People hatin' on your special interests.

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The firearm interest tends to bother some. I have no idea why, as my firearms will never harm another human as I will never harm another (barring the exceedingly rare self-defense stuff). If I drove a car, people should fear that more if fear is the primary reason.

video games boomers think it's for "children" than go on to complain about gta

I get offended very easily when people hate on my special interests. I've learned to keep some of them in check - i.e., I know it's generally not appropriate to quote Latin poetry to most people. But when people talk negatively or demeaningly about the things I care so passionately about, I take it personally, and have been known to suffer meltdowns, sometimes very publicly. This often takes people aback, since I'm not very open about my diagnosis and I'm pretty well socialized in general.

However, the whole special interest thing is a curious topic. It's been brought up before, but it's always struck me as odd that NTs are allowed to have special interests that are in some cases every bit as intense as anything we might have, but as long as it's something societally acceptable, they're not considered odd. I live in an extremely sports-obsessed city. It is not unusual at all to see people decked from head to toe in team regalia, and to have whole rooms of their house dedicated to the local teams. Similarly, I once worked with an NT woman whose devotion to scrapbooking far exceeded my passions for record collecting, classical languages, or microtonal music. It's considered deeply eccentric that I know details about composers who lived four hundred years ago, but millions of people know far more intimate details about celebrities, and that's not considered strange.

maybe she was joking

People just view Spongebob as another childrens cartoon. But they don't pay attention to what it is - a lot of Spongebob is actually very creative and very witty.

People actually hate on the Kinks? IMHO that is a true mental disorder.

I know how you feel. My sister keeps making fun of me because I want to be a dinosaur for Halloween. She says only little kids go as dinosaurs, but I don't see why; I bet there are a lot of paleontologists who love a good triceratops costume. I've learned not to let her bother me, but it did take some time.

^ Maybe a zombie dinosaur? That would be cool!

Last edited by smudge on 16 Oct 2013, 9:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

Lol, yeah, just go as a dinosaur skeleton and say I'm a post-cretaceous asteroid dinosaur

It's really weird. I watched The Producers from 1968 last night with Gene Wilder in it, the only movie I've ever seen him in apart from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and fell in love with his performance. I spent all last night researching his other works, and today I'm hearing about him everywhere; my abnormal psych professor had a picture of him with Daisy the sheep from his film, Everything you Wanted to Know About Sex but were Afraid to Ask, on his lecture slideshow this morning, and now he's here on WP too!

Isn't it fascinating that NT's are renoun for their empathy. Their natural understanding of how the other person is feeling. Modifying their responces so as to not hurt the other's feelings.

And yet, they they have no understanding of hurting people on the spectrum. NT's indeed.

I'm NT. Some of this is general joshing. I have a 'thing' for bad art. I take a lot of stick for it. You know what...so what? I grew up in a family of artists and art snobs. I grew up around great art. I can tell the difference. My love of 'bad art' is probably just a reaction to it. I don't care. I know it's laughable. I laugh, too.

I also have a love of DNA test specials on talk shows and crime documentaries and my college football team. Sometimes I get teased about those things, too. I get teased for being American. (I live in the UK). I get teased for all kinds of silly things. I would tease someone for a love of Sponge Bob or meerkats or My Little Pony. Hopefully not excessively. And yes, I'd be wary of someone with a lot of guns and who liked to talk about them. Tooled up = danger signal. No offense, but gun enthusiasts are more dangerous than someone who doesn't own an arsenal. I will grant that most people who collect guns will never use them to harm a human being or sometimes even anything more lively than a tin can. But ya just never know...

Sometimes the teasing is just for a bit of fun. And sometimes the teasing is 'kidding on the nose' - people are trying to send a gentle message that maybe your special interest is creeping people out a little, or they've heard enough about it already or that it's a bit much. Some people are really bad at this and this 'kidding on the nose' is actually a bit cruel.

Sometimes people are teasing you because they want to be cruel. Some people are bad.

I'm NT and I sometimes can't tell the difference between these types of teasing. But usually I can.

And some people take offense when they want to talk about 'their thing' or even small talk which is quite an important social lubricant for us and someone responds with "I don't like X, let's talk more about meerkats." (Sorry, I'm not picking on meerkats in general, they are very cute.) Some people take offense (just as you do) if you even say "I don't like X." I had a NT co-worker flip on me one time because I told her I don't watch British soap operas. She accused me of being a snob. Far from it, I don't like them, but I don't care if someone else does. Yes, they are 'low culture' and even though I do enjoy 'high culture' as you can see from the things I've listed above, I don't exclusively like high culture. But she was someone who had a great deal of class anxiety and she reacted to me out of her own insecurity.

But there are some special interests I'll admit I hate on.

Let me explain why I hate on my husband's Special Interests.

1. I have heard QUITE ENOUGH about them already.
2. I have grown to resent some of them because they consume his time so much to the detriment of family time, couple time and work time. And all of our closet space in our tiny little house.
3. I'm subjected to a level of detail that I find painful.
4. He will not accept non-verbal cues such as getting up and walking away. He will follow me chattering on. He will not accept verbal cues, such as trying to change the subject. He will not accept verbal cues such as "I really don't want to hear about this any more right now."
5. He will not accept that I know something, too about some of his special interests (i.e. politics - especially if he ventures into discussing local politics which was actually my CAREER for 15 years) or that I may some valuable insight (I'm pretty smart and perceptive and experienced!)
6. He will not stop discussing special interests that I find emotionally uncomfortable. He was very interested in race differences in intelligence for a while...and some of the sources that he read were disgustingly racist. (some not). I found his monologues really upsetting. Told him so. And he became angry with me because what he wanted to tell me was REALLY IMPORTANT.
7. I can rarely discuss the things that are really interesting to me and I expect some level of reciprocity for having to listen endlessly to various painting techniques of D&D miniatures.

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