A man details his functional workflow to extract an embedded video from a web page. The Author, his head clutched in his hands and writhing in something akin to an allergic reaction, relates an internal monologue about not wanting to know how anyone less technically literate thinks. To people like the Author, the Method is at least as important as the Results.
This demonstrates an axiom of nerd culture, “Why aren’t you as smart as I am?” Many hackers invest countless hours of their lives learning a huge volume of detail about specifics of today’s technology, but then because of their profound insecurities dismiss this effort entirely. This effect is akin in many ways to Impostor Syndrome, but usually rooted in the need for positive parental or peer attention. But, nerd dominance tells these individuals that anyone with fewer facts memorized is beneath them. These conflicting social cues lead the nerd to a kind of pauper’s arrogance: “I may be scum, but this person is even worse than scum!”
