The lost few

[Ephinum]

This is a simple story we all know and perhaps to often ignore, about a lad I met out of the blue.

I'm from the UK and have been an avid gamer since my first ZX Spectrum, through to my Amiga 500+ and everything along the way. I've always considered myself lucky in life, because I was born in 83 - I was very active in sports and the outside world, yet at the same time, thanks to luck and very giving grandparents the evolving digital world around me was never far from my fingertips.

As much as I've watched almost every Linus video, there's been a fair few I've avoided. That's likewise for others, such as Jayztwocents and so forth. Even from those early years I've always been data concious so I've never subbed, thumb'sed up any videos. I just don't have a youtub account and never will..

I got caught out by mental health many moons ago and gaming online was my distraction - to name a few played mmo's - EvEonline, WoW, Rift, To name a few hot swap chair games during those early years - Imperium Glactica I & II, M.A.X (not M.A.X. 2).
Over those years I've met many people, some I still talk with daily. Here today, we are a small band of friends from various countries across the globe that enjoy playing games with each other and massively take the piss out of each of other because there's that trust and friendship. Chalk and Cheese - not everyone is for everyone, personality clashes and the like... bar a few we've grown as a group and as friends.There's always a danger of becoming a clique, unwlecoming to others - even if unknowingly / unintentional, we seem to have avoided that for the most part.

We've always been open, and this is where the story begins.
I like to help where I can in tech support discords, I've made many mistakes over the years and love to help others avoid them. In helping on one particular forum a person asked to pm me - I had a lot going irl at the time and the discord was... lets say inactive - we kept missing each other in PM's, which resulted in a time of me having family over, while receiving a number of help messages. In the end I just invited the person to my server. 
It turned out to be a guy from the US trying to get some oldish laptops up and running. The fixe's were easy, the quickest solutions being a bootable usb.
I started with the question;-

"do you have a usb stick free?"

the reply came "I have a 4GB one"

That was fine for the linux stuff, but not for the windows bootable usb needed for one of the laptops...

There was no real reply about getting a stick of 8gb+

I'd not been on for a week and some mates were itching to play some unification mod Soul Storm..
Rather than flaff about because I really wanted to play I acctepted the friend request from the guy that had turned up - invited him to our discord server and started chatting.
Going over the same solutions and hearing his young voice, things changed a bit. What ended up apparent was a youngish guy (turned out to be 15, no problem, we just had to be mindful with all the shit that happens now days, but tried to create a supportive environment due to the timidness that was coming across) he loved computers and was trying to get 2 oldish laptops back and up and running. As much as we tried to help there was a constant hesitance. The mere $6 cost of a usb stick came up among other conversations and the young lad said on comms "I'll message you so you understand"

untying myself from a game, I alt tabbed too "Don't be sad, I'm in foster care"

No other friends on comms knew of this message and it wasn't shared (until now I guess), during the next couple of hours I spent time ensuring I made comments around accepting people for who they are and the circumstances they might experience and the usual people on comms were being themselves being very welcoming. Before I got that message and whilst the lad was on comms we'd all been talking about my new G9 odyssey (a monitor I've wanted for years - don't buy one the scale of it isn't supported by many games and other shit, anyways it works for my setup multi-tasking), a couple of friends new 7900xt's and my plan to get one also.

Over the many years of gaming we've experienced as a group, we've met younger people (youngest person we have in the team is 22 btw), we've met bonkers people, all sorts - ultimately, just people you meet as par for the course. This lad never asked for anything, never made any hints about how fortunate we were for the gear we had. Solely focused on the couple of broken laptops he had that had been given to him by a kind couple of teachers that had seen and recognised his enthusiasm, that still sits in my throat as a feeling while I type now. I'm truly grateful for having met the lad, me at coming upto 40 years old and having become a bit bitter towards life and society to know his circumstances and beyond that to only be asking for help fixing what he had infront of him - it humbled me to a level I can't explain and I'm sure I'm not conveying well in text. He was the epitome of Oliver, whilst not asking for more.






 

[johnno23]

it really comes down to how people from a young age develop. 

these days things seem to be so hectic and often the old adage of another mans grass is greener often over shadows the fact that the grass upon which we stand is often greener that that of others.

I am 65 and a day never passes where I do not take time out......as little as 2-3 seconds just to look at my own patch of grass.

The youngster you mention was never jealous in my mind......he was simply very aware of what he had and was happy. Getting something fixed to live for another day is an example of youths ability to see past what they do not have and truly see what they do have. 

On a personal note I do not see them as the Lost few but shining examples of the Rare and Gifted Few.

[Ephinum]

8 minutes ago, johnno23 said:

it really comes down to how people from a young age develop. 

these days things seem to be so hectic and often the old adage of another mans grass is greener often over shadows the fact that the grass upon which we stand is often greener that that of others.

I am 65 and a day never passes where I do not take time out......as little as 2-3 seconds just to look at my own patch of grass.

The youngster you mention was never jealous in my mind......he was simply very aware of what he had and was happy. Getting something fixed to live for another day is an example of youths ability to see past what they do not have and truly see what they do have. 

On a personal note I do not see them as the Lost few but shining examples of the Rare and Gifted Few.

That's really insightful Johnno, I've become quite tainted in my views as I've aged - the experience was quite a rethink for me. I don't normally write in forums... I did want to share though. I didn't mean to suggest it's only the younger generation that can be a bit demanding. We've met people of all ages that can come across entitled.

He was very unique and gifted us the opportunity to learn. One guy has a RX580 sat on the shelf, partnered with the right ex-office PC should give him an alright gaming PC

[bezza...]

a moment like this happened to me just last week..

 

agroup of us from the forum all ages 15,16,17 ish  created a discord server. i dont have the best pc (5600g using the igpu at the moment). but there was one guy who was getting rlly exited about having a 550ti ariving to replace his hd 6450.