--- title: 21 sure signs that you're a geek (Woot!) description: Do you know what to do in a maze of twisty passages all alike? If so, you might be a geek. Take the test to find out. image: https://geekboss.com/hubfs/Blog%20Images/Screenshot%202024-09-19%20at%2015.58.58.png --- [Geeky Things](https://geekboss.com/blog/tag/geeky-things) # 21 sure signs that you’re a geek [ By Matthew Stibbe ![Matthew Stibbe](https://app.hubspot.com/settings/avatar/c0fe13642b2329271b9ce0a5b41d744a) ](https://geekboss.com/blog/author/matthew-stibbe) Published 20/Nov/2019 Updated May 22 2026 ![Yu-gi-oh card unsplash](https://geekboss.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog%20Images/Screenshot%202024-09-19%20at%2015.58.58.png?width=1600&height=1000&name=Screenshot%202024-09-19%20at%2015.58.58.png) Are you a geek? If you’re asking the question, you probably are – curiosity is the defining characteristic of geeks. But here are 21 more signs that you might have the geek gene. 1. Even on a touchscreen device, you prefer to use a command line interface. 2. You secretly hope that GitHub is also a dating site. 3. You have more than one monitor on your desk. 4. [ASCII art](https://www.economist.com/babbage/2013/04/16/a-picture-worth-a-thousand-words) is too a real kind of art. 5. You modded your camera or smartphone by jailbreaking the firmware. 6. You say ‘[Woot](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot)’ in everyday life. 7. Raspberry Pi is a computer not a desert 8. You know that a ‘kilo’ means 1024 and not a bag of groceries. 9. Did you play [SimIsle](https://geekboss.com/blog/history-of-computer-games) or [Azrael’s Tear](https://geekboss.com/blog/azraels-tear)? 10. You know that there are 10 types of people in the world; those who understand binary and those who don’t. 11. When nobody's looking, you hug your MacBook Air. 12. You can argue the merits of [BBC Micro](http://www.mkw.me.uk/beebem/) vs. [Sinclair Spectrum](https://worldofspectrum.org/infoseek) with full recall of the specs. 13. You know what to do in a [maze of twisty passages](https://www.web-adventures.org/cgi-bin/webfrotz?s=Adventure) all alike. 14. You want to run a penetration test on your vintage Atari 800. 15. When you write, you [write like a hacker](https://geekboss.com/blog/how-to-write-like-a-hacker) (but you can also [write for non-geeks](https://geekboss.com/blog/write-for-a-non-technical-audience)). 16. You know [what technology wants](https://kk.org/books/what-technology-wants). 17. Geeky novelists are good novelists. For example, you read [Charlie’s Diary](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/) and Charles Stross’s books. 18. You hate paper-based paperwork and [embrace digital documents](https://apogeecorp.com/insights/how-to-use-document-management-e-forms-to-automate-paperwork-and-cut-bureaucracy/). 19. You work 9 to 5 but it’s at night (hat tip: [Real programmers don’t use Pascal](http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html)). 20. Your hero is Steve Wozniak not Steve Jobs. 21. You read [The Nerd Handbook](https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-nerd-handbook/) and realised it was about you. 22. Futurama FTW 23. You for one welcome our new alien overlords. 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This is an important understanding. ‘Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,’ said Steve Jobs... By Matthew Stibbe [Productivity](https://geekboss.com/blog/tag/productivity) ![Matthew Stibbe and robot at the Studio Ghibli museum](https://geekboss.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/Matthew-and-Robot-1.jpg?width=800&height=500&name=Matthew-and-Robot-1.jpg) ### [How to understand what your boss is thinking](https://geekboss.com/blog/what-your-boss-is-thinking) There are a lots of articles about how to impress a boss. This isn’t one of them. This article is about how to understand what your boss is... 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By Matthew Stibbe [Communication](https://geekboss.com/blog/tag/communication) ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Matthew Stibbe", "url" : "https://geekboss.com/blog/author/matthew-stibbe" }, "dateModified" : "2024-09-19T14:59:36.262Z", "datePublished" : "2019-11-20T07:07:00.000Z", "headline" : "21 sure signs that you're a geek (Woot!)", "image" : [ "https://geekboss.com/hubfs/Blog%20Images/Screenshot%202024-09-19%20at%2015.58.58.png" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://geekboss.com/blog/geek-test", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://geekboss.com/hubfs/Geek-Boss-logo_Geek-Boss-logo-thin-1.png" }, "name" : "Articulate Marketing" } } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org/", "@type" : "Person", "image" : "https://www.stibbe.net/hs-fs/hubfs/IMG_0612.jpeg?width=4032&height=3024&name=IMG_0612.jpeg", "jobTitle" : "CEO", "name" : "Matthew Stibbe", "sameAs" : [ "https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewstibbe/", "https://www.facebook.com/matthew.stibbe" ], "url" : "https://geekboss.com", "worksFor" : { "@type" : "Organization", "name" : "Articulate Marketing" } } ```