This is kind of a tangent, but this exactly is one of the reasons I was not very hopeful about his plans to go into costuming as a career choice.
Not only does his work keep him tied him to fandom and geek/nerd circles with all the easily-abused Geek Social Fallacies that implies, it also keeps him in an entire industry where people do accept this kind of thing more willingly than, I don't know, accountancy or engineering. I'm a theater person rather than film, which I think is where he's aiming, so there may be differences. But while most people in my circles at Andy's age do have some form of steady employment, it's still fairly common for people to crash in spare rooms, trade in things other than money (commissioned work, favours, room and board, etc), and network like crazy because so many opportunities come down to knowing someone. It's an environment where people are able to have their quirks and idiosyncrasies more obviously on display than more white-collar jobs would allow, which can be really positive but also allows for things like Andy's predatory tactics to be written off as just personality quirks, which is exactly what happened with the person he was staying with in LA.
Like, to be fair to him I don't know what 9-to-5 office job would take him with his work history or that he would be any good at it or want to do that with his life. But I just do not trust the fact that he's invested this much time and effort in pursuing a career practically designed to keep him in one of the environments where his bullshit has the highest chance of passing as normal.
Re: "I can sell you realities"
This is kind of a tangent, but this exactly is one of the reasons I was not very hopeful about his plans to go into costuming as a career choice.
Not only does his work keep him tied him to fandom and geek/nerd circles with all the easily-abused Geek Social Fallacies that implies, it also keeps him in an entire industry where people do accept this kind of thing more willingly than, I don't know, accountancy or engineering. I'm a theater person rather than film, which I think is where he's aiming, so there may be differences. But while most people in my circles at Andy's age do have some form of steady employment, it's still fairly common for people to crash in spare rooms, trade in things other than money (commissioned work, favours, room and board, etc), and network like crazy because so many opportunities come down to knowing someone. It's an environment where people are able to have their quirks and idiosyncrasies more obviously on display than more white-collar jobs would allow, which can be really positive but also allows for things like Andy's predatory tactics to be written off as just personality quirks, which is exactly what happened with the person he was staying with in LA.
Like, to be fair to him I don't know what 9-to-5 office job would take him with his work history or that he would be any good at it or want to do that with his life. But I just do not trust the fact that he's invested this much time and effort in pursuing a career practically designed to keep him in one of the environments where his bullshit has the highest chance of passing as normal.