Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
Sometimes it seems people hate the unemployed. I've written about it before, and despite my other ranting and raving, it's never quite cathartic enough to purge me of the pernicious disgust I feel over the sheer dislike people have for those without jobs. I've mulled this over again and again – and amongst my many mulling I think I found at least one reason people look down on the unemployed.
They fear being like them.
You ever get a call from a family member to help you with a computer problem that they could have figured out with some research?
You ever have a friend doing an interview who called you to ask you what the person he was interviewing was talking about?
You ever find yourself cornered at a party or get-together to explain something about your job or industry to someone, and wondered how they didn't know something that simple?
Yeah. Me too. When we do something for a living, when we're truly into it – in short, when we're progeeks or would-be-progeeks – everyone uses us as a source of information. It gets annoying.
If you were on an interview for your ideal job, would you have mentioned the most recent Comic-Con? The latest game releases? The recent travails of smartphones or tablets?
Maybe you should have.
One of the things about being, well, the geeks and fans and otaku we are, is we're often painfully well informed about news issues, at least with stuff we like. We know about conventions and releases, games and manga, shipping issues and scandals. We know a lot of stuff.