Welcome to the 21st century?

Greetings, all.

One of my co-workers and I were talking about various things and the subject of social networks came up. I mentioned that I was on Twitter and the comment from this much younger than me individual was "Well welcome to the 21st century!"

Or, to put it another way: "Like, OMG, way to crawl out the prehistoric age and join the human race, old dude!"

Oi.

I didn't think anything about it at the time, but as the day went on it kept turning over in my mind. Was I really that old that younger people thought I had no clue about technology or the internet? And, like usual, my witty repartee arrived about six hours later when I realized I could play the "Old Fogey" card and say "Yeah, well I remember when.."

See, I can remember a world long before we had readily-accessible internet. A world where personal computers were still a rarity and reserved for schools and those folks that were well off. I can remember writing my first computer program almost 30 years ago in BASIC (ah, yes, the days of GOTO *sigh*).

The more I thought about it, though, I came to the realization that even though I have always considered myself a geek and fully embraced the title, I've never been a "true geek" in the way that most people might think about it. Yes, I really like video games, but can't consider myself a video game geek since I own only one console (PS2) and a handful of games for it. While there are a few PC games sitting on the shelf, it's not nearly as many as other people have. I've never played Halo or Mass Effect and never really had interest in doing so.

Long gone are the RPG books, although the dice are still in their bag on the shelf. Trying to talk about D&D to me these days is an exercise in futility unless you stick to 2nd Edition or earlier.

The comic books and I parted ways a very long time ago. And frankly, I never really got into them, even though I was employed at a comic book store for a while.

When things like MySpace and Facebook grew into popularity, I didn't join when most geeks I know - and knew - couldn't wait (although I do have a Facebook account; just never use it). Things like Twitter and blogging eluded me because I didn't really understand what all the fuss was about. Sure, I've had a computer pretty consistently for nearly 20 years now, but I've never really done a lot of the "geeky" things that people do with computers, like overclocking the CPU or modding my rig. IMing and being sociable on the internet is still a fairly new thing for me, usually reserved for the (very) few forums that I frequent.

There are plenty of anime out there that I enjoy and would even say that I'm a fan of - such as Trigun, Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell - but I'm nowhere near obsessed about it as many people I know.

I've been to one "geek" convention" in my life: GenCon '07. Had an absolute blast while I was there, but my level of geeky obsession paled in comparison to just about everyone else there. And while I would like to attend another one - preferably close to home - I don't go out of my way to find out where and when such conventions are taking place. For all I know, there's a geek convention every weekend just fifty miles from me.

All of this got me to wondering: am I truly worthy of being called a geek, simply because I tend to enjoy geeky things, have a blog and a Twitter account - both of which I'm finally using - and can hold my own in a discussion on geek-related things?

Or am I some kind of part-time geek? Is my using things like this blog and Twitter simply a subconscious effort to tell myself that I am, truly, a geek in my own right?

Maybe I'm more of a "random geek" in that I don't focus on any one thing and instead vary my interests. Knowing a little bit about several things, but never really mastering any of them.

Maybe I am just an old fogey who's quickly falling behind the times.

Or maybe I'm just over-thinking things as usual.

Thanks for reading.
-Hinton