Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
This forum is in permanent archive mode. Our new active community can be found here.
Once a Geek always a Geek?
What's your opinion of people who no longer consider themselves geeks. If you ask these former geeks their usual response tends to be that they have grown out of it. Which implies that the hobby they enjoyed was something only for children. And if your an adult that is still in to that hobby, you are socially stunted. Now there are people in the geek communities that are like this. But aren't these kinds of folks in all social groups? So why is it that geek communities suffer from this stigma even more so?
Comments
The reason there is a stigma is because many geek hobbies happen to involve things that are commonly perceived to be children's toys outside of geek communities. It would require in depth knowledge to understand why they are not. A normal person can't tell the difference between a fancy model trail and a children's toy. If a grown person is playing with model trains, they see it as childish because they don't understand what's really involved in that hobby. A normal person sees a cartoon, and only understands cartoons as something for children even though it might be Urotsukidoji.
And yes, some geekiness is childish.
I think it really also matters in what sort of social circles you are a part of. If you mostly hang out with people that continue to do geeky things, they will follow suit. It reminds me of my previous former circle of friends. Once someone knocked a girl up, they all started getting married and having babies within the last few years. Before we would hang out almost every night watching Friends and playing video games. Now everyone is pretty much all domesticated with children. They all still continue to hang out, while I'm no longer considered part of that circle and not really contacted at all.
Live enough decades, and most people will shift in and out of various hobbies, some of which might be geekeries. And yes the responsibilities of parenthood (or eldercare, or careers, etc) take time and money, which probably means less time and money for other things. And maybe geeky hobbies are particularly vulnerable here because of social stigmas.
But the "growing up" thing as expressed by SMBC above covers pretty broad ground, and I think plenty of people (geeks and otherwise) give up too much joy in the name of "responsibility." But as a person ages it can also be harder to keep up with the hobbies, keep in touch with friends, etc. So I think what I'm trying to say is I think it's a cop-out for a person to say they grew out of something when really they can't face that they're too tired after a long day at work, or that their tastes just changed over time, but also oversimplifying to say people never change.
Plus, when you're in your teens and 20s, I think it can be hard to tell the difference between "growing up" and "tastes changing over time," because there is such a thing as a healthy, good type of "growing up" and a lot of it happens during that decade of one's life.
(Said the middle-aged lady sitting in a coffee shop before work, reading Scott Pilgrim, and typing a waaay too long forum thread response on a tiny phone keyboard.)
There are lots of people who literally spend 100% of their time on work or home related responsibilities. They don't have anything else. Those are the saddest people.
- Some people where never really geeks to begin with. In the early stages of life, where who you live close to and who you sit with in your classes is a major factor in who you can possibly interact with, some people just adapt to suit their crowd. They take an interest in geeky things but as soon as the social aspect is gone, they are done with that geekery.
- Spousal pressures can be more than just "stop playing with that childish thing" and more of an attention aspect. If you don't find a mate that shares in your geekery, they will grow to resent it due to the time you spend on it. It's almost unavoidable unless your mate is equally passionate about some other thing, and you both maintain a good balance of alone time and together time. If they have no hobby, their needs will clash with almost any geekery. This is why for a lot of adults, they have no hobbies. Their hobbies are working on their lawn and other things that can be construed as productive in life such as car and house maintenance, so the spouse has a harder time becoming resentful of such effort towards the betterment of the family.
- Overindulgence in a geekery doesn't need to push someone completely away from it. I think this causes more of the rotating "seasons" that have been often spoken about on these forums. You go full throttle for a while, switch gears, repeat.
(Again, hobbled by lack of "geek" definition. Maybe somebody's grandma is a gardening geek.)
(How is it that I seem to be the first in this thread to now reference JoCo's Shopvac?)
How is gardening any different from home automation in any fundamental way? How are videogames and different from a bridge circle?
Saying something is more or less "grown up" seems like a petty difference without taking the time to acknowledge the actual differences. I've genuinely lost interest in some hobbies, but I can go into detail as to why without trying to make someone else the lesser.
It's all too clear.
Or they don't understand the thing you like.
And I think part of Josh's question really played into the question of "geeky" hobbies being stigmatized, where many other hobbies aren't. Oftentimes people are expected to "grow out" of comics, Legos, animation, etc. Not so much for gardening or art. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say, "Oh yeah, art museums, I was totally into that when I was a teenager but then I grew up."
Not that I'm faulting your definition of Geek, which I think is right, but more with society's definition of "Geek" as a whole, which I think the Geek Pride movement will take a big bite out of.