A person coming from “social culture” to “nerd culture” may interpret everything as a part of some devious status game.
The social person is right here. Remember ‘X is not about Y’?. The difference is that your ‘social culture’ person is in fact low-to-average status on the relevant hierarchy. Something that’s just “harmless social banter” to people who are confident in their social position can easily become a ‘status attack’, or a ‘microaggression’ from the POV of someone who happens to be more vulnerable. This is not limited to information-exchange at all, it’s a ubiquitous social phenomenon. And this dynamic makes engaging in such status games a useful signal of confidence, so they’re quite likely to persist.
I think that one very important difference between status games and things that might remind people of status game is how long they are expected to stay in people’s memory.
For example, I play pub quizzes and often I am the person who is responsible for the answer sheet. Due to strict time limits, discussion must be as quick as possible, therefore in many situations I (or another person who is responsible for the answer sheet) have to reject an idea a person has came up with based on vague heuristic arguments and usually there is no time for long and elaborate explanations. From the outside, it might look like a status related thing, because I had dismissed a person’s opinion without a good explanation. However, the key difference is that this does not stay in your memory. After a minute or two, all these things that might seem related to status are already forgotten. Ideally, people should not even come into picture (because paying attention to anything else but the question is a waste of time) - very often I do not even notice who exactly came up with a correct answer. If people tend to forget or not even pay attention whom a credit should be given, also, if they tend to forget cases where their idea was dismissed in favour of another person’s idea. In this situation, small slights that happened because discussion should be as quick as possible are not worth remembering, one can be pretty certain that other people will not remember them either. Also, if “everyone knows” they are to be quickly forgotten, they are not very useful in status games either. If something is forgotten it cannot be not forgiven.
Quite different dynamics arise if people have long memories for small slights and “everyone knows” that people have long memories for them. Short memory made them unimportant and useless for status games, but in the second case where they are important and “everyone knows” they are important, they become useful for social games and therefore a greater proportion of them have might have some status related intentionality behind them and not just be random noise.
Similarly, one might play a board game that might things that look like social games, e.g. backstabbing. However, it is expected that when figures go back to the box, all of that is forgotten.
I think that what differentiates information sharing and social games is which of those are more likely to be remembered and which one of them is likely to be quickly forgotten (and whether or not “everyone knows” which is most likely to forgotten or remembered by others). Of course, different people might remember different things about the same situation and they might be mistaken about what other people remember or forget—that’s how a culture clash might look like. On the other hand, the same person might tend to remember different things about different situations, therefore people cannot be neatly divided into different cultures, but at the same time frequency of situations of each type seems to be different for different people.
I think what people usually keep in mind are not the specific mistakes, but status and alliances. In the “nerd culture”, the individual mistakes are quickly forgotten… however, if someone makes mistakes exceptionally often, or makes a really idiotic mistake and then insists on it, they may gain a long-term reputation of an idiot (which means low status). But even then, if a well-known idiot makes a correct statement, people are likely to accept this specific statement as correct.
In the “social culture”, it’s all about alliances and power. Those change slowly, therefore the reactions to your statements change slowly, regardless of the statements. If you make a mistake and people laugh at you because you are low-status and it is safe to kick you, next time if you make a correct statement, someone may still make fun of you. (But when a high-status person later makes essentially the same statement, people will accept it as a deep wisdom. And they will insist that it is totally not the same thing that you said.) It’s not important what was said, but who said it. Quick changes only come when people change alliances, or suddenly gain or lose power; but that happens rarely.
The pub quiz you play has clearly defined status. You lead it. As such there’s not the uncertainty about status that exists in a lot of other social interactions.
The social person is right here. Remember ‘X is not about Y’?. The difference is that your ‘social culture’ person is in fact low-to-average status on the relevant hierarchy. Something that’s just “harmless social banter” to people who are confident in their social position can easily become a ‘status attack’, or a ‘microaggression’ from the POV of someone who happens to be more vulnerable.
You’re confusing two points of view.
Let’s say social Sally is talking to nerdy Nigel. From the point of view of Sally, there are a lot of microaggressions, and status attacks, and insensitivity, etc. But that is not because Nigel is cunningly conducting a “devious status game”, Nigel doesn’t care about status (including Sally’s) and all he wants to do is talk about his nerdy stuff.
Nigel is not playing a let’s-kick-Sally-around game, Sally is misperceiving the situation.
Nigel doesn’t care about status (including Sally’s) and all he wants to do is talk about his nerdy stuff.
Oh, Nigel may not care about Sally’s status—that much is clear enough, and I’m not disputing it. He cares a lot about his own status and the status of his nerdy associates, however. That’s one reason why he likes this “bzzzzzzt, gotcha!” game so much. It’s a way of saying: “Hey, this is our club; outsiders are not welcome here! Why don’t you go to a sports bar, or something.” Am I being uncharitable? Perhaps so, but my understanding of Nigel’s POV is as plausible as yours.
Our friend Nigel may or may not play status games of his own, but my issue was with you saying
A person coming from “social culture” to “nerd culture” may interpret everything as a part of some devious status game.
The social person is right here.
And, nope, the social person is not.
Of course, it all depends on the situation and she may be right, but, generally speaking, feeling like an outsider does NOT mean that everyone is playing devious status games against you.
I’m not sure it does depend on that. Suppose your ingroup is made up predominantly of people with ginger hair and your outgroup predominantly of people with brown hair. Then if you make fun of people with brown hair, and admire people with ginger hair, you’re raising the status of your ingroup relative to your outgroup even if you apply this rule consistently given hair colour.
Similarly, if your ingroup is predominantly made up of people who don’t make a certain kind of mistake and your outgroup is mostly made up of people who do.
