After living in the US for nearly 2 decades I am still amazed at the fact that Americans belittle and make fun of people who are experts in certain fields and go as far as calling them names. When I was a kid in USSR I participated in a club called "Юный радиолюбитель" (similar to amateur radio hobbyist) where kids from 9 to 16 made electronic gadgets, radios, games and etc from publicly available schematics. I remember how fascinated everyone in my class was when I talked about the stuff I worked on. When I came to the US, still as a teenager, I was mocked as a geek or nerd. It is the oddest thing and still makes no sense to me.