A silly poll

[sabotabby]

I don't know if this happens to you, but it happens to me a lot, because despite my general curmudgeonliness, I am perceived to be some sort of gadget geek, early adopter, phone asshole. (Note: I hate phones, I can't figure out what tablets are for and thus hate them, and I'm agnostic on e-readers.) Whenever friends or acquaintances get some sort of new device, they immediately hand it to me and unlock it. And then I'm super-awkward, because isn't that just like poking around on someone's computer? I don't want people poking around on my computer, or on my cell. But other people are always inviting me to dick with their cells.

Anyway, I never know what to do. I assume if there's a particularly interesting app, they would show it to me, but when they do this, they seem to want me to just randomly poke at apps. Is this what people do? I have a smart phone but the apps I actually use are minimal: I have one for the intertubes, several for my e-mail, FB, Tumblr, (not LJ, because LJ's mobile app sucks monkey balls), a calendar, a calculator, a contact list, and a map thing. I hear it can make phone calls too. At any rate, I really don't think anyone is interested in playing with these apps unless they happen to be me. I don't have any games, and when people hand me their gadgets, I never really know where to find the games or how to play them. The last time someone handed me a tablet, I found the camera function and started snapping pictures of random people until he finally took it back.

Basically, this is one of those situations where I completely fail at social interaction. When someone hands me a gadget they might as well hand me a baby. I just gape at it and say, "ooh shiny."

So what do you do?

[Poll #1817413]

Comments

[akisawana.livejournal.com]

Informal survey reveals...
People don't hand us new gadgets unless
a.) they want to show us a specific feature
b.) they want us to fix it
c.) it's broken

It is just like poking around on someone's computer. I don't know the proper protocol for it. Taking pictures seems pretty safe to me. It's not just you!

(I apologize for the complete lack of helpfulness in this comment.)

[sabotabby]

I wasn't looking for advice so much as reassurance that there wasn't some sort of basic social understanding that I was missing. I'm generally pretty socially adept, but sometimes I fail in highly specific ways. (Like holding a baby, for example. I literally had to watch other people holding babies and listen to what they said so that when someone handed me a baby, I would respond appropriately. And also not drop it.)

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

Oh, and nobody ever hands me their gadget; it's like pulling teeth to get anyone to let me use their new toy. Which isn't surprising; I usually don't ask anyway.