I only offered as platform to show that its not only the seriousness that has others avoiding these two specimen- its the nature of what they both are that's culprit.

Dr. LouNatic:

[deleted]

 

Rosa: With respect to Byron porn, I remember there was a Frankenstein-based movie which was supposedly a drug-ridden retelling of Mary Shelley's imagination of the Frankenstein story; I saw it on TV, but I can't find it on the IMDB.

Actually, I always thought the depiction of Shelley and Byron in Blackadder was the funniest.

"Open the door, or I shall kill everyone here by giving them syphilis!"

Classic.

Gendy: Wanting to long-distance choke someone Vader-style isn't really related to their nerdness, since revulsion usually manifests in avoiding someone, not beating them up. I don't think Tiassa really qualifies for the pure nerd, is what I meant. (He seems to be getting more argumentative of late - maybe I just didn't know him before.)

Hell, I'm guilty myself of esoterica - check out this one!

That's some hot shit there, I bet there's only about twenty people in the world who would get this reference.

And so my hum'rous metaphor's
Appeared as quite a gaffe
For few would understand it...
And none of 'em would laugh.

That (Tiassa I mean) is a different kind of problem from, say, your garden-variety Battlestar Galactica nerd, the one who hates it when he mentions Richard Hatch and you say, "Oh, that guy from Survivor?"

 

HA!

Man oh man the things you pukes around here do to my misanthropy.

"running from the ancient barber's like a wesmorris-cult recidivist"

Let's see........ancient barber's. Russell came to mind:


The Barber paradox is a paradox with importance to mathematical logic and set theory. The paradox considers a town with a male barber who daily shaves every man who does not shave himself, and no one else. Such a town cannot exist:
• If the barber does not shave himself, he must bide by the rule and shave himself.
• If he does shave himself, according to the rule he will not shave himself.
Thus the rule results in an impossible situation.


Is this what you're referencing?

On another point, you mention Tessie does not qualify. Have you seen the many threads put up soley to ridicule his Jesuit education? I'm more than happy to dig them up for you.

 

Without exercise your brain will get old and fat. Hate us! Hate us! You won't be a proper misanthrope without a little activity each day.

I remember Russell's Paradox, I think I even mentioned it in the Shape of Language thread.

With respect to Tiassa's detractors... I haven't actually spent that much time with the boy so I can't say. I'll bow to your judgement in the matter of his nerdness.

NOW

On to an example I know a little better.

Why is wes not a nerd? Is it because he has a wife?

 

1. Because he has a wife and children.

2. Because he is honest. Honest in a manner that many people can easily understand and relate to.

3. He shows appreciation in a manner that many people can easily understand and relate to.

It's called emotional intelligence. Something that nerds usually lack.


Gendanken,


About the self-esteem issue: "widest sense" is about content and intesity. I was trying to cover all nerds: those who are the way they are because they overly creatively dealt with their feeling of beeing too uncool, or with the feeling of not being intelligent enough, or with the feeling of not fitting in ...
Some nerds (=the result of that creative process) are intelligent, some aren't. Some are cool, some are spooky. Etc. etc.
What they, even though they are so different, seem to have in common is that they overly creatively dealt with their problems, whatever those problems were.

***

You asked why you aren't liked. And then you do as if you are no different than the spirochetes on the petri dish.
Few things are more unappealing than someone actually asking that question in public -- for whatever reason one asks it.

I don't have a problem with you being very uptight and hopelessly critical.
The one who really has to "Eat it." is you yourself. This is why you are a misanthrope.
Man, you must hate yourself. Man, it must be hard to be you. But you like it, don't you?

It is because of statements like this that some nerds are reviled.

Now you can rationalize and analyze all you want.
If one doesn't care about people, one shouldn't be surprised if people don't care about one. And, believe it or not, you *do* need and want people to care for you.

Yes, this may qualify for an ad-hominem.
It is just mind-boggling to me how you pretend as if you wouldn't know why such "very uptight and hopelessly critical" people are reviled.

 

I'm charismatic and physically attractive.
Tiassa is not, tiassa is the single most boring living organism to ever exist on earth. It's no contest really. I'm confident that it could actually be scientifically proven that I'm a better person than him, I'm just waiting on the technology.

 

BigbluHudribras:

My brain is old and fat and so's my ass...haven't you heard gendanken getting serenaded?
Spooky : [deleted]

No one said he wasn't- I picture him getting a rash from the jocks pulling his undies up his crack afterschool.
Poor Wes.

However, the "accumulations" find him acceptable on account of his following the program and fitting the script- now he has a family, a home, and all the bagagge making up Normal.

Roamagika:

Diagnonsense.

You're kidding right? This puts you right up there with Wanda- she thinks I hate me too.

Dr. Lou:

In a world where all you are to us is the text on my screen, your pearly whites and hairdo mean shit around here.

'Charismatic" is a good word- though we all know its a euphamism for 'normal' or 'passe'.
Now...[deleted]

 

You mean, I'm a nerd 'cause I pissed off PMT? C'mon, that was tough love.

Emotional Intelligence is another new age buzzterm for what used to be called common sense; I personally think people picked up the idea after reading the description for the Empathy stat in the Cyberpunk RPG, but that's a wild conjecture.

EI (when that term is used) is considered to be something that's removed by formal education, or so I have been taught. Part of the EI thesis states that educated people are tactless and have bad tempers because they only understand machines and not people. This is a pretty hamster-headed view of people's behaviour, of course, as if disagreement were the greatest crime. EI is actually a soft of institutionalized nerd-reviling, so you need to be careful of it...

 

And am I:

More resolute and wrongly furious
Than MuslimProud or monkeyspurious?