Ever get bashed by people for being 'techy'?

russell664 said:
Step Mother, Father, Step Brother/Sister pretty much everyone family at the moment.
Even my Nan called me 'weird minded'.

Tried to have a discussion, but always results in a heated argument.

Thanks, will certainly start doing that!
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Surely the solution is not to talk to them about it? Without meaning to be offensive, based on whsat you are saying your family appear to be a little ignorant and are just lashing out at something that they themselves don't really understand. If that is the main thing they have to complain about where you are concerned, then you must be doing something right.

russell664 said:
Yeah, could do with some of those, problem is I go out, but am not a fan of drinking or anything like that. Messaged a couple of old friends the other week, but they actually ignored me, which hurt a little to say the least.
Was kind of bullied through school, and left with a number of friends I could fit on one hand, one by one have moved away, and moved on.

Don't like to seem such a downer, or look hard done by, just for some reason this weekend has really tipped me!
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Maybe your family are also expressing a little worry for you not having in their view a real social life, which they are unfortunately expressing in the wrong way by knocking the one thing that makes you feel happy when you are alone, your PC gaming and upgrading hobby.

I was once in a situation where I was in a real rut in terms of where I worked and lived, and I poured all of my excess energy and cash into PC upgrading and maintenance. It served its' purpose at the time by giving me something solid to focus on and eat up the hours, but it was only later in life when I sorted myself out and got a busy social life and friends who really cared about me that I realised how much I had been missing out on by devoting so many hours of free time to my room and not socialising and building up the soft skills needed for successful integrative adulthood, not to mention attracting the opposite sex.

If your friends are as cold as you are saying then it is simply time to cut out the fat from your life and start from scratch. Find local groups of subjects that interest you (whether it be PC gaming, tabletop gaming, whatever, it just has to be something reasonably local where you can physically go and see people) and attend to them and get chatting people... shared interests are a huge social lubrication and starting out with something in common that you can happily discuss breaks down so many barriers very quickly.

You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family... so learn how to better manage your family and tell them they are hurting you with their comments... it's likely they just do it without really realising or thinking of the consequences.

Chin up chap, it can only get better, and only you can identify and make the necessary changes in your life. :)
 
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It would be the same thing if your hobby was building cars/flying RC planes/erecting model train sets/insert any other bloke type hobby here.

**** them.
 
Maybe your family are a little worried for you, I have been in the situation where a large part of my life was spent at a keyboard, the only person I talked to was called Mike I had loads of friends, none of which I had ever met or would be likely to ever meet.

Over time your social skills take a hit, become more recluse and life can start to become a long, lonely grind.

If your friends are drifting away it could be due to they don't enjoy or are not compatible with your lifestyle, been indoors all the time etc. Just plan a bit of you time and try to arrange a bit of them time.

PC's are easy to buy, friends not so..

Nothing wrong with been a geek, nerd etc but mix it up with getting out in the fresh air..

Been there done that..
 
My wife used to bash me for being a geek but when i showed how useful geeks can be and i explained my passion for tech is like her passion for horses we became friends again haha!
 
Years ago it was normal, but now people realise that geeks have made the world around them so they watch their god damn mouths. :D

Cosimo said:
Just ignore it should be water off a duck's back for you.
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I think that phrase should be re-worded:-

"Just ignore it should be clearasil off a geeks face for you."
 
V F said:
Most of the 90s wasn't any different in school. Saying that, neither was college. Even the early 00s was still iffy.
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Definitely. People actually talk about gaming in public/at work etc now, which was pretty rare up until about 8 years ago (I think the Wii helped matters a bit). Likewise when you look at online dating, or even just online chat, there used to be a massive stigma attached to that. Social media also exploded meaning using the internet every day is no longer the domain of freaks but something that normal people do too. We are fast approaching a point at which 'the internet' isn't even really viewed as a thing detached from 'real life' but is just an integrated part of it with an assumption that everyone uses it (similar to how it is taken for granted that adults drive a car).

I used to be quite secretive about my geekdom (e.g. when I went to a LAN event in Sweden in 2003 I just told friends I was meeting people I knew from uni). Nowadays I am self-assured enough to discuss more openly and indeed most of my male friends tend to play games as well. I've been with my wife only 10 years and I can't actually remember how/when I brought up the subject of my nerdiness but thankfully it has never really bothered her.

One area that may have a slight renaissance I guess though is the bashing of hardcore techies. By which I mean technology has been massively simplified, you just buy something and it works out of the box without configuration, you download an app and it uses standard icons etc. So in a world where everything is that easy, it may seem strange to others to spend hours building a computer, manually configuring software and so forth. Chatting to people online used to mean installing a particular client, connecting to the right server, joining the right room, finding the right nickname etc so if you wanted to do that 15+ years ago you kinda needed to be at least a little bit geeky compared to the modern age of download app / find contacts or whatever.
 
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I think you have to stand up for yourself as well. Letting them walk all over you doesn't help the situation.

Alternatively look at renting somewhere and then charge them should they want anything looked at. It's a harsh thing to do but it should then establish the value of having someone technical around. If you don't want to charge them then get them to get someone else in and as soon as they get a quote I'm sure they will be more reasonable./


M.
 
Every day when someone comes into the shop. Most conversations start:

Me: Hi,
Them: Right I'm not technical / nerd / tech savvy / computers mean nothing to me but what it is...
 
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