OP posts read like half thought sentences, almost like a symptom caused by a psychotic crisis.
People spread shit about everyone at my work, I haven't put any attention to it even once, I just shrug it off and keep going about my business, your reaction seems to suggest what many already guessed, or something very sensitive about your personal life got uncovered among your every day colleagues.
A phone touchscreen with dry fingers with a 15 minute time limit on my break isn't exactly conducive to writing large sentences and paragraphs.
Anyway, it's time to clear some shit up in here:
The shit that's damaging for me? The controller, or games in general - Anything related to that. Like I said earlier, I live in a small town with an ultraconservative temperament to it. A lot of the people here are *really* nutty on certain subjects, and the "games are evil" rhetoric is still the mainstream around here, along with a lot of other old-fashioned conservative 'ideas'. So, as my hobby clashed with this town's dogma, I kept it hidden and upheld the Productive Hard Working WASP American facade, which is about one of only three accepted archetypes of people around here, next to Football Players and Soldiers.
To that end, pretty much all my public facing details on anything I have related to gaming are associated to the Sven Dahl alias in Sweden such that I don't risk having anything related to my name and gaming popping up in the event that my name gets googled. So, yes, I'm a closet-gamer, and any proof of me being a gamer is damaging shit as long as I live here, especially after August 2014's events - Lord Odin help me if the locals ever end up hearing about GG
and find out I'm a gamer, because these are exactly the kind of people who would associate that shit with me. One of the neighbor families has been giving me shit for a long time now for not following their orthodoxy, and them knowing that I play games would be great fuel for them to continue their douchebaggery. If anyone is curious, the associate I mentioned in the OP is that family's son, and, well, me and him have never exactly been on great terms with eachother, and I've done my best to keep our current relations strictly professional.
So, since pretty much forever that I've been into gaming after being introduced to Steam by a cousin I've been all-digital, and going to Amazon whenever I explicitly wanted a physical copy or hardware, but I slipped up on that recently in hype for ToZ, and bought myself an Xbone controller on the assumption that the MnK controls would probably be ass, completely forgetting about Amazon out of impatience over how long they've taken to ship things out here in the past. Anyway, the lease on the house I'm renting is over this December, so I'm probably going to get out of this place and head off for Chicago before I genuinely go insane from hearing some stupid Republican schlock in-person for the billionth time.
Just one thing though: Anyone else not exactly liking the directions things are going lately, with how anyone who is concerned about their privacy and unwelcome snooping are deemed a schizophrenic nutjob? That's not a healthy idea to be accepting as gospel.
Oh, and, since I plan on moving to Chicago in the near future, I just want to throw this out here: Anyone know of any IT companies in the area looking to fill entry level positions, particularly related to QA and testing? I've got MTA and MCP certifications, and am currently studying towards getting an MCSD in ALM. Recent events, including the one I mentioned in the OP are giving me the sign it's finally time to hit the eject button on retail and get my foot in the door in IT while I'm still young.
