Social Dissociation
Have you ever thought or talked about “normies”? If you’re reading this, odds aren’t bad that you have. We, the technically adept (or at least not completely clueless), often use this term to talk about the kind of person who doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the small web, Linux distros, infosec, blogging, the Fediverse and a gazillion of other obscure subjects. At this point in my life, I’ve come to realize that all the things I care most deeply about are nothing a “normal” person (whatever that may mean exactly) can easily relate to. I can get enthusiastic about self-hosting, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, RPGs, dungeon crawler board games, data privacy, the issues of browser monoculture, online ads, Doctor Who, the dangers of LLMs (a term to many people probably don’t know). And all of this makes me what people usually call a “nerd”, even in my non-English-speaking country. ...