There you are, minding your own business, enjoying the camaraderie and social connections in a scene or a group, with everyone seemingly getting along just fine, when suddenly it strikes…. DRAMA!

You’ve only been on this forum for a few months, but you feel you know the place pretty well, and so it comes as a total shock to you when, out of the darkness of the human soul creeps….. DRAMA!

You can’t believe it! You finally found a place where people care as much about the best show in the Universe (Marsupilami, as if you had to ask) as you do, and then these ASSHOLES have to ruin it by starting up another round of that hated enemy…. DRAMA!

And the one thing you know, beyond even the ghost of the spirit of the shadow of a doubt, is that all these people in your group or scene are definitely the most whiny, emo, backbiting, divisive, factionalizing, self-destructive crybabies in the world!

Just every other group or scene.

Yes, if there’s one thing das Internetzen and all fannish groups agree upon, it’s that their group or scene is the absolute worst for interpersonal conflicts, people breaking into subgroups or subscenes, people taking things too seriously and/or too personally, and everyone doing it all right there in public and dragging everyone else into it with them, making people choose sides, and capsizing your precious little island of stability and commonality into the sea of people who just don’t get you.

It’s adorable, really, how many people can simultaneously hold the exact same mutually exclusive opinion about their particular in group. It’s a fairly harmless form of provincialism, roughly on the same level as every parent thinking their little ones are the cutest, smartest, healthiest children in the world. In both cases, on some level, the people involved know that it’s probably not true. But they just keep on thinking it anyhow. They have no choice.

Still, as someone who has poked his nose into a number of various subcultures and social groups, I have been amazed and amused at the universality of this conclusion. Somehow, completely independently, millions of nerds have all come to the same conclusion about their fan group : they are the absolute worst when it comes to that dread beast, DRAMA.

And obviously, probability alone would suggest this probably is not the case. With thousands of little drawers in the grand portmanteau that is the World of Nerds, the odds of your little cubbyhole being the worst for this “drama” phenomenon are very poor indeed.

So what gives? Why does this phenomenon happen again and again and again?

Part of the answer is found in the term “drama” in the first place. The fact that all the people involved intuitively point to certain forms of human interaction and label them “drama”, and use that word as a perjorative, as something that is so inherently bad that it inherently and instantly brings the character and even the mental health of the people involved into question, is the vital clue in this mystery.

People outside fannish circles do not think this way. It’s a nerd thing. Why?

First, we have to note that nerds tend rather heavily towards the intellectual. No duh, I know.

But as such, they tend, as a group, to have a very high level of abstract reasoning skills, but a relatively low level of social understanding and emotional awareness.

This makes for a group of people who are, on the one hand, very good at being reasonable and tolerant and mature (often helped by strongly internalized desire to seem “grown up”), but who lack the basic social and emotional awareness to understand the social milieu in which they participate. What is more, they lack the kind of broad social experience it takes to understand that “drama” is something which happens absolutely everywhere human being are socially connected. Period. It doesn’t matter if it’s a workplace, a fan club, an army barracks, or a knitting circle. Human beings are simply too complex to remain in perfect peace and harmony forever. Eventually, people get on each other’s nerves, and someone says something that sets another person off, and off we go into what we nerds call “drama” and the rest of humanity calls “life”.

So part of the problem is a certain kind of social naivete. Nerds do not know any better, so they figure other groups get along just swell, and there must be something wrong with their group alone. Thus, this notion is a subset of the much larger social illusion that “everyone is normal and happy but me”.

Another part of the puzzle is that nerds, being intellectuals, tend towards a rational, relaxed, conflict-avoidant, socially harmony seeking temperament. This is very good for short-term and somewhat superficial and impersonal association with one another.

But once human being associate with one another for a long enough time, they stop being cordial strangers to one another, the social barriers between them come down, and they begin thinking and feeling a lot more deeply about one another and the group as a whole.

This lowering of barriers leads both to the increased feeling of inclusion and intimacy that the socially isolated nerd seeks so desperately and to the increased chance for conflict.

In fact, those with a keen interest in a particular subculture should be glad to see conflict arising, because it means that the group has reached the point of success as a social enterprise that it has begone to act like that quintessential unit of human social interaction : a family, with all that implies.

Add into this the nerd/intellectual’s tendency to avoid conflict at all costs, and what you have is a lot of feeling being swept under the rug and suppressed in favor of short term social stability, leading to periodic volcanic eruptions in which all the suppressed conflict comes welling up to the surface in a white hot uncontrollable torrent, and wreaking havoc on the whole damn scene.

Hence, periods of seeming calm punctuated by short but very intense bursts of highly emotionally charged conflict… colloquially known as “drama”.

It would be better for all concerned if we nerds stopped fearing “drama” and started conflict as a natural part of healthy human interaction, instead of clinging to this idea that total calm is the norm and these outbreaks of conflict are some sort of pathological disease of your particular subgroup.

If we simply understand that “drama” is inevitable and not something to be feared, we can open up the door to making our groups a safer and more accepting place to express anger, doubt, fear, and so forth, and hence deprive these attacks of “drama” of much of their destructive intensity.

Merely recognizing and accepting that some social tension is perfectly normal and natural and not something that can be punished or avoided into nonexistence will go a long way towards keeping the social waters of your fannish life calm and volcano free.

Above all, you need to be aware of what is happening in your group so you can be an intelligent and proactive member of your community instead of simply reacting when it’s already too late. Look for signs that people are feeling frustrated or unheard. Ask people what is bothering them. Make room for people to express themselves without feeling like they will be vilified for rocking the boat.

If you do this, you can have a community, fan group, subculture, or club that keeps going on being a supportive and happy place for us lonely nerds for many years to come.

If you don’t, sooner or later, you will be standing in the wreckage of a once fine group that seemed to suddenly and inexplicably tear itself to pieces in an orgy of irrationality.

It’s hardly inevitable or inexplicable. It’s normal human interaction, not a terrible shameful aberration unique to your particular grouping of intellectually advanced naked beach apes.

Surely we’re smart enough to see the thunderstorms coming and get in out of the rain?