Interests and Other People

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I'm wondering which answer in the poll applies to ye the most. Define normal as something you've found other people to often be interested in. Define relate as also getting along with or befriending.

My interest in movies by Tim Burton has allowed me to make a handful of friends with similar interests. However, some aspects of it are more intense than other people's, such as my passionate love for Alice in Wonderland (whereas many people seem to think it was "mediocre").

Other so called Lion King "fans" make fun of me for my intrest in Lion King. Other people who supposedly like meerkats would probably make fun of me but than I was obsessed with meerkats before meerkat manor came out. I feel people who like meerkats but only liked them after the popularity of meerkat manor and compare the meerkat are "fake" meerkat lovers. I've never tried to fit in with other Titan A.E. fans.

Most of my stuff - linguistics, homeopathy, genealogy, und so weiter, "Normal" people DO. Mighty few of them appear to me to be INTERESTED.

I picked unusual + unusual, because I pretty much never find other people who are interested in my interests. Although, on the internet, one can find people who are interested in just about any strange thing. In real life, it's different.

However, some of my interests have been things that other people are interested in (like when I'm really interested in a particular religion) but it's not really the same sort of interest because usually they don't spend hours researching it like I do and don't want to talk about it all the time. I used to be surprised when someone who had belonged to a religion for years (which I didn't even belong to) didn't know anywhere near as much about it as I did and didn't want to talk about it.

I'm still not sure, maybe I should have put normal + too intense to relate. It's hard to say.

Here's a question though:

Say someone isn't pregnant, but their all-consuming interest is pregnancy and fetal development, so they join a forum for pregnant women online and start spending time there. The other women there are talking about pregnancy and fetal development and are interested in it but for them, it's because they actually are pregnant. Is the non-pregnant person's interest then a normal interest that is too intense, or is it unusual because usually people who are not pregnant are not interested in pregnancy?

(BTW, pregnancy is not a special interest of mine, just an example.)

Last edited by PangeLingua on 26 Oct 2010, 8:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have found that having an interest in the same subject is not necessarily a point in common with another person. People can be interested in the same thing for very different reasons and it can be very alienating to try to share something that one cares deeply about with other people, who may not see it in the same way or care about it in the way that we do.

I didn't reply to the poll because my interests are quite normal but they don't help me relate to other people, though I have tried and wish that they could.

Generally I don't talk with others, so I don't talk about my SI. Maybe sometimes online, but very rarely IRL.

"My interests are normal in subject + too intense to relate to others with similar interests."

Philosophy, Literature, and Psychology are normal in subject for adult intellectuals.
There are a select few kids my age, however, with whom I can discuss these topics, but not into very great depth. I'm best with an adult.

Then my interest in music (The Beatles, especially) is normal for any age group, but I get weird looks when I spout out the dates on which a certain album was released or when they played a certain show. I just say, "Yeah, I like the Beatles. Some of my favorite songs by them are 'A Day in the Life', 'I'm Only Sleeping', and 'Yesterday'. There are more, though. Do you know any of those?"

I still sound odd, I know.

I don't talk to people that often.

I got to share my photography interests with people on flickr. I noticed that my photos were an Aspie-like collection, not the collection of "Photos of friends" that a lot of people my age would display. My photos are all either landscape, urban-scape, flowers and plants, or animals. I rarely decide to take photos of people .

Some people have friended me on Flickr. There is one guy who friended me who I think is an Aspie, after looking though his photo collection

Also a few women with similar interests to me. But they seem to be a bit older than me. It is like I have the interests of an older woman, perhaps a woman in her 60s but the personality of a young girl .

Most women my age are not as taken with flowers as I am, but women seem to get into gardening a lot around 40s plus, or perhaps it is a generational thing.

I have always had good conversations with my grandma about flowers. She is a keen gardener and always had a lovely flower garden. My other grandmother is an artist and did oil paintings.

Too intense.

Well, I grew up with a big interest in games, back when it was considered nerdy. Now just about anyone can play a game and be considered casual/normal. My gaming tastes and goals are different from other people though, so I could still fit in the unusual category.

Overall, not many share my interests. I've been unable to get my friends to do what I'd like to do. I end up having to do what they like if I want to play with them.

Even when I play one of my favorite types (online text games), I don't really fit in with the players there. They're mostly interested in socializing, fighting each other, or game politics. Everything about them as players feels fake to me too. It's weird.

My music tastes are very broad. I like a lot of genres, but mostly I don't like what's popular. Some popular stuff is okay for me though. I've asked numerous people when the subject of music comes up, if they've heard of my preferences, and it's always a no.

All of the options apply to several of the interests I've had. Some are too unusual, some are too intense, some can be interesting to others if I'm careful, some I never share with anyone because the interest is most enjoyable when just daydreamed about all day and talking about it does nothing for me or because there's a stigma attached to it.

By the poll results so far it seems few people have interests that have helped them make friends or relate to people better. I know it is often advised, even here, to make friends by a club of people with similar interests. I wonder if this is just bad advice or not often applicable to many.

I'm not sure what type of interest would be considered "unusual".

I definitely have a lot of exposure to people doing online games, and they would help me make friends -if- I let them. I don't accept friend requests on games, I don't accept party invites unless I know them in some way. I don't actually like making friends when I think about it, I don't want any new ones.

Text games have gotten me more "friends" than other games, because I'm roleplaying. I keep them strictly in that game world though, so they aren't really my friends, they're my character's friends.

Aside from online gaming, no, my interests don't really have much friend potential unless I went to forums specifically for them.