I had lambasted some friends for calling me a geek. See I don't mind being called a geek, I just mind it sounding like a bad thing.
I had sent out this mail a few days ago
Some really interesting picture on here. Read the explanations, some are quite fascinating. Ok if you are a geek like me perhaps.
Which solicited this mail
Ok - so this I don't get. we get a hard time about the fact that someone might have perhaps mentioned you are a bit of a geek, and then you go and advertise the fact that you are a geek by sending out one of your mass emails openly admitting that you are a geek!!!!So what's the position then? are you or are you not a geek?
No, I gave you a hard time because you make it out like I do things I don’t. I felt you gave the impression to people that don’t know me that I’m the kind of pathetic person who spends the whole day in dark rooms rewiring my computer and queuing up for 3 days in a Darth Vader outfit for Star Wars.Which is not the same as being self effacing and making fun of myself. I acknowledge I am a bit of a geek, but I felt some of the ways people joke about it makes me appear somewhat pathetic, which is not a pleasant feeling.
I’ll give you and example (although not strictly about something techie). I’ve been trying really hard to get my body fat down below 10% and lose weight. My mechanism for doing this is to eat healthily and exercise. In trying to eat healthily I found it useful to read a lot more about what goes into food and what food has different calorie counts. So after a while I built up an awareness over what food is better or worse for me and how much energy different foods have. I’m an engineer and working with numbers and analysis is what works for me.However it’s made out like I don’t eat anything anytime without working out how many calories are in it, and act like some anorexic model who is eating 2 pieces of celery and a slice of carrot. Which I don’t feel I do. However every time we are out someone says “Sevitz, how many calories are in this”. It’s not me saying “I’m not eating that because it’s not good for me or fattening, unless someone asks.” So it’s made out like I’m some sort of obsessed gym bunny freak, which is not an image I feel I portray or cultivate. Nor is it an image I feel reflects fairly on me.
Now I realise most of the time you all are poking fun at me, and I honestly do take things with good humour most of the time. Hell the level of abuse I get from my mates in SA makes you lot look like amateurs. However sometimes it gets a bit much. Especially when I am feeling down, which admittedly I have been feeling a fair bit recently and I do apologise for the general pain in the arse I can be. However it's not always easy for people who aren’t down to understand how small things grow and gnaw at you. Things like feeling all your friends think you are pathetic geek loser. Understanding that your friends don’t, and feeling that they do are two different things.
It also doesn’t improve matters when there are people I don’t know around or people I am trying to get to know. Then I feel like I am being put down in front of people who haven’t yet formed a fair impression of me.
So I’m a geek. But it’s the tone and impression that’s put forward in that I was objecting too.
Sorry you asked?
1. Destructor
Geekiest. Post. Ever.
2. Sevitz's Stalker
Pathetic geek losers of the world unite!
Ya know, you could probably have saved yourself a lot of trouble and time by simply responding with “You’re too stupid to understand.”
Incidentally, how many calories do you think you burnt typing that out?
3. Adrian
Well the person is a friend and her email was sent in good humour. And she is a lawyer who I need a favour from so I tend not call her stupid. :-)
Also I was trying to explain how I felt and why I was having a go at them the week before. I’m largely quite misunderstood (hear the laughter in the background). [That’s self deprecation their and not seriousness, just for the record]
It took me about 20 minutes to type that. Hence that would be 34 calories burnt.
4. Bindy
I agree, you’re not a geek as geekiness normally requires a degree of pedantry that is not normally attributable to your rants on desire lines and the like. I on the other hand, am a pedant. E.g. Weight loose? Is this some sort of detachable belly appendage? And do try and eat healthily, not healthy. (You’re not a yank). (Next thing you know you’ll be saying “Drive safe” and then I will just have to batter you to death. (Apologies to the yanks that read this but South Africans with British Passports and soft Americanisms make me sick).
PS Can I have my Darth Vader costume back please. PPS Can you dry clean it this time before you give it back as I gather you got pretty sweaty standing in line for three days. Ta.
B.
5. Adrian
Corrected grammatical errors.
I don’t have a British passport. Yet. Application goes in this month hopefully.
I categorically deny borrowing your Darth Vader costume. I didn’t even know you had one.
6. Sevitz's Stalker
Who’s more geeky? The geek or the geek who reads his weblog?
7. Bindy
…so you’ve left a skid mark in the Darth Vader pants again and you don’t want to admit it, eh?
8. LukePDQ
If you are a geek, and I’m not saying you are; but, surely living and working in Amsterdam is just the recipe you need to get over it. Which leads me on to say; if you accidently ingested a few shrooms and wink strong green tea, or imbibed at a few of Amstel Brewery’s finest hostelries, you mind find your posts lose that geekery detail in a haze of post prandial blogging. PS. I avoided mentioning the Red light district for some rest and relaxation, didn’t I ? PPS. Although it has got rather seedy over the years hasn’t it.
9. Gordon
I’ll stop short of a lengthy response and suggest that YOUR response is more telling than the “geek comment”? No?
10. razorhead
Hmmm, I do know that I am reading this post after seeing it spin in on the RSS aggregating screen saver that comes with Tiger. I don’t feel qualified to discuss matters of geekiness.
11. stroppycow
Sounds a bit like when one of my acquaintances split up with her boyfriend and I suggested I could introduce her to a friend and she said “if it’s one of your geeky mates I’m not interested”. There was no point saying they are not geeky, they are; only to me their geekyness is one of their personality traits that make them different to joe average and as such more fun and interesting to know, whereas to her geekiness is a flaw. You are right in one thing - same word, different tone, opposite meaning.