I actually like helping people a lot, too.

I don't think IT folks are naturally misanthropic or antisocial, but I personally got beat down so much by wanting to help and realizing they didn't care to listen, or weren't willing to learn anything. At all. Even though they came to me with the problem, it seemed they mostly just wanted me to fix it for them with zero understanding required, or to "be emotional at someone" or were lonely.

I also got so tired of being friendly and enthusiastically educational with advising my relatives or friends, only to then watch them completely disregard 100% of my advice they came to me for.

In the former job I'm still putting myself back together from, most of the public peoples who visited me would have been better served by visiting a psychologist / therapist first, but I was cheaper (free). :(

Often when it's something I do specialize in and I get all excited, that's when they choose to gloss over and I can tell they just want me to stop talking.

I hate having biases against people, but there very much are definitely "normies" who are threatened by the prospect of having to activate their neurons for the first time since they stumbled out of their highest level of education, and only learned to think when it was forced upon them.

Makes a guy feel pretty crappy. So I'm not as forthcoming with my skillset as I used to be in casual company. Lol