Your Whackiest Special Interest in Adulthood??

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Well I had some pretty intensive treatment for my acne because it was literally impacting my life (my forehead swelled so much and was so tender that I stopped riding my bike that year because wearing my helmet hurt too much) I do notice other people's pimples, but have zero desire to pop them because that would involve close physical proximity which is a very solid 'no'. I just watch videos online. There was one person in the comments that theorized that this stimulates an ancient part of our brain, because other apes use grooming each other as a form of bonding, and that watching pimple popping kinda hit's that button.

Well blow me, I never knew that! I've been to Beatrix Potter's house, read her books when I grew up, and have started to read some to my toddler... I feel like a fraud! Haha. Thank you for pointing that out to me, that is fantastic. Although also extremely annoying to hear about her treatment at the time.

History is full of totally epic women (some of whom we are already familiar with) who did totally epic things, but we don't hear about it, because 'ladies can't do things'.
Alice Roosevelt: Teddy Roosevelt's daughter, rode around in cars with men, UNSUPERVIESED, smoked, would climb on top of the White House, gambled. When a foreign dignitary asked Teddy if he could control his daughter, Teddy replied "I can either run the country, or attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both."
Sheng Yi Sao/Ching Shih: former Chinese prostitute and MOST SUCCESSFUL PIRATE EVER! Not just successful female pirate, but out of ALL pirate. Had about 400 ships and between 40,000-60,000 men under her command. Successfully negotiated her retirement with the Chinese government and lived to be 68.
Khutulun: Chinggis Khan's great-great-granddaughter. Said she would marry any man that could beat her in a wrestling match, but if the dude lost he had to give her a horse. Eventually she had a herd of about 10,000 horses.
Mary Ann Brown Patten: First female merchant ship captain. Her husband fell ill and was incapable of of captaining the ship, so Mary took over, stared down a mutiny, successfully navigated to San Francisco while studying medicine to care for her husband. And and by the way, she was also pregnant while she did this.
Susan Ahn Cuddy: Korean-American woman during WWII, and the first female aerial gunnery officer in the U.S. Navy. She instructed male (primarily white) soldiers in how to properly shoot enemy planes out of the sky. She could even work guns that the men usually had trouble with.
Hedy Lamarr: Actress and inventor of frequency hopping, the thing that lets up have Bluetooth and Wifi. She invented it because she found out that remote controlled torpedoes could easily be jammed, so she wanted to figure out a way to fix that. The solution was frequency hopping.

^ thank you, starrytigress. Also wow, just wow!
Another one to add to the list is Rose Friedman. Everyone knows of Milton Friedman, but they wrote books together and from all that I have read it is she that deserves most of the credit for the ideas contained within! An intellectual powerhouse, to be sure.

Probably because it was (and in some cases still is) common to address things to Mr. & Mrs. *insert man's name here*. Which always cheesed me off to no end. You should've heard the 'loud discussions' Mom and I had when we were addressing graduation announcements. My Mom would go with the traditional address, as above, I, however, would write Mr. & Mrs. *last name only*. Mom told me that you're supposed to put the man's full name, which made no sense to me, because that isn't the woman's first name, and if you're putting first names, you should put BOTH first names, and if you don't, then you should only put the shared last name.

That and we're still struggling with the fact that women can be intelligent individuals, and can, y'know, write. At least a third of all early sci-fi writers (1920-1940 or so) were women, and women made up about half of the sci-fi readership. So where did the idea that women don't like or aren't good at sci-fi? That's because when John W. Campbell and Groff Conklin put together the first sci-fi anthologies the purposefully excluded women, because the believed that women couldn't write, period. Not that women couldn't write sci-fi, but that women couldn't write at all, despite some of the landmark books in the genre were actually written by women (The Blazing World 1666 by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, Frankenstein 1818 by Mary Shelly). It's just like computer science. Grace Hopper almost single-handedly invented what modern computer science is (she's the reason why we use the word 'bug' to describe a problem with computers), but if you listen to Silicon Valley, women just aren't biologically made to do computer stuff, so if we try to put more women in computer science we'll get inferior work because, through no fault of their own, women are totally bad at anything computer related. Of course this came about once it was realized that coding and programming were where the money was at with computers, then women became bad at it and men became good at it. Just look at other 'traditional women's jobs'. Sewing is women's work, unless you're a fashion designer, cooking is women's work, unless you're a chef. It's a woman's job until it makes money, then it's a man's job.

I'm glad that nobody bother with Mr. or Mrs. any more over here. It's easier for the people addressing envelopes anyway. When I got married I didn't change my last name. That confounded a few of DH's older relatives. They couldn't figure out how to write the names on letters.

I tend to get into something weird when I'm sick. A few years ago when I had fever for three days I read all about burials of homeless people in mass graves. Once I recovered I wasn't interested any more. The next bout of illness made me watch old Chinese movies with a particular actor. He was nuts but I enjoyed them during my fever.

Hmm maybe fever is my special interest. Having fever is like going on a themed vacation for my mind. Oh those fever dreams. When I got omicron a while ago I went to heaven and visited lots of dead relatives and had a tour there. It was fun. Although none of them would accept the gifts I brought because I had Covid. The gate keeper who did Covid screening tossed my presents outside into a pile. I tried to retrieve them and they caught me sifting through the pile. I was embarrassed and tried to joke about it then I teleported back.

1) Everything I could find about vanlife
2) cob houses: techniques, examples, alternative building styles
3) ancient Roman culture
4) objectivism (have since moved on from this one)

...And a LOT more that fall under your "restricted" NT-like categories... Because c'mon...obsessing about Harry Potter is just awesomely FUN! (Especially when you know the books so dang well that you can spot tiny flaws and inconsistencies from book to book to book, and have imaginary conversations where you take J.K. Rowling to task for not noticing them herself when she was writing the books in the first place...)

My weirdest special interest in adulthood is My Little Pony, both the dolls and the cartoons, but mostly Friendship is Magic. I began watching it at age 16 and I haven’t stopped since. I like other generations of MLP, but G4 is my favorite.

Historical/Ancient Woodwind and Brass Instruments - probably my strangest interest aside from ancient music itself (not talking like J.S. Bach [who I do love!] but more like this).

I've seen MLP mentioned a couple of times in this topic. I guess I never really thought of that was particular whacky, but maybe... Probably having the amount of MLP toys I do is slightly odd, I guess. But I don't even have that many compared to many collectors. lol

That's awesome! Friendship is Magic has such a strong fanbase, and the storytelling really resonates with all ages. G4 is definitely a standout!

My whackiest special interest in adulthood is prolly cults.

Wojaks and alt-right internet meme culture. It’s so f*****g weird but genuinely fascinating. Knowing about the sharty is a curse. They practically speak another language on there.

The D.B. Cooper case is fascinating, so I can’t blame you.

The very elderly woman across the hallway from my mother is actively dying and has been for almost a week. She has her mouth open and is gesturing toward dead relatives all the time, so I’ve been into reading about deathbed visions. It reminds me of my dad doing the same.