>Once people realize you're "different", you get the "poor boy treatment" and that hurts.

Or worse, once you're pegged as a hopeless geek then people tend to walk all over you and you're not seen as the kind of person who advances, becomes management, etc. You're a freakshow human resource to perform labor that, unfortunately needs to be done, until everything can be a one-click cloud solution.

I make a very special effort to hide whatever geeky qualities I have. I think ultimately a lot of geek culture is manboy-ish and the kinds of people who let all of that loose at work are seen as childish or immature, right or wrong. Sadly, those of us into things like hard sci-fi or DIY maker stuff get lumped in with the guy who still buys Superman comics at age 40 or thinks over-sexualized fan-service anime is humanity's highest artistic calling.