It’s not clear to me that there’s a good way to tease apart the two hypotheses here. And of course they could both be right: Nigel may sincerely care about the nerdy stuff but also on some level be concerned about raising the status of his fellow nerds.
The social person is right here. Remember ‘X is not about Y’?. The difference is that your ‘social culture’ person is in fact low-to-average status on the relevant hierarchy. Something that’s just “harmless social banter” to people who are confident in their social position can easily become a ‘status attack’, or a ‘microaggression’ from the POV of someone who happens to be more vulnerable. This is not limited to information-exchange at all, it’s a ubiquitous social phenomenon. And this dynamic makes engaging in such status games a useful signal of confidence, so they’re quite likely to persist.
I think that one very important difference between status games and things that might remind people of status game is how long they are expected to stay in people’s memory.
For example, I play pub quizzes and often I am the person who is responsible for the answer sheet. Due to strict time limits, discussion must be as quick as possible, therefore in many situations I (or another person who is responsible for the answer sheet) have to reject an idea a person has came up with based on vague heuristic arguments and usually there is no time for long and elaborate explanations. From the outside, it might look like a status related thing, because I had dismissed a person’s opinion without a good explanation. However, the key difference is that this does not stay in your memory. After a minute or two, all these things that might seem related to status are already forgotten. Ideally, people should not even come into picture (because paying attention to anything else but the question is a waste of time) - very often I do not even notice who exactly came up with a correct answer. If people tend to forget or not even pay attention whom a credit should be given, also, if they tend to forget cases where their idea was dismissed in favour of another person’s idea. In this situation, small slights that happened because discussion should be as quick as possible are not worth remembering, one can be pretty certain that other people will not remember them either. Also, if “everyone knows” they are to be quickly forgotten, they are not very useful in status games either. If something is forgotten it cannot be not forgiven.
Quite different dynamics arise if people have long memories for small slights and “everyone knows” that people have long memories for them. Short memory made them unimportant and useless for status games, but in the second case where they are important and “everyone knows” they are important, they become useful for social games and therefore a greater proportion of them have might have some status related intentionality behind them and not just be random noise.
Similarly, one might play a board game that might things that look like social games, e.g. backstabbing. However, it is expected that when figures go back to the box, all of that is forgotten.
I think that what differentiates information sharing and social games is which of those are more likely to be remembered and which one of them is likely to be quickly forgotten (and whether or not “everyone knows” which is most likely to forgotten or remembered by others). Of course, different people might remember different things about the same situation and they might be mistaken about what other people remember or forget—that’s how a culture clash might look like. On the other hand, the same person might tend to remember different things about different situations, therefore people cannot be neatly divided into different cultures, but at the same time frequency of situations of each type seems to be different for different people.
Yes, this is an important aspect.
I think what people usually keep in mind are not the specific mistakes, but status and alliances. In the “nerd culture”, the individual mistakes are quickly forgotten… however, if someone makes mistakes exceptionally often, or makes a really idiotic mistake and then insists on it, they may gain a long-term reputation of an idiot (which means low status). But even then, if a well-known idiot makes a correct statement, people are likely to accept this specific statement as correct.
In the “social culture”, it’s all about alliances and power. Those change slowly, therefore the reactions to your statements change slowly, regardless of the statements. If you make a mistake and people laugh at you because you are low-status and it is safe to kick you, next time if you make a correct statement, someone may still make fun of you. (But when a high-status person later makes essentially the same statement, people will accept it as a deep wisdom. And they will insist that it is totally not the same thing that you said.) It’s not important what was said, but who said it. Quick changes only come when people change alliances, or suddenly gain or lose power; but that happens rarely.
The pub quiz you play has clearly defined status. You lead it. As such there’s not the uncertainty about status that exists in a lot of other social interactions.
You’re confusing two points of view.
Let’s say social Sally is talking to nerdy Nigel. From the point of view of Sally, there are a lot of microaggressions, and status attacks, and insensitivity, etc. But that is not because Nigel is cunningly conducting a “devious status game”, Nigel doesn’t care about status (including Sally’s) and all he wants to do is talk about his nerdy stuff.
Nigel is not playing a let’s-kick-Sally-around game, Sally is misperceiving the situation.
Oh, Nigel may not care about Sally’s status—that much is clear enough, and I’m not disputing it. He cares a lot about his own status and the status of his nerdy associates, however. That’s one reason why he likes this “bzzzzzzt, gotcha!” game so much. It’s a way of saying: “Hey, this is our club; outsiders are not welcome here! Why don’t you go to a sports bar, or something.” Am I being uncharitable? Perhaps so, but my understanding of Nigel’s POV is as plausible as yours.
Our friend Nigel may or may not play status games of his own, but my issue was with you saying
And, nope, the social person is not.
Of course, it all depends on the situation and she may be right, but, generally speaking, feeling like an outsider does NOT mean that everyone is playing devious status games against you.
Depends on whether “bzzzzzzt, gotcha!” is applied more frequently to the outsiders than to the insiders when they make the same mistake.
In other words, does “making a mistake” screen off “being an outsider”?
I’m not sure it does depend on that. Suppose your ingroup is made up predominantly of people with ginger hair and your outgroup predominantly of people with brown hair. Then if you make fun of people with brown hair, and admire people with ginger hair, you’re raising the status of your ingroup relative to your outgroup even if you apply this rule consistently given hair colour.
Similarly, if your ingroup is predominantly made up of people who don’t make a certain kind of mistake and your outgroup is mostly made up of people who do.
It’s not clear to me that there’s a good way to tease apart the two hypotheses here. And of course they could both be right: Nigel may sincerely care about the nerdy stuff but also on some level be concerned about raising the status of his fellow nerds.