A.D. Trosper

Today on Facebook I saw this pic with the “Caption this” prompt:

Most of the captions were things like, “Must be nice to still live at home.” “Still living in mom’s basement.” “Still living at home.” “The joys of still living at home.”
Why? Why this assumption that if you are a geek or a gamer (or both) and have a large collection of things reflecting that then you must still be living at home?

Nobody looks at a post of someone’s thousands of dollars worth of hunting. camping, or fishing equipment thinks the person must still be living with their parents. No one looks at someone’s expensive new sports car and thinks they must still be living in their mom’s basement. Somehow these things area symbols of success at life and collections of geekery are seen as symbols of failing at life.

Guess what? Geeks are perfectly capable of succeeding and do. Plenty of us don’t live in our parents’ houses. We work, and pay our bills and have enough money and time left over to enjoy our interests just like anyone who enjoys a hobby. Just because we choose to spend their money on something other than hunting, camping, fishing, or sports cars does not lessen our success in life nor does it make the value of our interests less than someone else’s.

So quit assuming that geeks are a bunch of mid-thirties parent’s basement dwellers. Some of us actually own our homes, have spouses and children (children who are just as big of geeks as we are), jobs, and everything. And some of us aren’t mid-thirties even, some of us are pushing forty and beyond.