There is a unfortunate trend and narrative that keeps repeating the trope that folks who are geeky or not interested in playing outside are somehow not normal. A good example of how that keeps coming up is the screenshot below where someone posted about a kid who started coding at a young age (10 years!) and asked what were you doing at his age and another person responded stating “Being a normal kid and playing outside??”
10 years old boy writing program in python…what were you doing at his age? Being a normal kid and playing outside??”
Why is it that it is considered ‘normal’ to play outside but not normal to create something on a computer or compose music, or write a book or write poetry or any other creative activity? Both require skill but one is considered normal and the other is not.
Media plays a big part in it especially the US shows and movies where the geek is someone who is an outcast and is always picked on by the more popular kids who are usually good looking but otherwise have no redeeming qualities. They are loud, rude and obnoxious and for some reason everyone thinks that this is a good behavior pattern to emulate. The recent push towards becoming ‘manly’ or alpha or whatever they are calling themselves now is another reason smart folks are picked on because these ‘alpha male’ folks want to showcase how tough they are. Due to this push too many people think that being manly means that you need to behave like an ass or put another way they think that:
Being an asshole is all part of my manly essence
Obviously this is not a good approach and unfortunately for them they are usually whiny snowflakes who are threatened by everything. If you read the definition of what it means to be ‘a man’ you will be rolling on the floor laughing or be scared because they think that having literally any emotion other than anger is something that makes you less manly and if you happen to be a smart person it makes you ‘less manly’ because obviously the only thing that matters is physical strength. Here are some gems that have come up in my feed over time and I collected them as I wanted to put them on a blog post. There are a lot more but I decided to just delete them/block when they come up in my feeds.
These folks need therapy, not that they would ever agree to go for it.
– Suramya