mrissa | PSA: geek relationships

Entry tags:

PSA: geek relationships

This came up in Numb3rs and then again in House, so I'm sort of feeling like it needs saying:

Geeks! You are allowed to talk about your work on a date!

No, really. You're not allowed to be boring about your work on a date. But you're also not allowed to be boring about your family, your reading material, your friends, personal anecdotes, travel plans, etc.

Deciding in advance that you're not going to talk about work when you are mutually interested in work is silly, silly, silly. Far better to get to having a comfortable, interesting conversation about work that mutates into a comfortable, interesting conversation about other things than to try to force the conversation in ways it won't naturally go.

When I lived with three other women physics students the summer I was doing research in Ohio, we were hanging around in our pajamas eating popcorn and getting to know each other. We were hoping to be friends extending beyond our work. And we did not set ground rules for the conversation about not talking about work. As a result, the conversation flowed from "bad boyfriend" stories to "bad lab partner" stories to "I dated my lab partner and what a bad idea that was" stories without lots of artificial starts and stops, and in talking about those things we ended up talking about our families and our groups of friends back home and the things we liked other than physics, and it was good. And no, that was not a date, but I'm pretty skeptical of rules of dating that treat "people one might date" as a completely separate category from "people one might be friends with."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This, yes.

I operate under the assumption that unless I am talking to someone who is known in advance to share that interest, there is no way to talk about my work, even in moderation, without being boring. Best to avoid it entirely.

This goes for most other geeky/specialized topics as well. If you're not talking to someone who is also in that geekdom, forget it. The odds are too poor.

Now, if you'd like to tell me that I am underestimating other people's openness to topics outside their comfort zone, I'm prepared to have that discussion and even maybe plead guilty, but the bottom line is that I'm not going to fault someone - real or fictional - for not daring to discuss search algorythms or obscure novelty recordings or Doctor Who fandom or quantitative fluid dynamics or, really, ANYTHING specialized, on a date.

Hmm. May just have stumbled on one reason I hated dating so damned much. Um. Carry on then.

I think it also depends on the level at which you talk about it. There's a difference between bringing up "Have you ever heard of $obscure_band?" or "I picked up some music I've been looking for" and seeing how they respond (which strikes me as fine) and diving in with a long rave about the fine points of that obscure recording and how it compares to a different version, with no idea if the other person has ever even heard of the song in question. Similarly, I don't come home and tell my partner all the details of my day, but I may say "I've got another manuscript from the writer who never uses one word where eight will do."

These are general comments about talking to people: I never did sort out dating as a specific activity or way of approach things.

For clarification, I wasn't advocating a double standard here; the issues I discuss above would come into play even if it was just dinner chat with people I was hoping to become friends with. The key is the "become." The issue isn't date-vs-non-date conversation for me, it's tested-vs-untested.

The more I know someone, the less stressful conversation with them gets, because if I do bore or irritate or disenchant them, the odds it can be soothed/repaired are higher. (Ideally they tell me I'm being boring and I stop, but I can't always expect that.) Whereas on a date - or with a not-quite-friend-yet - it's possible the other party will just walk away at the end thinking, "Well, I don't want to have anything further to do with THAT guy," and I'll never know why or what I did wrong.

My grandmother's big 65th birthday party was the same weekend as

markgritter's college graduation, so in order to make it to both, I did Grandma's party in Omaha and then got up at 4 a.m. to drive myself up to St. Pete for Mark's graduation. This was the event that would involve meeting his parents and sibs and one of his sets of grandparents for the first time.

My mom, being a very loving mom, got up with me at 4:00 and sat with me as I ate my Grape Nuts. "You're worrying about what you'll do if they don't like you," she said. I nodded blearily. "Never mind that!" said Mom. "What'll you do if you don't like them?"

Ha! OK, good show, Mom.

Mom's right most of the time, but there are those situations in which one finds everyone interesting for whatever reasons, yet is not socially interesting oneself.

(Of course the thing to do is stay quiet, listen, be polite, and do not uncork.)

Ah, yes, a valuable distinction and one I hadn't picked up on.

Well, problem one: the people on dates in these two shows worked together. So they were, in fact, known in advance to share that interest.

