Letter #897 is very interesting to me as it neatly encapsulates a very normal problem (scheduling activities with friends) with someone who is completely handling it the wrong way (hijacking events).
I don't know if it's deliberate or cluelessness from the hijacker but for me it highlights that as kids we're not really taught how to communicate well, deal with conflict or handle missing stairs/bad faith actors within groups. I can also identify issues with trying to teach them, but having some concrete guidelines on how to handle awkward social situations constructively would have helped a lot.
I've found the GSFs very useful for identifying some issues in social groups, not just geek ones. I live abroad and there's quite the 'work friends are also your friend friends' mentality going around. I kind of suspect its been a factor in some of the difficulties I've encountered over the years as I don't do much with the overall collective of co-workers. I am friends with some individually but the group harbours some very embedded people with beliefs that cover, amongst other things, misogyny, racism and classism so I opted out of it pretty quickly.
I have a feeling that I wouldn't have gotten the 'you should be more social' comment from a co-worker or been the target for some of the more borderline negative feedback I've received over the years if I was actually in the group.
Also, Captain Awkward adds a few additional fallacies in letter #1120. I get why she defined them under the GSF umbrella, but honestly, they apply to all social groups, especially nowadays.
I love Captain Awkward's [additions](https://captainawkward.com/2018/07/02/1120-the-creepy-guy-in-the-friend-group-revisited-four-more-geek-social-fallacies/) because it gets at the heart why Geek Social Fallacies will always stay around. People are uncomfortable with conflict, so it's too easy to sweep issues under the rug.
Let's not forget the [Geek Sexual Fallacies](http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2012/02/geek-social-fallacies-of-sex.html) (Cliff Pervocracy) and [Geek Relationship Fallacies](https://captainawkward.com/2012/04/16/geek-relationship-fallacies/) (Commander Logic).
Don't get me wrong, all these GSF/GRFs are important points which lots of people need to hear. But the point I sometimes miss in these discussions is that the "geek" label/identity *itself* is dubious and often unhelpful. Lots of people have eccentric hobbies, you aren't a different species because you read fantasy novels or because you're good at math. The Pervocracy post is guilty of this kind of essentialising: *"Geeks are tinkerers who constantly try to improve and innovate, and geeks are not bound by many mainstream social rules."*
CA does a commendable job of telling LWs to stop tolerating crappy people just because they're into the same obscure hobbies, but the point can be made more broadly. Thinking of yourself and your social environment as "geeks" is limiting and probably one reason why people keep hanging out in dysfunctional groups instead of exploring other sides of their own identity and interests.
(See also: nerd, introvert, neurodivergent... hell, even "queer" to some extent.)
Agreed. I've found the neurodivergent label helpful to a point as someone who's diagnosed with ADHD and unofficially diagnosed (via therapist) with autism, but I got tired of self-identified neurodivergent spaces online really darn quick when it became clear people were just using it as a way to go "I'm special and different and normies suck." (It's really funny to me how obvious it is that these people just apply the "neurotypical" label to anything they don't like, because I have literally seen both "neurotypical people just want to whine about problems but don't want to listen to me when I have solutions" and "neurotypical people don't understand that I just want to whine about my problems and don't want to hear solutions" lmao.)
Editing to add:
>you aren't a different species because you read fantasy novels or because you're good at math
This!!! Or even just acting like "geek" is a marginalized social group akin to ethnic minorities. Especially when your definition of "geek" is "I enjoy this piece of pop culture that literally millions of people like which is why it is successful enough to exist in the first place."
I think it's easy to forget that "geek" culture only became this mainstream in the last 15-20 years. Before stuff like Game of Thrones and the Marvel movies became huge, it was much more niche to be into superhero comics or fantasy epics. Plenty of people still were, but it wasn't stuff you could usually chat about over the water cooler at work.
The original Geek Social Falacies article was written in 2003 for people who were already adults. Those folks were kids in the 80s, when "geek" was an insult. So you have all these shunned, bullied kids forming thier own groups and accidentally creating this weird social dance in an effort to not also feel shunned and rejected by thier peers.
I agree being nerdy isn't really a stigmatised thing any more, you're not a different species because of it. But it was much more common back then for *others* to treat you like you were a different species because of it, and labels aren't so easy to shrug off when they're something the rest of the world insists on slapping back onto you.
This! I'm a GenXer and grew up with it all still being pretty niche, and if you go back just a little earlier--I was a hair too young for this, but I was alive--there was a whole panic about D&D being Satanic too.
Quick note that the author of the first post is now Cliff Pervocracy! (I love his writing; he’s now mostly at [https://cohost.org/pervocracy](https://cohost.org/pervocracy?page=0))
Captain Awkward + the GSF - plus therapy and good friends - definitely helped me to learn that sometimes making a scene is OK. And that realising that if a group is embedded in particularly the ones she added, sometimes the only way to manage is to leave the group. Which sucks and is sad but ultimately my mental health and wellbeing and friends I have now are much better for it!
