2y ago

What are some ways you've generally handled know-it-all nerds? The kind that gatekeep the concept of being highly intelligent? They've taken advantage of me all my life because I'm unconfident.

CW sexual assault, physical assault Growing up, I've been repeatedly assaulted and harassed by know it all's. That's how upsettingly nerdy they were about gatekeeping the autonomy of thinking for myself. Because they wanted to violate the most intimate of boundaries, and not have me fight back. They wanted control and power over me in every way. To play pretend that they were all powerful and intelligent wizards.

I see a lot of communists on here saying things that might lead to them being stigmatized, and I want to be able to do that more. You guys shut down nerdiness. I've been conditioned to have controlling nerd voices in my head, and automatically let them convince me out of setting boundaries and speaking up for what I believe in. Now I'm my own controlling nerd, and I don't want to be. I want to walk the right path regardless of how stigmatized it may be.

How do you shut down nerds? Especially when their opinions are antihuman? If you don't care about piggypoopballs opinions, what are your reasons for not caring?

27 comments

As a former
, I've learned that the first, best step you can take is learning to tell people to shut up
It can be hard, mainly because we're usually browbeaten into believing that we're supposed to settle things with civility
But the thing is, they're the ones who aren't being civil, they're the ones who don't show anyone respect, they're the ones who will resort to cruelty and bullying
So it's important to remember that even if you don't know everything, you know enough to know that nobody knows everything and anyone who pretends to be the arbiter of absolute knowledge is just being a shit
- I want to say "shut up" all the time. Thing is, I don't want to choke on the rest of my words and silently freeze afterwards.
  
  One that i like to use when I'm clearly just being "talked at" is "nah, I'm done here. i don't owe you a debate" and then STICKING TO MY GUNS and exiting the situation
  
  I actually disagree with shut up. These people are looking for anything that can keep it going and keep them being powerful over you. Saying shut up will give them what they want, a response. Them, the intellectual, you the angry person saying shut up.
  Just say you're done with the conversation and stop responding. Silent indifference eats at these deeply insecure people.
  
  Freezing them out hurts them more than saying shut up. Any response at all validates them and you getting angry really does validate them more than freezing them out because you’re telling them they’re important enough to get upset about.
  “Grey rock” them.
  This isn’t just self help “they aren’t worth your time” advice. Legitimately it’s the best way to get back at them. They want validation in the form of a response, of occupying your attention, so don’t give them your attention. Be a grey rock.
Intelligence is a poorly defined concept, epistemology makes any notion of objective knowledge seem hallucinatory, and it's much more likely that self-declared intelligence has a psychological origin than an objective one so that they're entire personality is built on foundations of sand.
I interacted with a lot of intelligent assholes in my schooling in physics, and I was on track to be one of them until I realizing that leaning into that role was trying to exempt myself from the basic social requirements of humanity. The end result of that didn't seem like a good place to end up so I ran the opposite way with it.
So if you find yourself interacting with one who seems intent on beating you down, try lampshading what they're doing and what they hope to accomplish and why they think this strategy is the best way of getting there and just keep asking them why they think that and if they have evidence and if it perhaps can be attributed to their own pyschological factors and so on. Because these types also typically eschew the social sciences they'll quickly end up on the backfoot.
- Example: "someone smart like you knows that education and psychology studies show that treating people like an id*ot alienates them, makes them less agreeable to your ideas and your person, and makes accomplishing shared goals that much more difficult. Are you trying to make things more difficult intentionally or are you trying to accomplish something else and if so could you explain why you think that might be helpful or useful?"
  
  I'm a slow thinker and that length of text is hard to remember. The few times I speak from the heart, it's been conclusions about understandings I've been thinking about for years rooted in deeply personal experiences. Epiphanies I came up with on my own.
  I guess I'll try to use what you said by letting it build into epiphanies. You do make points I vaguely thought about many times.
  I'm glad to hear you chose saving yourself from being a full blown nerd. You sound like a nice and supportive person.
- Intelligence is a poorly defined concept
  Not exactly on topic [OP disregard this], but a definition that works fairly well for me is that "intelligence is the general ability of someone to quickly uptake, mentally organize, and synthesize new information".
  There is something to the concept of "intelligence" as a trait, but as you mentioned it is often measured by others as a quantity of knowledge that someone has, or tested against specific knowledge (IQ tests) that may be an expression of intelligence, but are incredibly flawed interpretations. Someone can be very intelligent and still end up sort of a "dummy" if the information they are processing so well is garbage.
  I would say that when someone has the intuition to identify false information, that's a part of having "wisdom".
"lmao okay *
motion* " then leave.
It's that easy!
- Wanker gesture really wins them up.
  I used to take myself way too seriously and this one in particular would send me nuclear
"Nerds" seem to cling to an idea of objective truth, and that their ideologies are universal, and that they are important for the "knowledge" they have obtained.
You can flip the script by pointing out the ways these things are wrong.
Lol "that's what they want you to think" "Where'd you get that,
?" Or if you really want to piss them off compare them to an evangelical pundit or

