I wish I never told anyone I worked or studied tech. Especially older family and friends, because their requests for help are relentless.
A lot of friends are chill with it, and I don’t mind doing a little bit of help, but sometimes people are who are OFFENDED when you don’t want to help. In the same way a contractor friend won’t remodel your home for free, I am not going to fix every single issue you have with your computer for free. I’m happy to give advice, but i’m not going to work for hours without pay to fix everything.
Yep.
I have been expected to solve tech problems constantly, constantly blamed for when further problems arise due to others undoing what I fixed or not following my instructions, expected to undertake large tech oriented projects or research that take up significant amounts of my time, for no benefit to myself.
And when I am unavailable for whatever reason, my family members and friends would pay an hourly wage to other tech savvy family members or friends to do what I was negged into doing for free… and of course they would usually do it in a far sloppier, less efficient, more expensive way or even fail completely, yet still be paid.
… along with many other instances like this, I eventually realized that basically everyone I used to know was actually a gaslighting, narcissistic, exploitative piece of shit with insanely hypocritical double standards, and just fucking ghosted everyone and moved halfway across the country.
Woops!
Turns out I have CPTSD!
Drag is very sorry to hear all that, and wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up with narcissism or a similar personality disorder from abuse like that.
My father in law was a proctologist - and also a man I didn’t really enjoy spending any time with. One day during one of those strained compulsory family dinners - not sure which, maybe Thanksgiving - he turned to me and said with this false jovial air:
“Hey, you’re a computer guy. I have this problem with my Windows laptop. Could you take a look?” and proceeded to unpack his laptop, which he had brought along, clearly to have me fix it.
So I got up, started undoing my fly and said “Sure! Hey, I have piles. Could you take a look?”
He got up and left without a word, and never came back. His wife kept visiting though, thankfully. She was lovely. But I got rid of him for good that day. But I did have to face the music with my wife 🙂
Hey, you’re an ass man. I have this problem with my bum. Could you take a look?
A lot of people struggle to internalise how capitalism works, because it’s unnatural. In a natural communist society, you ask your friends and family for help with the things they’re good at, and they help you. But under capitalism, you need to sell your limited time and energy for money in order to survive, so you can’t afford to help your friends and family for free. This is confusing to many people, because their instincts are telling them to act like communists, the way human beings are supposed to.
You can solve this problem by joining the communist revolution and restoring our economy to its natural state.
I dont really get what this has to do with capitalism. They could also reciprocate in a capitalist society but don’t? They don’t need communism to bake some cookies or serve a meal. Just anything to make it worth my time
You’re describing a gift economy, where people give labour and resources away for free. People are stuck between their instincts, which say to behave as if they’re in a gift economy, and their environment, which says to hoard resources for survival. Many people resolve the conflict between these competing systems by acting both cheap AND entitled. In a communist society, people would still be entitled, but they wouldn’t bother hoarding their cookies, because their job wouldn’t demand all the cookie baking time. So they’d act the way you describe.
