Tech Support Syndrome and a last Reply to Ryan for a while

Monday, December 7, 2009

 

Started here.

I've never seen Ryan refuse to engage with his readers, I know Ryan has never refused to engage with me even when I disagree with him. There's a firm difference between refusing to engage, and discouraging stupidity.

That said, I think there's certainly value in Ryan being called on his shit occasionally. Cause the dude is 20 - and while he is unquestionably smart and 'gets it' - at 20, he's still going to get caught in his own arrogance, he's still going to misjudge things, and he's still going to fuck things up and need to be called on it before he'll get it. You can't be 20 and smart without being arrogant. You can't be told that you 'get it' by miscellaneous smart people (and morons from the internet) at 20 without starting to scorn the morons who don't get it.

Ryan has what I describe as Tech Support syndrome - he constantly deals with complicated concepts that relate to the lives of everybody he encounters, and he, and those around him, have internalized those ideas so soundly, that the people who can't follow those concepts through in a logical and sensible way, seem like fucking retards.

Tech support monkeys get shot down by a smart customer, college prodigies tend to be humbled by a professor they idolize or something. Or the lesson comes from parents or an employer or something.

Ryan's stepped away from his parents, and I don't think Tucker is the sort of person to demonstrate the lesson. I don't know where Ryan's going to get the right sort of experience to cure him of that experience and give him perspective - but I'll be interested to read the story when it happens.

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