name? byte
i generally use the name “trashbyte” most places, mostly because “byte” is almost always taken. but “byte” is my preferred moniker. what about my real name? that… is my real name. i have a legal name, that i won’t post here for security reasons, but i never use that unless i’m doing something legal-ey or business-ey. “byte” is my name.
age? in excess of 25 years (p < 0.05)
i’m old enough to rent a car, and after that there aren’t really any big milestones so i have a lot less reason to care. well, the milestones are just round numbers and they’re depressing to think about, so let’s not.
location? the U.S.
not because i particularly want to be here, just because i was born here and haven’t had the money or sufficient motivation to go elsewhere. i could do a lot worse though, so i don’t see this changing any time soon.
gender? no thanks
i identify as “non-binary” or “agender” or “i just really don’t care”. gender is an arbitrary construct that i don’t feel aligns with my identity, so i’m just not dealing with it. my preferred pronouns are they/them, but i don’t care if people refer to me by he/him or she/her or it/its or whatever else, because i don’t really tie my identity to those grammatical entities. it’s just clearer if people are consistent about it.
orientation? whatever, really
for sexual orientation, i suppose the closest label would be “pansexual”, but really it’s mostly a person-by-person thing. i’m physically attracted to most body types in the right context, and i’m emotionally attracted to people whose identities mesh well with mine, which isn’t an easy thing to put a label on. i also have some complicated feelings about physical intimacy, and i’m generally not super interested in IRL sex (again, it’s a case by case thing). so that would fall under “gray asexual” (or “grey ace”) i believe. so, uh, let’s just go with “pan-sorta-sexual”. sure.
as far as romantic interest goes, i’m “demiromantic”, meaning i tend to form romantic feelings for someone once i’m close friends with them, and “love at first sight” isn’t really a thing that applies to me. really, to me, intimacy and romantic interest are kinda just a natural extension of a close friendship, and there isn’t a firm boundary between “friend” and “more than a friend”.
how about that brain? oh it's real weird in here
i’m neurodivergent, on the autism spectrum, and i suffer from clinical depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and a range of vague but clinically-significant symptoms like fatigue, trouble concentrating, and poor memory (unless it’s random trivia, then i’m great at remembering it, for whatever reason). i’ve been on antidepressants for several years now, and it’s managed a lot better than it used to be, but it’s still not great.
to be clear, while the depression and such are obviously things i’d rather go without, the autism-spectrum and neurodivergent qualities are not something i consider harmful (except insofar as society being designed for neurotypical people, but that’s not a me problem). autism isn’t a disorder, it’s a non-specific, largely-unhelpful umbrella term for a vast range of neurodiversity, and while my brain works in ways that some people might consider “different”, i don’t see those differences as a problem to be solved.
what are your hobbies? yes
if you’re looking for a short answer, it’s “computers”. if a thing is computers, i am into it. software development, video games, retrocomputing, electrical engineering, and so on.
as for a more complete answer, my list of hobbies is quite long, and constantly growing. i enjoy pretty much any kind of creation, be that software, music, games, 3d modeling, writing, electrical engineering, mechanical design and machining, you name it. i greatly enjoy being able to make things, and i’m always looking for more things to learn. my obsession with computers and software development is largely because the modern world runs on computers, and a computer is what i spend most of my day interacting with, so being able to bend them to my will and make them do my bidding is incredibly empowering. i also like collecting things, but not having much money means this generally manifests as digital “collecting”, like 100%-ing video games.
what are some of your likes? i can't think of something witty to put here
i was gonna make a joke about long walks on the beach, but honestly walking on sand is really tiring and i can’t imagine just doing that for its own sake. i could be going for a walk literally anywhere else.
there’s a lot of overlap with the above answer here, computery things, music. i like a very wide range of musical genres, mostly of the “electronic” variety (big surprise there).
how about dislikes? a few things
bigotry, violence, capitalism, systemic injustice, hatred, holding grudges, apathy, and so on. please just be nice to each other.
why the lowercase? it suits me
in most of my communication, i don’t mark the beginnings of sentences or most proper nouns with capital letters unless i’m trying to emphasize something. we’ve already got periods to delimit sentences, and i doubt there’ll be any confusion over which variety of january i’m talking about if i don’t capitalize it. instead, i prefer to use that extraneous quarter of the ascii character set to mark emphasis or as an attitudinal, to mark irony or sarcasm. like when i’m talking about The Good Shit, or explaining that i’m having an Extremely Normal day (sarcasm). i’m a hardline linguistic descriptivist, and i’d much rather type in a “non-standard” way if it helps me express myself better. conveying meaning through text is hard enough without imposing arbitrary restrictions on the character set.