"Anyone can get a Ph.D / doctorate, it's the most middle-brow achievement" "What do you call the guy who finishes last in med school?" (Doctor) "spent your time slaving away when you could have been stacking papers" "too smart to be happy, not smart enough to be successful"
Nerds will generally take the bait and continue to try to make their point if you catch them in a leading question / insult. "I know YOU can rely on RealDolls for jobs no one wants to do, but other work needs living minimum wage, healthcare, etc." "Your mom wasn't really providing 'skilled labor' last night but she still should make a living wage" "Everyone makes mistakes, like your parents when they made you" "Hey yeah, with all the money you're saving by not tipping, maybe you can buy a friend / self-respect / whatever"
Online: drop a wojak, pig poop balls, close tab
Real life: smile, don’t dignify them with a response, walk away
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3tG-4i0ygBE
It works with know it all nerds, asshole customers, family members, coworkers, managers, etc. They’ll probably end up seething to themselves or finding someone to complain to. If they care that much they’ll come find you and continue arguing, but chances are they don’t want to be making a fool of themselves.
- I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
  yewtu.be
  inv.zzls.xyz
  yt.artemislena.eu
  piped.video
I hold my hand up like I'm wearing a sock puppet and match its movements to their speech so it's like the imaginary sock puppet is talking instead of them.
I also do it any time I just want to annoy someone. It works especially well if they're talking to someone else and you hold the "puppet" just behind their shoulder so they can tell everyone's attention isn't quite on them.
Edit: Also when they tell you to stop deny all knowledge of what they're talking about, and give the hand a "get a load of this guy" look. One of the key parts is that you don't need to worry about how to respond or falling over your words, you're just mocking them with the worst, lowest effort ventriloquist act ever conceived, while making completely implausible denials. It's basically being stonewalled by an actual clown.
- That's behavior you'd see in a show I love called Black Books. The three main characters are usually drunk and not giving a shit about most things they're doing. Two are all about avoiding effort where effort isn't needed, and I admire it.
  
  You're right, I can definitely see Bernard doing something like that.
Is just being straight up with them about how theyre making you feel not an option? Like if you cant point at anything specifically it doesnt really matter, theyre still making you feel like shit.
Do you have to be around this person?
- It's a pattern of people I keep running into. You'd think I'd have enough practice handling them by now.
  There seems to be a type that doesn't care how people feel if they can take advantage of them. They seem to view people on a hierarchy of power, and only view who they see as "on their level and above" as respectable. You can set boundaries with them, but if they've already began abusing you, they're just offended by you setting boundaries. There's never any real respect. How you feel only matters to them if your boundaries seem too threatening to cross.
  I try to make myself inaccessible to being used for their power trips, but I have trouble with that. So it happens and then I'm stuck in this position of avoiding them, which I don't want to do. I want to chill regardless of if they're present or not. And handle conversations with them well.
  
  oh i see what you're talking about
  whereever you are at/the field you are in attracts these kinds of people
  i don't think there's much you can do about how people are. i think the best you can do is stop caring about what they think and put the kids gloves on when they are around.
know-it-all nerds
I mean you've been handling this site alright.
I guess you can't avoid them... (that'd be my first line of defense).
(This feels like a very silly thing to ask) Have you ever straight up confronted them about it? Like, when they do the
schtick have you ever just dead-eye stared at them for a solid 30 seconds before pointing out that they're being a flaming poo bag for no reason?
If you want to go rrrreeaaalllyyy dark... if you've got some friends who can keep their cool and don't mind breaking a person's brain... pick one of the asshat know-it-all-nerds and find some one thing and just work together to gaslight the shit of them.
Know more then them on a particular subject and embatrass them.
I like sandbagging any little facts they have. "That's cool" "that's nice" or "don't care". If they say anything especially heinous, i like to pull the "no one will remember you when you're gone.".

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