The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

Now we have self-identifying "computer hackers" and "security researchers" and "red team operators" who probably have never heard the words "shellcode" or "ASLR" in their life, and whose technical chops cap out at wrapping payloads from hardcoded URLs in a 100-line golang script and call it an advanced exploit. We used to call them "script kiddies." "Compiler developers" who couldn't tell you the difference between a regular expression and a context-free grammar, and simply wrap babel in a javascript snippet, calling their glorified terminal alias a real compiler.

Go look at the posers on r/programminghumor, or, god forbid, fucking Instagram influencers releasing content and memes about programming instead of having any technical competence with computing itself. While being a computer nerd used to be looked down upon with derision, it's now trendy and hip to be a "software engineer," much in the same way geek culture was appropriated and colonized by outsiders to the field. People think that 16 weeks spent studying JavaScript at a bootcamp puts them on even footing with shut-ins who spent tens of thousands of hours in front of a bash terminal and customizing their vim setups. It's the absolute depths of Dunning-Krugerism. These aren't geeks; they don't act or talk the same as people who have been embedded in this culture for years and lifetimes, even if they parade around superficial status markers to try to pose as one. It's as if an Anglophone went to a country where the predominant language was one other than English and started appropriating a few dozen words from the native tongue to pose as a local - "you're not from here, are you?"

Perhaps this stance on computer geek culture is "elitist" or not "inclusive" enough, but be aware that maximum inclusivity tends to result in the same regression to the mean that you describe. It's much easier to spin a narrative about how 31337 at programming you are when you can write any bullshit you want on social media and pose and identify as something you are not, while those who are actually out there writing software instead of posting about it, pushing commits instead of simply updating their GitHub READMEs, have scant little to show to the blithering masses of people who confuse Internet Points, narratives, and hearsay for actual competence. It's a continuation of the postmodern trend to socially construct status, narrative, and indeed, even truth, by manufacturing simulacra and digital content to stand in for and completely replace any underlying reality.

I think I _used_ to be able to visualize things. I remember feeling frustrated when I was younger and did a more art because I could never imagine the same thing twice when I wanted to draw it. Every time I tried to think about about it, it would have a different pose or texture or orientation. But even then I think I just had a different "level" of aphantasia. I could never figure out how to use color. I kept to pens and lead pencils for art and couldn't get into painting. Even now, staring at a wall and thinking about repainting it, I cannot visualize it with any other color, much less two or three colors for trim and accents.

One of the advantages, perhaps, is that I don't need to close my eyes to imagine things. There's no point, there's nothing there. I may let my focus drift so I don't get distracted by shiny or moving things. But I can stare at a wall, or go for a hike or a run and just let my mind go wild.

That said, I do enjoy fiction, though I never really get "into" anything in particular. In light of this discovery, perhaps it is because I'm not really able to "visualize" scenes to recreate memorable moments, I can only really enjoy it in the moment and maybe recall a few quotes and descriptions, which are harder to get excited about.