I have a good understanding what <i>dude</i> means, my question was a rhetorical one to try to deconstruct what the author meant by &quot;white dude&quot;. How do you know a person you see for the first time at a hackerspace is a &quot;dude&quot;? If we accept you explanation of the disparaging use of <i>dude</i>, how does the woman in the hackerspace perceive what a given person conforms to?<p>But why keep the discussion philosophical, after all a word&#x27;s meaning is its use, right? As a simplistic experiment google &quot;geek dude&quot; and &quot;geek&quot; and look at the image results to try to figure out what the extra <i>dude</i> adds.