Problem two is, of course, under this theory of human interactions, nobody could ever talk about anything, even the weather, because some people are awfully bored by the weather. And I would rather try talking to someone about an interest of mine and either fail miserably or discover that their level of interest in discussion was so different from mine that no conversation was possible, than to assume that I could never find out who was interested in which things in common with me.

It's not that I'm saying you're underestimating other people's openness to topics outside their comfort zone, although I do think you might be. It's that I consider that a reasonable filtering mechanism.

I think the "rule" is based on the assumption that your job is inherently boring. Which is a sad assumption all on its own.

I think my job is inherently boring to other people. It's not necessarily boring to me.

Ah, but if they DO work together, then the restriction suddenly makes sense.

As there is danger that the common career would, due to being the MOST important topic, just stifle the tender shoots of any other topic before they could flourish.

So it makes sense to say: "I know that job related topics are the most interesting to all of us, but lets talk about something else, even if it would be less pleasant. As it would be useful in long run!"

That seemed to be their logic. Then they were not talking to each other at all. Not a success condition. Agreeing to make an effort to talk about other things is not at all the same as agreeing to ban conversation related to work.

The example on Numb3rs that I am thinking of, the logic seemed to be, "We need to make sure that we are not mistaking our intellectual stimulation for personal attraction." Especially since one person had clearly been the mentor and the other the mentee, intellectually. I have sympathy for that logic, because I know what the erotic charge from a shared intellectual pursuit is like. But I also found it problematic at the time I was watching it, because, so what? If someone's math skillz drive you mad with lust, why should that be a bad thing?

It does seem to presume that wanting to be with somebody for the rest of your life because you like the same singers is way better than because you like the same mathematicians. Which presumption I do not share.

Nor do I. Or, if not the same mathematicians, the same mathematics. And paleontology and astronomy and such.

Oh, yeah, people who work together have lots to talk about if work is an allowable topic, and they should be allowed to geek out on a date if they want, but it is not romantic if that geeking out is no different from an at-work interaction and doesn't result in people feeling closer to each other. Also, constant temptation to do more bitching about work can be a reason to call off talking about work. I dated someone I worked with for a couple of years, and we got bored of rehashing the same topics at work and at home/restaurants/parties/road trips. We used to call weeklong moratoria on talking about work. Those were the weeks we each learned more about what non-work-related thoughts stirred in the other's head.

And I find that sort of thing a lot more reasonable when it's the people actually in the actual relationship saying, "We want to do it this way for awhile," than when there is some external rule that Thou Shalt Not.

Perhaps I'm in a unique situation due to being an introvert standing next to a social hub, but I generally consider it a win condition to discover whether someone is going to be bored by the things I am interested in, or vice versa, as quickly as possible, so that we can both expend our efforts elsewhere.

(Or maybe that's the part of the brain left over from being a slush editor.)

That's a sound strategy with much to commmend it. I am a little too pathologically risk-averse for it, but I can see its merits.

(I'm acquiring a deep personal interest in case studies of that introvert-next-to-social-hub thing. I thought I was an introvert marrying another introvert, but my spouse has shown signs of changing teams in recent years.)

One of the useful functional definitions of "geek" is "people who are interested in other people's shop-talk". So in geeky circles, you're probably making a mistake, though of course being sensitive to reaction is always important. Of course going deeply into details specific to a project not known to other people has little future (and is probably against policy as well).

If you're not talking to someone who is also in that geekdom, forget it.

Does the reverse hold true? Are you disinterested in the things other people are passionate about unless they're your interest as well?

I soak up information. I *love* sharing other people's lives, I love hearing what it's like from the inside to be/do/love x.

'Geekdom' is a state of mind. 'Interesting' is a function of the topic, how you present it, and the listener's state of mind. I know people who can talk about accounting and have the audience hanging on their every word. I know people who can talk about my favorite authors and send me to sleep.

Even at my level of social skills, it doesn't take that long to tell that the person I'm speaking with isn't finding a particular topic fascinating. I'd rather trust (and improve) my judgment than make a possibly-incorrect decision in advance with no way to determine if it was right.

This seems to me to be an important point: one of the approaches under discussion allows for data to be taken and refined, and the other precludes a fair amount of data collection. We Like Data.

