Don’t get me wrong - I spent many a lunchtime in the library and the computer lab. Loved it. But by 17 I had to repress it and get into drinking and music (which, honestly wasn’t hard), just to get accepted and meet girls.
The taboo of IT stayed with me, so I never openly discussed my interest in it.
Happily, online life has been normalised and teens and adults game all the time without it being seen as odd.
Ironically, despite being into 16-bit games in my teens I never really allowed myself to get into gaming in the preceding years.
I regret that now as I reckon I missed out on a golden age of gaming that I would have enjoyed had I just been born a decade or so later and been less upright about what people think.
realitista@lemmus.org 2 days ago
Yeah I also started partying in my teens and met lots of girls… Also kept my IT hobby mostly to myself. But gave me a great career and as you say, now it’s fully normalized so no need to hide it too much, though there aren’t a huge amount of 50 year olds that are into gaming and home automation as I am outside of forums like Lemmy.