You look so tired and unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us

Neither am I feeling like I fit in with the IT/computer-geek crowd. The crowd drools anxiously, awaiting the next awesome step in technological upgrades. For me, I'm always dragged into upgrading kicking and screaming. The system before my current one lasted me over five years. I know that for a fact, because I had a 9800XT in it and had the coupon for the free copy of HL2. And when did HL2 come out?

It was with great reluctance that I stepped up to my current system (well, except maybe the case. I was excited to get the new case) and once I did, I didn't jump on my social outlets and crow about it. Because even as an upgrade, it's not cutting-edge. And if you're going to crow in this group, you better make damn sure nobody else can beat you. Because if there's one thing I've learned about geek society, it's that the intellectual beat down is even more effective than a physical one.

We're a group of physical weaklings for the most part, so we've replaced the physical punching and sparring with the mental equivalent. You better have your facts straight, or you will get destroyed and ripped apart. It's a game of one-upmanship for the title of alpha-geek, so if you don't have the fastest, the biggest or the newest, don't even bother trying.

It's this whole need for superiority that rules the internet forums. All the snarky, smart-ass responses that can be given to a poor newbie that has the great misfortune of asking a question that has been asked many times before or is in a FAQ. You know what? We all screw up and ask questions that have been answered before. How hard would it be give them the answer, and then maybe gently remind them they could have found it in the FAQ. C'mon, no matter how experienced we are now, we were all newbies at one point.

But instead it's like throwing meat into a pack of wolves. People trample one another trying to post some humiliating response to the poor person who asked the question. You have to stop and ask: on boards that act like this, how do they ever gain new members? Who would ever want to stay after being treated like that? Then again, perhaps that's the whole point. Perhaps it's some kind of way to keep out the people they don't want there.

So this time I don't fit in because I refuse to play the game. I'm kind and informative to people and try not to engage in the contests of superiority. But then, if I refuse to play the game, am I allowed to complain about feeling left out of it?