Do normal people really act like this?

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I am telling people because they ask me. Like I said several times, for my whole life up to around a month ago I had this robotic naïveté that when they asked me about my sexual history, I would just tell them straight with no lying. If no one asks me, I do not reveal information. Only when asked. When I turned 30 in October I stopped answering questions like these.

No, I do not show up to meetups and flirt. First of all, I never flirt. I just never do it, never have, never even knew how. I just do not flirt full stop. A combination of ASD, anxiety, self-hatred and OCD have basically made any of those skills zero. At meetups I usually try to meet with basically my only friend here, some guy who is almost 50 from rural Minnesota whom I had met a few years ago during one of these events, and we try to go and talk to groups of people, of both genders. If I am alone because he cannot attend, I just go randomly to whichever group of people there is present.

The reason that I joined meetup at age 26 because I was steadily becoming more of a hermit and had increasing problems with anxiety and OCD. From ages 23-25 I basically talked to no one, barring immediate family like my parents and grandparents, and going to the store or doctor. As a result, I had zero social life, started suffering from severe OCD and anxiety and my life was basically going downhill. I was recommended meetup.com to try to meet people and make friends, to get out of the hermit lifestyle. If, and this is if, somehow naturally and randomly I did meet some woman there then fine. But generally, I did try socialising, even though I ended up in verbal arguments with many people and made very few friends.

I have spent a month refusing to answer questions about my sexual/relationship past. Yes, people still ask, and they ask not only me, but also that guy from Minnesota as well as other acquaintances. I get very irritated and often respond, "Why are you asking this? This is none of your god-damned business." or something similar. Sometimes they insist and try to guilt-trip me into answering. I refuse to answer. If they do not like it, that is not my problem.

So what did you end up arguing about?



So yeah... they are trying to figure you out because you're acting "off." And you're right, it ISN'T any of their business, but my guess is that you may come across as stiff, anxious, and not very friendly.

I don't know what to tell you. If you don't enjoy it maybe you shouldn't go.

The same thing--they ask me questions like the sexual history stuff, how many girlfriends I have had, what race I am. I tell them that this is none of their blasted business. Then they get angry at me...for getting irritated at them for asking me these questions.

Other than that, people make passive-aggressive insults to me about how I do not earn six or seven figures or do not work in tech, or the fact that I am mixed-race, or my personal beliefs...all sorts of things.



I have had some tell me that I "act like a virgin" and then that is apparently their reason for asking me. In the few times that this happens, usually women more than men tell me this. I am not sure what acting like a virgin means. Because like I said, I never flirt. I have seen many men at meetups do what you described, but no, I do not partake in that.

I am off, because obviously I have Asperger's, OCD, a few types of anxiety...how else am I supposed to appear normal? I have been socially awkward since I was born. My mother is socially awkward. My grandfather was socially awkward. But it does not mean that they can push me around and poke and prod asking me about my sexual history.

I no longer answer their questions. Maybe that makes me sound abrupt and abrasive. But that is how I am--brutally honest and straightforward. It is not fair to me to go back into my naïveté mode and answer their questions about my personal life.

You don't have to tell anybody you're a virgin. It's none of anybody's business.

Meet Up has been a dead end for me. If you don’t drink or smoke, you can forget about making friends. Luhluhluh also doesn’t get that the Meet Up group she thought I didn’t know about I was actually a member of before and I was alienated because I didn’t drink or smoke or have a list of people I’ve banged.

Wait, to which meetup group are you referring? Do you mean that we had attended the same meetup without noticing it?

No, I live in the Bible Belt so we didn’t attend the same Meet Up group events but your experiences with them reflect mine. The Bible Belt, especially the Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood area where I live, is a messed up place. Your worth as a human being is based around if you are a “Christian” even if you don’t attend church regularly. These people drink until they cuss up a storm and vomit, smoke until their nostrils burn, have pre-marital sex, and tattoo up their flesh but it’s only acceptable if you call yourself a Christian. If you a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or, the most shocking for them of all, an atheist, you are a “freak” or “liberal Bernie Sanders voter”.

However, being a Christian won’t guarantee social success. Even when I was a Christian, girls weren’t interested in me and that’s largely because I wasn’t a “bad boy”.

I am an atheist Bernie Sanders supporter, but I get hell for that in San Francisco. You would be surprised how many people at San Francisco meetups have economic views not dissimilar to those in the Bible Belt. I get called all sorts of names for revealing that I came from a poor, working-class family, and currently do not make six or seven figures like the tech people here. "I wish I could hide my money in tax havens instead of paying for poor freeloader people like you" and other related comments is something that I have gotten several times in San Francisco. Being single/virgin certainly does not help at all.