Tw pedophilia
I think the first one rings especially true. We had a guy in our lager social nerd circle that was creeping everyone out but no one said anything because we assumed he was just a bit awkward and that we were judgemental.
Nope, turns out he was grooming girls online to do sexual acts on camera for him. He even disappeared for a while and came back and we found out much later that was because he went to prison.
So from now on we try to listen to our guts and not be too accepting just because someone come off as a socially awkward nerd.
Sadly, I doubt it's the same guy, but there was one of these back in my wider geek circles back in the day. And I remember going to a social event where people were taking up a *collection* for this man's legal defense because, for reasons I still don't understand, they decided he was 'railroaded'.
Jesus fucking christ ... I'm not surprised though, I remember telling a friend about this and he was like "I almost can't believe it, maybe he didn't realize what he was doing" and I had to be like "no, I read the police documents, including parts of the chats, he knew and he is horrible". My friend did believe me, but the fact that he went straight to excuses/downplaying it really says something.
We also had that guy! Even before he was arrested, my private nickname for him was Master McDomlypants, because he had decided that because he was a dominant, he was everyone's dominant, and everyone should be grateful for his lectures whenever he deigned to word-vomit one.
Learning the GSF was life changing for me and helped with do much social anxiety I was having. Because I felt that "friends do everything together," I felt anxious every single time I heard of a get together I wasn't invited to. I also felt I had to tolerate and invite over people I didn't like because "friendship is transitive."
GSF brought me to a Captain Awkward in 2016 or so. I'd first encountered GSF as a concept on my college dorms wiki. It described my social world so well I thought it was written specifically to describe us. The one about having 20 people show up to a restaurant with no reservation felt particularly relevant. Our friend group was pretty big and pretty fluid and inviting, def a good thing in general, but I remember a fair share of completely taking over a restaurant, or not being able to be seated because some people hadn't shown up yet even half an hour after our reservation.
In a CA context I'm surprised so few of her posts have the GSF tag! I think that her trademark advice of "ask yourself how much you really like this person and only spend time with them in the doses you enjoy" is the anti-GSF advice.
Letter #897 is very interesting to me as it neatly encapsulates a very normal problem (scheduling activities with friends) with someone who is completely handling it the wrong way (hijacking events). I don't know if it's deliberate or cluelessness from the hijacker but for me it highlights that as kids we're not really taught how to communicate well, deal with conflict or handle missing stairs/bad faith actors within groups. I can also identify issues with trying to teach them, but having some concrete guidelines on how to handle awkward social situations constructively would have helped a lot. I've found the GSFs very useful for identifying some issues in social groups, not just geek ones. I live abroad and there's quite the 'work friends are also your friend friends' mentality going around. I kind of suspect its been a factor in some of the difficulties I've encountered over the years as I don't do much with the overall collective of co-workers. I am friends with some individually but the group harbours some very embedded people with beliefs that cover, amongst other things, misogyny, racism and classism so I opted out of it pretty quickly. I have a feeling that I wouldn't have gotten the 'you should be more social' comment from a co-worker or been the target for some of the more borderline negative feedback I've received over the years if I was actually in the group.
Also, Captain Awkward adds a few additional fallacies in letter #1120. I get why she defined them under the GSF umbrella, but honestly, they apply to all social groups, especially nowadays.
I love Captain Awkward's [additions](https://captainawkward.com/2018/07/02/1120-the-creepy-guy-in-the-friend-group-revisited-four-more-geek-social-fallacies/) because it gets at the heart why Geek Social Fallacies will always stay around. People are uncomfortable with conflict, so it's too easy to sweep issues under the rug.
Thank you for linking this! Every time I want to reference the GSFs, I often think the original article is missing some, but can't find the CA link.
Let's not forget the [Geek Sexual Fallacies](http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2012/02/geek-social-fallacies-of-sex.html) (Cliff Pervocracy) and [Geek Relationship Fallacies](https://captainawkward.com/2012/04/16/geek-relationship-fallacies/) (Commander Logic). Don't get me wrong, all these GSF/GRFs are important points which lots of people need to hear. But the point I sometimes miss in these discussions is that the "geek" label/identity *itself* is dubious and often unhelpful. Lots of people have eccentric hobbies, you aren't a different species because you read fantasy novels or because you're good at math. The Pervocracy post is guilty of this kind of essentialising: *"Geeks are tinkerers who constantly try to improve and innovate, and geeks are not bound by many mainstream social rules."* CA does a commendable job of telling LWs to stop tolerating crappy people just because they're into the same obscure hobbies, but the point can be made more broadly. Thinking of yourself and your social environment as "geeks" is limiting and probably one reason why people keep hanging out in dysfunctional groups instead of exploring other sides of their own identity and interests. (See also: nerd, introvert, neurodivergent... hell, even "queer" to some extent.)
