Sven A. Schmidt
your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦RE: https://hachyderm.io/@ekuber/116789174312475622
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❝ I hate the "asshole genius" trope because all it's done is convince assholes that they are geniuses, and non-geniuses to think the way to appear smart is to be an asshole.❞
Scary Austin@blogdiva
Good Lord yes, Elon Musk is the poster child, because the "asshole genius" idea is very rooted in white male supremacy.
Good Lord yes, Elon Musk is the poster child, because the "asshole genius" idea is very rooted in white male supremacy.
Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen@MaryAustinBooks @blogdiva I blame Richard Feynman and Bobby Fischer
@BegoniaArizona@mxchara I would add Ezra Pound and Keith Jarrett to that list.
Ricardus@Ricardus is it rare to refer to Bobby Fischer? I suppose there's a lot of chessic folks who would prefer to forget him
@mxchara Well, I used to play a lot of tournaments and actually ran a chess club called "The Robert J. Fischer Memorial Chess Club, Not Dead But What Has He Done For Us Lately" (and of course this was when he was still alive) The USCF actually let us register that name.
Anyway, I don't hear that many references to him these days. That's all I'm saying.
Irenes (many)@mxchara @MaryAustinBooks @blogdiva honestly it's hard to tell at this distance but we get the feeling that so did Socrates
@ireneista @MaryAustinBooks @blogdiva more to the point: the charge against Socrates in Aristophanes's The Clouds was that sophists (symbolized by Socrates, unfairly, maybe) were using logical tricks to weasel out of agreements and oaths and stuff, making honest business impossible.
@ireneista @MaryAustinBooks @blogdiva jeez good thing Aristophanes warned us all, so it didn't become a general problem! =D
@mxchara @MaryAustinBooks @blogdiva yes, absolutely. he'd call himself a lover of wisdom, but there were those who'd have called him a wise-ass.
Alephwyr@ireneista @mxchara @MaryAustinBooks @blogdiva My understanding is he was an old man of status and prior military service who publicly opposed a war. But also a weird autistic toe Walker and also sex pest.
@ireneista @MaryAustinBooks @blogdiva I disagree; as written, Holmes is remarkably compassionate. But adaptations have created the jerkass Holmes trope.
Father Hardstone@MaryAustinBooks @blogdiva Musk !! A genius ??! More like asshole Billionaire (Trillionaire now)... none of the tech bros are any genius !
@harib_murshidi @blogdiva
Yes, that was my point. He thinks because he's a bigot and a sociopath with white skin and a bunch of apartheid dollars, he's a genius. He didn't get that idea out of thin air.
Yes, that was my point. He thinks because he's a bigot and a sociopath with white skin and a bunch of apartheid dollars, he's a genius. He didn't get that idea out of thin air.
Mark Gjøl@MaryAustinBooks @blogdiva I had a boss once who looked up to Steve Jobs and how he ruthlessly treated his employees as if this was a desirable trait. To me, he's the original asshole boss, but I'm sure there are plenty to choose from before him.
ClipHeadThat's the reason I don't watch Rick and Morty anymore. Because Rick is exactly this...
The Problem with Rick and Morty | Renegade Cut
Ben Ramsey
geolaw
Ben Rush
Ian K. Rogers ikr?╭ರ_ಠ@blogdiva A person who is significantly smarter than everyone around them is usually so traumatized by social bullying by the time they reach adulthood that they learn to get heir own way by seeming "nice" and prey on social weakness. The assholes usually don't care about people very much because people have treated them like shit and they aren't manipulative. The assholes are often actually nicer people underneath their social defenses.
@blogdiva yepppppppppp
an actual bus@blogdiva Honestly, being an asshole is so counter-productive to being a genius because humility is so key to learning
Tom 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️@renardboy @blogdiva
Case in point: Stockton Rush, builder of the imploded OceanGate Titan submersible.
Case in point: Stockton Rush, builder of the imploded OceanGate Titan submersible.
Toni Aittoniemi@blogdiva Yeah. It really is bullshit, because all businesses are people businesses in the end.
I think people also confuse honesty with assholery, because our business culture is soaked so thoroughly with bootlickery.
John Ripley@blogdiva @brouhaha @ekuber Many examples of this in my career, but most notable: Vic Gundotra (yes that one). Coworkers would exit meetings and comment “how he gets stuff done” and “doesn’t let failure slide”. My response: “He’s just thumping the desk with his fist and picking a team to shout at each day”
Kind of always recognized managers like that throughout my career, usually instantly. Gets me in trouble, because others don’t understand why I think their boss is a dick.
K.C. Budd@jripley God, thank you.
It's no coincidence that someone who conflated that behavior with "leadership" and "impact" ended up imploding because a team under him used <checks notes> image load impressions from Google Photos to inflate the metrics of his mandatory failing social media product.
Charo del Genio@blogdiva YES! And thank you for saying it clearly!
This resonates very much with me also for personal reasons. About 10 years ago, in what was a *truly bad* personal period in my life, a guy I know professionally contacted me, telling me he knew I was on a bad period and pretending to offer me a certain job. I thanked him very much for it and then, when I enquired, he laughed at me and said that I was just supposed to finish some tasks that one of his subordinates, who quit, left unfinished, and "how could you even think that I would lobby for someone like you to get that position, hahahahaha!". Lately, a colleague mentioned him to me and I told him this story, and INSTANTLY I became the bad guy because "noooo, he's a genius, and also he's autistic, are you crazy, how can you say that an autistic person is an asshole."
Sorry for the rant, but there are maybe 3 people in the world that cause me such a visceral reaction, and this guy is one of them.
Ambrose Verdigris@Verdigris @blogdiva as a highly functioning one, I will add that the two things are independent. One can be neurotypical or neurodivergent, and a terrible human being or a nice one, with at least 4 possible combinations.
As to the specific person, frankly, I always thought he was a very neurotypical guy who just does hipster things and acts the part of "I am so deep that you commoners can't understand my profound philosophy". And, incidentally, I surely do not consider him a genius.
Shaula Evans
Eh
Woolfhound@blogdiva there was an actually-good business book about 20 years ago called “The No Assholes Rule” that made this point - pretty much nobody is so great that it’s worth the damage they do.
Kierkethumbs up convincingly@blogdiva We could use a canon of scientific and artistic geniuses who weren’t assholes
Darth Osler@Kierkegaanks @blogdiva I nominate Fred Rogers to the list
David McMullin@blogdiva
A related observation I’ve made before:
David McMullin (@[email protected])
I’ve been fortunate to know a lot of people who are really smart. And I’ve known a lot of people who can’t stop telling me how smart they are. They’re not the same people.
baconandcoconut@blogdiva There's way too many "Mommy's special boy" adults running around. They've been coddled, told that they deserve the world and vigorously sheltered from any disagreements or consequences.
economística@blogdiva I'm reading Humankind by Rutger Bregman and his theory about why we outlived Neanderthals is that although they had bigger brains and were individually smarter, we are better at imitating and socializing knowledge. What one of us knows can and should help everyone else!
Kent Navalesi ☕️Devil's advocate: in certain parts of the US, any kind of assertiveness in the workplace is considered rude and off-putting. Sometimes the "smart asshole" is really just trying to break the group indecision that results when everyone's tiptoeing around everyone else.