We actually do work on not talking about work too much, despite working in the same place and having an established relationship, but that's a totally different situation - it's not that it's boring, and it's certainly useful from a work perspective. It's just that if we didn't make some effort to stop, we'd end up talking about work *all the time*. I find it very interesting for the first hour or so, but there comes a time when enough is enough - plus it edges out other interesting conversations of the kind that maintain relationships. However, the only hard and fast rule I have is "no talking about work while horizontal."

I think if you have totally separate rules for dating and friendship, what happens is that you end up dating people you're not (or can't be) friends with. Not good.

I fond that people tend to be interesting when they're talking about something their passionate about, even when it's a topic of which I have no knowledge. I've seen that demonstrated on anything from four-bar mechanisms (by a teacher who bored the piss out of me in other classes) to Romantic poets to dam removal to the social life of ants. If jobs are boring, it often means the person doesn't care passionately about their job - research topics are often a passion , though.

Hmmmm. I personally love hearing people talk about things that excite them. I went to a university that specialized in geek educations, and there was a guy I dated there for several years who was majoring in Computer Engineering and loving it. Anyway, during his senior year he took a course on semiconductors that covered a lot of ground on doping silicon to create semiconductors. And he was SO excited about this. How excited? The course was during winter/spring semester and he spent our Valentine's Day dinner explaining how to make a NAND gate. Or maybe that was the time he explained how you could make all other gates out of a combination of NAND gates--I forget exactly.

Now, you might say that G should have chosen his subjects more wisely but the point is that I really enjoyed hearing him explain it because his eyes lit up when he talked about it. Perhaps I am a special case but I do not think so. I can put up with just about any topic if someone is passionate about it because passion often means that they won't be boring--because they want to communicate how exciting and wonderful the subject is.

But more importantly, G was also familiar with Important Conversational Rules such as:
a) once in a while you should make sure your date still wants to listen to you go on.
b) even if they say that you should continue, you do not go on for excessively long.
c) you also ask your date what's up with them, and listen raptly to your date's stories.

So I think you should be able to get away with talking about work provided that you love your work, and that you follow the above rules. But if you are unable to make your passion for your work shine through, or if you have no passion for your work, or if you don't know the Important Conversational Rules, then maybe it is best to steer clear.

I think if you don't know those important conversational rules or are otherwise not good at being interesting on subjects about which you're passionate, that's a problem in itself, and one worthy of attention, rather than one worthy of rerouting to blander topics.

There's knowing the rules, which is pretty important. And then there's being able to read the tone of voice, body language, and other clues that actually tell you that the other person is not so okay with where the conversation is. Some people are much worse at that than other people.

Yes. And I do see the value of giving guidelines to people who would have difficulty spotting that sort of thing on their own, whether it's because of neurological issues or personality traits or something else completely. But I feel like the "don't talk shop in romantic settings" rule is more likely to result in frustrated, unhappy people who feel like they are doomed to unsatisfying relationships than in people who successfully find what they're looking for.

Past college age, most people have invested a lot of time and effort in what they do for work. Hopefully work is an interesting part of their lives. If not, "I work a stupid day job so I can persue my passion for X" is a very good thing to discuss on a date.

I can't say that I've tested this personally. I have not gone on many traditional dates. However, talking about my profession interests has worked very well as a screening tool. If I say "biochemistry and molecular genetics" and my companion's eyes automatically glass over, we probably don't have a potential romantic future. My first criteria for friends is that they can hold a resonable converstation. I don't talk much about the nitty-gritty of my job, but I am likely to kvetch about the state of science education in North America. If that intimidates someone, they probably won't like my other interests much either.

Geeks who are on a date with a geek of a different flavor or a total non-geek should wait to talk about work until bringing up something about work will add depth to a conversation or until their speaking partner asks something about work. Geeks who decide to talk about work with non-geeks will have to tone it down to a level more on par with teaching someone about the subject and the specialty's social milieu instead of talking to a co-expert. Failure to follow these rules will result in glassy-eyed stares from the other side of the dinner table. Hint: this is not good on a date.

To me, this is in the category "do not be boring," and applies to hobbies and other things as well as to work.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

PSA: geek relationships

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

For a change of pace, my mom will smack you gently upside the head instead of me doing it.

Re: For a change of pace, my mom will smack you gently upside the head instead of me doing it.

Re: For a change of pace, my mom will smack you gently upside the head instead of me doing it.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject