宅男 (up-to-date term)

In the past, when parents wanted to reward their kids for good performance, they might take them out for a good time. These days, however, taking kids out could be taken as a “punishment”懲罰(cheng2 fa2).

I’m not kidding. These days kids would rather stay home playing online games 線上遊戲(xian4 shang4 you2 xi4) or hanging online doing who-knows-what than go out for fun. One of my friends told me that her 12-year-old son begged her for an extention of time for him to play online games as a reward instead of anything else. I once read a mum saying that whenever she wants to punish her kids for their misbehavior, she would say, “We’re going out this weekend, the WHOLE weekend!”

That explains why we have such a term as宅男(zhai2 nan2) nowadays. It is generally believed this term came from a Japanese TV series Densha Otoko 電車男(dian4 che nan3), train man, a “purportedly true story of a 23-year-old who intervened when a drunk man started to harass several women on a train, who ultimately begins dating one of the women.” (Densha Otoko, Wikipedia)

Originally the term was more derogatory, referring to those who are absorbed in online games, comics or animations; those who are obsessive with things such as electronic products; those who always stay home with messy looks and in sluggish clothing; those who are inept at social skill. . .

But since the word 宅means house or residence as in 住宅(zhu4 zhai2), people tend to associate the term with a neutral meaning referring to those who love to stay home instead of going out. We not only have宅男,but 宅女(zhai2 nu3) for female. Consequently the word 宅is sometimes used as an adjective. For example, I can say 我很宅(wo3 hen3 zhai2), I am very宅,to mean that I love to stay home, more or less as a self-mocking.

Take CBS’s hot sit-com The Big Bang Theory for example. It is titled as宅男行不行(zhai2 nan2 xiang2 bu4 xiang2) in Taiwan. The four nerd characters are directly called宅男 in the title. Take a closer look at the four, you’ll find a lot of characteristics corresponding to those of 宅男.

The four nerds, all with advanced educational background in science, spend a lot of time playing online games or hanging out at comic store on a regular basis. Raj has so much trouble speaking to women that he turns mute in front of them unless drunk. Sheldon, played by Jim Parson who later won a Golden Globe Award, causes so much laughter in his ignorance of social norms, who I think shows abundant symptoms of Asperger syndrome.

The four characters, though dramatized, in some way show some typical traits of宅男 (and nerd as well). Frankly speaking, with so much fun you can get online, who would want to go out suffering with the weather and the polluted air and the hustle and bustle?

Well, it’s about time that I, a宅 mum, moved my ass from my computer to yell at my宅 son Steve, who is going to college in two weeks and has been staying in front of his computer for the whole summer, “MOVE YOUR ASS FROM YOUR COMPUTER AND GET OUT FOR SOME EXERCISE!”

懲罰=惩罚

線上遊戲=在线游戏