Also, I think that many on the forum, but also people in general, have a certain impression of San Francisco as an accepting, socially liberal place. I can say that it really is not. The dating scene is seriously weird, where despite this city having one of the lowest White populations in the country and in the entire Western world, many people want to date only White people. Many women voice opinions about accepting only White men as partners, and many men also say that they want to date only White women. It is quite bizarre. I live in a part of the city that would most likely be less than 5% White.

And even weirder is that I get hell for saying that I dislike religion. Even some Japanese and Chinese immigrants at meetups interrogated me why I am not a practising Christian like they are. I was thinking, when did Christianity become so popular in China and Japan…?

I find that surprising to hear about SF’s dating scene. I usually read the opposite kinds of stories such as “White men are racists! White men fetishize Asian women! White men have small penises! White men are pedophiles and like screwing animals!” as well as “White women age badly! White women have no lips, tits, and asses! White women can’t cook! White women are boring in bed!” and other stereotypical crap. I’ve also been accused by SJW types (I don’t f*****g care if I offend people by using this term. I am not aiming this at liberal people in general, just idiots) of being a Donald Trump supporter, a Christian, a country music fan, a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, and a patriotic kind of person just because of how I look.

No, White partners are sought by both men and women here. I think that the high emphasis on tech is what causes a lot of pairings where the man is White, usually in tech. However, it is very rare to see a White woman with a non-White man here.

Tech jobs are considered “dorky” or “paper pushing” where I live. Men in those jobs get bullied by rednecks and “bad boys”, especially if they are Asian.

This is just bizarre. I have literally never in my adult life had a stranger ask me about my sexual history.

That is extremely different to here where I live. If you have a tech job, you are basically king of the world. Everyone respects you, and everyone looks up to you. But note that San Francisco are the tech capital of the entire world. Not to mention, just an hour drive from here is Silicon Valley. This whole area is hypersaturated with anything tech.

If you do startup or coding or whatever, people view you as an alpha male. People here worship tech people like Steve Jobs and Zuckerberg as if they were gods.

However, if you are like me, from a working-class family, people will make passive-aggressive comments about you. Remember also that here, the poverty level is pegged at anyone making less than $120000 per year. Tech workers, who are overwhelmingly Chinese and Indian as well as some Whites, usually make six or seven figures. If you are from a family like me, where making even $40000 is a lot, people will just look down on you like scum.

It is basically probably the opposite of where you are. Some people call it the place where the "lonely nerd" becomes king. A lot of people say that those nerds who were picked on in school and in childhood basically are now the ones who get all of the praise and power in San Francisco.

You will often hear conversations about which language people like, and they refer to coding. They will brag about their skills in Python and JavaScript to your face. Eventually they will brag about how they pay $5000 or $6000 for rent in a cramped, one-room flat. They will brag about how they are proud of paying $20 for a glass of domestic wine in a chique bar.

One time I heard a weird song that sounded like a parody of "Shake your booty". Instead of "Shake, shake, shake…", it was like, "Tech, tech, tech...tech, tech, tech...tech your booty, tech your booty…"

Welcome to alternate reality.

Last edited by Leon_Trotsky on 25 Nov 2019, 9:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Again, where I live it is common to ask about and talk about these things, whilst they are often considered highly inappropriate in other places.

Go to any meetup, someone might just introduce themselves, then say, "Man, dating is hard, and I have not had a f*ck in a week! Too long! How about you? When was your last time?"

You may think that this is insane to bring up in a conversation. Not here.

I've spent some time living in the San Francisco area. I can vouch for what the OP says about the Meetups there really being that screwed up. To answer the original question though, no it is not "normal" behavior, just a local culture thing.

From what I saw a lot of people just get a kick out of explicitly pushing the boundaries of inappropriate sexual communication, and a lot of people are fishing for casual hookups. On top of that, there are also people who intentionally and aggressively prey on awkward men, looking for rich but lonely tech guys with bad social skills that they might be able to take advantage of, which would totally explain what you're experiencing so it's probably not your imagination or misinterpretation at all.

As ironic as it might be, you might actually be unwittingly saving your bacon from such predators with your virginity disclosure in that it probably causes them to assume you have no money so they move on. However, a better course might be to say, "I'm sorry, I'm not comfortable sharing personal information like that," as no decent person will ever be offended by that kind of statement. You can also try the tactic of just sharing contact information while at events to be able to look people up later and open communications from a safer place. No decent person should really have a problem with that either.

But yeah, overall those groups really aren't the best places to try and meet people given the amount of weirdos you might have to protect yourself from. The HTML5 group was pretty good as far as I saw, although I didn't go to their more casual social mixers like the weekly pub crawl to be able to speak to that. But they had good events at more professional venues, like at Google headquarters, where people aren't going to try to pull quite as much stupid or classless crap, and there's a lot more awareness of neurodiversity issues so there'll be more supportiveness and protection from predators.

to the OP: dr. seuss said, "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."