Limlim said:
A favored tactic of mine when a thread derails, is to quote the last relevant post to get it back on track, as we observe below referencing the third page of the thread: As far as I can tell this is the last thing that came up before we started getting into isms and the like.
LeaningIntoTheMuse said:
Whoa...wait a minute.
I can see where you're going with this, because people do assume. As a 30 year old guy, who is never seen with girls, people assume that I'm either gay or asexual. I've lost friends over it...they get married and have kids, they see that I'm still single and looking, and they drop me.
The only time, though, that someone would be seen as a pervert is if there is something seriously wrong with them. Like, they give out bad moods or vibes. I'm not talking about just social awkwardness, but the kind of vibe that "this guy is going to slit my throat in my sleep" kind of vibe. If you don't give out that vibe, you shouldn't have anything to worry about.
And all guys are perverts, lol. The sooner women realize this, the sooner we can all move on with our lives.
That is a terrible reply that I made. I'll make a better one.
I think, when people get to a certain age, people start to wonder about you. I face this now: I look like a teenager, but am expected to act like a 30 year old...and I'm still somewhere in the mid 20's (college.) It's incredibly difficult to comply with THREE different decades of intelligence.
Society kind of thrusts that on us. I get asked a lot of technical questions, because I am a geek. I, however, don't know everything (and I know that the answer to knowing everything is to realize that you
know nothing), and am quite often overplayed by geeks who can program better, code better, and answer technical questions better (I had a recent incident where I ended up destroying a desktop keyboard, because I didn't know that you're supposed to clean it with a certain solution. I now know what to use, but was made to look foolish by a guy at Staples.)
People are sheep, really. If you don't act or behave in a certain way, you are thrown into a certain box...and it is hell trying to get out of it. People assume all sorts of things, because I am shy. I remember a conversation I eavesdropped on when I first went to college - I have a neutral expression that looks depressed, and I am quiet and shy, and I remember an incident when I was in a room and there were a bunch of college kids who were laughing and hucking it up on the other side of the room, and pretty much everyone was avoiding me. I wanted to ask them a question, so I approached them...and when I walked away, I overheard one of the kids saying to the group, "I thought he was mean, but he was actually nice!"
Who'da thunk that a shy and quiet guy who has a neutral expression of not much emotion could actually be a nice person?
I have lots of other examples of this, over the course of my life, but suffice it to say that people are sheep. If someone perceives you as different, that separates you from them...and it is hell trying to convince them otherwise. I just live my life realizing that I don't fit into a box, and I am okay with that. Anybody who thinks I should, can just go screw themselves, and I say that with the greatest of sincerity.