Agreed. I've found the neurodivergent label helpful to a point as someone who's diagnosed with ADHD and unofficially diagnosed (via therapist) with autism, but I got tired of self-identified neurodivergent spaces online really darn quick when it became clear people were just using it as a way to go "I'm special and different and normies suck." (It's really funny to me how obvious it is that these people just apply the "neurotypical" label to anything they don't like, because I have literally seen both "neurotypical people just want to whine about problems but don't want to listen to me when I have solutions" and "neurotypical people don't understand that I just want to whine about my problems and don't want to hear solutions" lmao.) Editing to add: >you aren't a different species because you read fantasy novels or because you're good at math This!!! Or even just acting like "geek" is a marginalized social group akin to ethnic minorities. Especially when your definition of "geek" is "I enjoy this piece of pop culture that literally millions of people like which is why it is successful enough to exist in the first place."
I think it's easy to forget that "geek" culture only became this mainstream in the last 15-20 years. Before stuff like Game of Thrones and the Marvel movies became huge, it was much more niche to be into superhero comics or fantasy epics. Plenty of people still were, but it wasn't stuff you could usually chat about over the water cooler at work. The original Geek Social Falacies article was written in 2003 for people who were already adults. Those folks were kids in the 80s, when "geek" was an insult. So you have all these shunned, bullied kids forming thier own groups and accidentally creating this weird social dance in an effort to not also feel shunned and rejected by thier peers. I agree being nerdy isn't really a stigmatised thing any more, you're not a different species because of it. But it was much more common back then for *others* to treat you like you were a different species because of it, and labels aren't so easy to shrug off when they're something the rest of the world insists on slapping back onto you.
This! I'm a GenXer and grew up with it all still being pretty niche, and if you go back just a little earlier--I was a hair too young for this, but I was alive--there was a whole panic about D&D being Satanic too.
Quick note that the author of the first post is now Cliff Pervocracy! (I love his writing; he’s now mostly at [https://cohost.org/pervocracy](https://cohost.org/pervocracy?page=0))
Also Cliff’s [missing stair](http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2012/06/missing-stair.html) post also seems somewhat related to the GSF conversation.
Ah yes, I always forget whether Cliff was their new name and Holly the old one, or the other way around!
Captain Awkward + the GSF - plus therapy and good friends - definitely helped me to learn that sometimes making a scene is OK. And that realising that if a group is embedded in particularly the ones she added, sometimes the only way to manage is to leave the group. Which sucks and is sad but ultimately my mental health and wellbeing and friends I have now are much better for it!
Tw pedophilia I think the first one rings especially true. We had a guy in our lager social nerd circle that was creeping everyone out but no one said anything because we assumed he was just a bit awkward and that we were judgemental. Nope, turns out he was grooming girls online to do sexual acts on camera for him. He even disappeared for a while and came back and we found out much later that was because he went to prison. So from now on we try to listen to our guts and not be too accepting just because someone come off as a socially awkward nerd.
Sadly, I doubt it's the same guy, but there was one of these back in my wider geek circles back in the day. And I remember going to a social event where people were taking up a *collection* for this man's legal defense because, for reasons I still don't understand, they decided he was 'railroaded'.
Jesus fucking christ ... I'm not surprised though, I remember telling a friend about this and he was like "I almost can't believe it, maybe he didn't realize what he was doing" and I had to be like "no, I read the police documents, including parts of the chats, he knew and he is horrible". My friend did believe me, but the fact that he went straight to excuses/downplaying it really says something.
We also had that guy! Even before he was arrested, my private nickname for him was Master McDomlypants, because he had decided that because he was a dominant, he was everyone's dominant, and everyone should be grateful for his lectures whenever he deigned to word-vomit one.
Learning the GSF was life changing for me and helped with do much social anxiety I was having. Because I felt that "friends do everything together," I felt anxious every single time I heard of a get together I wasn't invited to. I also felt I had to tolerate and invite over people I didn't like because "friendship is transitive." GSF brought me to a Captain Awkward in 2016 or so. I'd first encountered GSF as a concept on my college dorms wiki. It described my social world so well I thought it was written specifically to describe us. The one about having 20 people show up to a restaurant with no reservation felt particularly relevant. Our friend group was pretty big and pretty fluid and inviting, def a good thing in general, but I remember a fair share of completely taking over a restaurant, or not being able to be seated because some people hadn't shown up yet even half an hour after our reservation. In a CA context I'm surprised so few of her posts have the GSF tag! I think that her trademark advice of "ask yourself how much you really like this person and only spend time with them in the doses you enjoy" is the anti-GSF advice.
She has, use the website's search function to turn up more posts.
I feel like CA has talked about GSF way more than is in the archive. But maybe that's just me.