This struck me earlier today. One of the most restricting words in the English language has got to be this one.

First, let's establish which 'sad' I refer to. I don't mean the synonym for unhappy. I don't mean feeling down or depressed. I mean the insulting sad. e.g.

"What age is that guy?"
"46."
"How do you know?"
"I looked it up on Wikipedia."
"...Dude. That's a bit sad."

And so the conversation will resume, usually with character #2 being told he needs to 'get a life' (another horrible expression).

What is it about certain actions that get them labelled as 'sad?' Why are certain things fine to do, whilst others will get you rejected socially?

Take collecting, for instance. I myself am an avid hoarder, one of my favourite things to collect is CDs. Now, CDs are fine. No one is going to take the mick out of me for collecting CDs. But what about something else? What about those who collect Star Wars models? These people are instantly labelled as 'sad' and told they should get a new hobby. Why?

Why is going on MyTwitter and FaceSpace considered fine, whilst playing Age of Empires is something only these Sad People do?

Why is showing an interest in Maths or Physics instantly named as geeky or nerdy, but if you like Art or Music you're normal?

My God. What about coding? Actually knowing a language such as HTML, actually having a skill that is useful in the world today, is slammed down as the domain of the lonely guy at home with the pizza box spending hours staring at his screen. Yet at the same time, texting with some bastardised version of English for a significant portion of your day is nothing unusual.

What the things you do? Putting too much effort into something is a big no-no apparently. The other day I spotted a conversation. Someone had misheard what a television presenter said and asked for clarification. Another user had gone to the effort of transcribing the whole speech by continually playing and pausing. Were they thanked for their services? No. They were told they had "too much time on their hands."

Knowing random things is also 'sad.' Yet everyone does it. Everyone knows random tit-bits of information. But admitting you found them while randomly googling something that crossed your mind, or worse, reading, is unacceptable. When asked by another kid how I knew what the 'Cretaceous' was, I had to blow it off; 'I heard it somewhere...' because admitting that I've actually read numerous books on the subject would open a whole can of worms that I couldn't really be bothered with.

It's these daft presumptions that really annoy me. Our society is severely impaired by the idea of the things it's 'okay' to like and do and it bugs me. Eccentricity is considered weird until you hit forty. It's downright prosecuted in your teens. It needs to stop. People need to stop being afraid to like what they like. They need to stop being afraid to do what they want to do.

Let that kid down the street watch his anime and pokemon with pride. Let people be into 40s dance music, steam engines, stamps, science fiction, computer games, band practice, classical music, gardening, bug collecting, mythology, roleplaying and whatever else they want to be into.

I think most people have some 'strange' interest that they're too embarrassed to talk about most of the time. I encourage you to post it here and be proud of it!