Do special interests work like going off on tangents?

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They do for me. Here’s an example. I enjoyed Borat and Sacha Baron Cohen. Got obsessed with Jewish themed things. Got more interested in Israel which I got a mild interest in ten years ago or so. About the same time got interested in Hebrew. Cohen using it in his movies kind of helped. After that I got into Israeli pop music. I don’t think most people who enjoyed Borat do this. They just get a few laughs and forget about the movie.

Sure, it can happen like that.

In the 90s, there was a show called “Connections.” It detailed how many seemingly unrelated things, together, could lead to great events or inventions.

Yes

My interest in Denis Istomin branched off into studying about Orenburg, Russia (Denis' birthplace), Russia, Uzbekistan and Tashkent. I want to investigate what life is like for Russian people like Denis growing up in Tashkent.

Why on earth did you get interested in Orenburg Russia, and the lives of ethnic Russians in Tashkent?

Not putting it down. Just that that stuff seems even more arcane for an American than knowing about Olympic tennis stars.

A friend of my parents, a well educated scientist, thought that two humped camels were called "Bactrian camels" (as opposed to the one humped "dromedaries") because he thought that "Bactrian" meant "two humped", but I actually knew of the middle ages kingdom in Central Asia called "Bactria" before I knew that two humped camels were named after the place . Bactria was in what is now Kazahkistan.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 26 Mar 2018, 9:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

Great to see that mentioned. I never forgot that show from seeing it as a kid (a few years earlier in the UK, I think) and I managed to pick up battered old copy of the book a couple of years ago, which is every bit as good. The format does remind me of my "trivia gluttony" sessions on the internet, which often lead to new, but related, interests. I'm surprised I never made that "connection" before!

My interest in history is particularly like that. I hated it as a school subject because they never showed how the different periods and political systems fitted together - it's amazing how much hyper-links can enhance the enjoyment of researching a subject and suggest all sorts of new rabbit holes to disappear down.

The Russians in Tashkent were probably sent there by leaders like Stalin in order to "populate" non-Russian areas.

Within those "SSRs" (Soviet Socialist Republics), one of the official languages had to be Russian. Uzbekistan used to be called the "Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic," if I'm not mistaken.

In 1991, all that changed, with the demise of the Soviet Union.

Mine work like that, too. The past couple years, let's see...I think I started with an interest in the 80's, last I can remember. That branched off into an interest in radio, which became astronomy (short-lived) thanks to Contact by Carl Sagan. That led to a missing meteorite, which in turn became an obsession with a man connected to its disappearance (my avatar). I've exhausted the last topic, though, for the most part. I'm building a website about him since I've run out of sources to learn more, but once that's done I'm turning entirely to one of my splinter interests: Confederate history. It branched off of radio last October.

I've done that kind of thing in miniature a lot. I'll be reading and I'll notice an idea that arouses my curiosity, next thing I'll be looking it up in depth, then another idea will come up during my studies, and I'll look that up, etc. It's more of a short-term thing though. It usually disrupts my life a little, as it's never a planned thing, and I've learned to notice when it's happening and keep it under some kind of control.

With longer-term stuff, my lifelong interest in playing in bands was sparked off when I happened to hear a band rehearsing in a school that I was walking past.

I guess one of my main special interests is music, specifically foreign music. Which often expands itself a bit to foreign cultures. To me it seems broad because I often switch cultures, but I know in the grand scheme of things NTs probably consider it narrow. To them there’s probably no difference between liking Korean rnb or Lituanian metal. It’s all weird foreign s**t. I also have a huge interest in optometry at times, but that interest causes me a lot of anxiety so I know I should proceed with caution with that interest. I also had a special interest in makeup that calmed down and became more of a regular NTs style interest.

kraftiekortie,

Yes, this is correct. All the former Soviet Republics were known as the "X Soviet Socialist Republic."

Not for me. Just because I liked meerkats never meant I was interested in other members of the mongoose family. Just meerkats.