The Five Geek Social Fallacies? Do Any Apply To You?

No Digg auto-summary, so you get Gemini. Read it anyway. This is over 20 years old. Does it hold up today?

Michael Suileabhain-Wilson’s 2003 article, "Five Geek Social Fallacies," explores how certain well-intentioned social ideals in "geek" communities can inadvertently lead to dysfunctional group dynamics. The author argues that these fallacies often stem from a history of social exclusion and a desire to create a safe haven, but when taken to extremes, they protect toxic behavior and cause unnecessary drama.

The five fallacies are:

Ostracizers Are Evil: Because many geeks have been victims of exclusion, they view the act of "kicking someone out" as inherently immoral. This makes it nearly impossible for a group to remove someone who is genuinely obnoxious, predatory, or disruptive, as anyone who suggests doing so is labeled an "evil ostracizer."
Friends Accept Me As I Am: This is the belief that true friends should never criticize one another. In practice, this prevents healthy accountability. If someone points out a friend’s problematic behavior, the "carrier" of this fallacy views the criticism itself—rather than the behavior—as a betrayal of the friendship.
Friendship Before All: This fallacy posits that friendship is a binary state where a friend must always prioritize the needs of the group over everything else (work, family, or self-care). It creates a "friendship test" where any failure to drop everything for a friend is seen as a sign that the friendship is a lie.
Friendship Is Transitive: This is the assumption that if I am friends with Person A and Person B, then A and B must necessarily be friends with each other. It ignores the fact that people have different social needs and "mesh" differently, often leading to awkward forced social gatherings where incompatible people are pushed together.
Friends Do Everything Together: The belief that every member of a social circle must be invited to every single activity. This makes it impossible to have smaller, specialized gatherings (like a specific game or a private dinner) without others feeling excluded or "betrayed," leading to logistical nightmares and "stealth" social events planned in secret.

The author concludes that while these ideas start from a place of kindness and inclusivity, they often result in "social debt" and conflict-aversion, allowing a few problematic individuals to hold entire social groups hostage.