Edgy Conversations: Being a Knowledge Snob Isn’t Cool.

Sometimes on the weekends I take my sons down to the park to play and I sit on the bench and watch as they interact with they children on the playground. I laugh. I observe. I come to their aid when they are holding into the monkey bars with one hand. It’s an interesting social experiment.

That brings me to Twitter.

I use Twitter as a listening device by day and a tool to retweet good content by night. It’s my own personal strategy for absorbing large amounts of “people knowledge” without needing to jump into every conversation and share every feeling I have.

Remember that old “knowledge equals power” quote? Your parents and teachers scared you with that so you would get better grades. Not so you could turn into a knowledge snob.

It is troubling to me how snobby we have become? We have become high-grade intellectual bullies.

Shouting at people who ask us for help. Mocking those who disagree with our opinion. All across the interwebs.

Has twitter spawned a generation of snobby, manner-less scalawags? Why are we behaving like first-class jerks?

After all, any knowledge that we have is a result of someone else somewhere.

No one successful ever got in the position all on their own…

It took a bunch of people who “had their back“.

One of the paramount perspectives for high performance is the idea of giving back. It’s the idea that you give your gift of knowledge to the world and expect nothing in return. You give because:

1. It is your gift to give and
2. You were given to.

Right? It’s a mindset that does not need to take greedily for one’s self (as a defense mechanism).

This is fundamental to understanding and maintaining high performance.

Takers are losers…

When you demand that people listen to you being a jerk, you are telling the rest of the world that you are a loser.

So give.

Care.