I am a student in art school, but I work in a machine learning research lab. I talk to hip people half the day, and nerds the other half. I hope (at least in part) that I've managed to pick up a little of both dialects.<p>I think that the point about speaking the written word is an excellent one. My nerd socialization as a young adult came almost entirely in text. I became used to the way that punctuation, flow, phrase length, and formatting communicated. Particularly when writing comments or IMing, it is fantastically important to be able to convey tone. If I'm sarcastic and you can't tell, I may ruin the conversation. When I'm talking about computer science, I end up using those skills more than the usual nonverbal cues.<p>I'd also make a point about eye-contact: it's really hard to think while making eye contact. When a "fan" talks, they let the eyes wander so that they can think. When listening, they focus the gaze to prevent internal dialogue from getting in the way of hearing.<p>Or maybe we're just awkward. Hard to say.