Nerd language barrier

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People often tell me I'm speaking a foreign tongue when I seriously explain what I've been spending my time on. Nearly 18 years of hacking gadgets & systems will do that it seems. I don't want my wired nature alienating someone who loves me.

What's to be done o' wise geeks?

Gisel troas ze hol phyrinitoie. Yman phaive velaze noy nel don gisel shen.

Xen tess vehol yman á lyragon gyseliss hagasel. Me za cheme yniss lagasel, hid'zarie maledaná cah za haípedanâvit? Cah tess vehol yman á gisel gasel nonn haphive.

though i guess it gets tiring to have to dumb things down so the "normies" can understand it.

I'm afraid you're right. English is a middle ground & nothing more. Why am I even using it now?

Not that I want to demean anyone's intellect though.

What's to be done? Just keep speaking in the same manner as usual. That way you will attract a girl with the same interests and vocabulary as you.

I'm not concerned with that as much as accommodating those I already know. It's not that everybody's unappreciative of all my technical work but I want them to feel more comfortable asking about it.

People generally just want to talk about themselves.

I’m a music composer who just this past year began using algorithms in PureData to create contemplative symphonic music. My wife has never slept better!

Do people really care that I wrote algorithms for generating 12-tone music that passes through another algorithm for quantizing notes to a traditional diatonic scale? Nope. Most people have no idea what 12-tone serialism even is, much less algorithm. So I just tell them I make relaxing music with a computer.

Like I said, people just want to talk about themselves and hear themselves talk. So a typical convo might be:

Hi! Nice to meet you! So what do you do all day?

I’m a musician. I also write instrumental music.

Oh yeah? What kind of music?

Mostly orchestra music for relaxation.

Whoa...you write for orchestras?

Haha! Well, kinda. We don’t need orchestras anymore. We have computers for that. So what do you do?

I’m an engineer.

Oh really? Cool. That sounds smart. So for us non-engineer types, what does that mean exactly?

Well, I do ___ and ___.

Ok. Sounds like you use a lot of math. Where did you study?

___

Oh really??? No kidding? I graduated from there in ‘00. Who did you take for your math courses?

____

Oh wow...that’s cool. I had her for ___. Hey did you ever have___?

...

At a certain point you deflect attention from yourself and focus on the other person. Open that up and you’ll never get your new friend to shut up. And they’ll think you’re the coolest person on the planet even though they really hardly know you.

Just yesterday, in fact, I participated in a color run fundraiser for a former student who has leukemia. This AS kid who used to take piano from me and later baritone for one semester was there. He ended up being big track star at my school and has gone on to bigger and better things. So I got him to tell me all about college, who all he’s met, what he’s doing, running (he’s too busy for sports now), etc. I let him dominate the conversation until 5 minutes before race time and would have kept going if I’d let him. He came in a good minute ahead of me. Afterwards we talked some more.

Thing is, his special interests include karate. Despite being athletic, he’s awkward and has some obvious issues. He got expelled from where I used teach and came over to where I am now because of fighting. A kid gave him a hard time, so he rearranged the guy’s face. Seriously messed him up, too. He struggles because people his age don’t really know how to relate to him. So I make a point every time I see him to engage him and just let him talk.

Anime, manga, writing stories, etc., are strikingly unusual activities for young people where I live. Well, I was exposed to those kinds of things back in the 80’s, so a certain segment of young people are usually surprised to hear me “speak their language.” What I end up doing, unlike on WP, is I suppress my enthusiasm and just listen to other people talk about it. I’ll ask a question from time to time to remind folks I’m in the room and listening. The effect is that people tend to see me as more important than I really am, and I get a cheap thrill from knowing I have that much influence.

Save speaking at length about your own interests for when you’re with your own tribe and you are passing information that people WANT to know. For everyone else, keep it simple and focus on the other person.

Never go academic while conversing with people.

AngelRho gave a good example.

In my experience, more women are even less patient and react more unfavorably to academic/geeky conversations than men. They would quickly label you as nerd and boring if you go into technical details in any subject.

You know, most people have to do this to a certain extent anyway. For example, I'm a nurse and work in the medical field. When I'm talking to other medical people, I use jargon. But when I'm talking to a lay person, I use everyday language.

Just a matter of knowing your audience and being able to switch back and forth. If you want people to listen to you, you have to be able to speak their language.

And as was already mentioned, you have to show an interest in your listener, too.

Don't show your power level! I also like to work on gadgets as a hobby, I also do martial arts. And there is a lot of jargon in my job.
Most people really don't care to hear the minutia of your hobbies and/or interests. In fact the little that you say the better, they will ask probing questions if they want more info.
A side note: at work one year, an aide would ask me questions about various things that interest me and see long he can get me talking about it. I caught on when it qas apperent that he was asking me questions he knew.
So yes, long rambling explanations about your interest rarely appeals to normies.

Just remember that the vast majority of people aren't going to be experts in your field of specialization, so speaking to them as though they should know all this stuff is a waste of everybody's time. You've got to give them a very vague outline of what you do and only give more information if they ask for it.

Maybe you can ask somebody you know who's really knowledgeable in an area you're inexperienced with to explain exactly what it is they do. It'll be a load of complete gibberish to you and you'll be able to appreciate how it feels to be on the receiving end of information dumps.

It’s a form of manipulation. I make no bones about it. The most successful people out there do it all the time, though, and most people are purely instinctive with it.

What you’re SUPPOSED to do is turn it around and probe the person engaging you that way. Someone who is disingenuous, I.e. just trying to see what he can get out of you, will either shut down on you or they just won’t stop talking. You learn to watch what you say around those people. You end up finding out that person is a complainer or a gossip.

The less you say, the better. If both people are playing this little game, it turns into an equal give and take. Quid pro quo. You are equally interesting to each other.

To me, that’s what dating is more about. You do best when you can show interest in everyone. It has the effect of making you look more interesting than you really are. You’ll end up finding that one person who is as much interested in you. Not necessarily someone into your same hobbies or music, but loves you more in terms of character. You can have almost nothing in common with someone and still be into them, and the only common ground is each other.

Right you are, what's confusing however is that all the same ladies were cool with my nerdy ways in square one. Of course to varying degrees, usually no matter who I'm talking with I digress a lot & speak anecdotally instead of mumbling software architecture or stringing together acryonyms.

Nevertheless, I've said it before & I'll say it again, we didn't build the internet to perpetuate sexism or ignorance, it's sad to see people write off their own ability to understand these things. Technology is for learning & for many it's cheap entertainment at best or capitalising on their soul at worst.

Oh I'm a mountain biker, we LOVE scary medical stories. I know a lot of medical jargon too, I'd say people find scientific Latin all the more repugnant than even technology. Luckily I love a CNA something tells me friends are used to me explicating the jargon as I go.

I guess my thread is mostly about inclusivity towards said tribe. I don't want anyone who cares about me sold short on what's to be learned about. Same reason I want to learn what they're doing.

Plainly I have much to learn of palace intrigue.