Tact Filter

This is an interesting take on the difficulty us nerds have with social interaction:
"All people have a 'tact filter', which applies tact in one direction to everything that passes through it. Most 'normal people' have the tact filter positioned to apply tact in the outgoing direction. Thus whatever normal people say gets the appropriate amount of tact applied to it before they say it. This is because when they were growing up, their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, 'If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all!'

'Nerds,' on the other hand, have their tact filter positioned to apply tact in the incoming direction. Thus, whatever anyone says to them gets the appropriate amount of tact added when they hear it. This is because when nerds were growing up, they continually got picked on, and their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, 'They're just saying those mean things because they're jealous. They don't really mean it.'

When normal people talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they say, and no one's feelings get hurt. When nerds talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they hear, and no one's feelings get hurt. However, when normal people talk to nerds, the nerds often get frustrated because the normal people seem to be dodging the real issues and not saying what they really mean. Worse yet, when nerds talk to normal people, the normal people's feelings often get hurt because the nerds don't apply tact, assuming the normal person will take their blunt statements and apply whatever tact is necessary.

So, nerds need to understand that normal people have to apply tact to everything they say; they become really uncomfortable if they can't do this. Normal people need to understand that despite the fact that nerds are usually tactless, things they say are almost never meant personally and shouldn't be taken that way. Both types of people need to be extra patient when dealing with someone whose tact filter is backwards relative to their own. "
Copyright © 1996, 2006 by Jeff Bigler (http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html)

This is interesting to me because I had many issues with this in High School as I transitioned from nerd to semi-normal. I couldn't understand why I wasn't allowed to blatantly say what I thought about situations, and when taken to task for it, I would often get angry and not really know why.

Factoring in Mr. Bigler's ideas, it seems that during Middle School the other kids were being socialized different that I. When another kid saw or talked to me, I rarely got the benefit of any tact filters, people I had never even seen before would take time out of their day to tell me what I nerd I was. So, naturally, when I started interacting with normal people, I would tell them why they suck, just like everyone else did to me. When told that this was not the way to act, it caused me to look back at all the people that had made fun of me and reverse the "didn't really mean it" caveat, and I would get upset reliving those experiences. Later in life I got to realize that kids are dumb and rarely say anything informed, so nothing that anyone said mattered in Middle School.