gauging people's interest

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Is inability to gauge people's interest a common ASD trait, or is that just lack of social skills?

I ask as I have known many people who probably were on the spectrum, primarily from my academia days, who would go on and on about uninteresting things at lunch with no regard for how bored and uninterested or even openly insulting their audience was.

Me, I think I am at the other extreme. I assume no one is interested in what I am interested in, so I don't tell anyone anything about my interests and we talk about movies, politics, etc.. But I'm also blunt and tell people when I'm not interested. But I think NTs get offended when you tell them you are not interested. I don't though.

But maybe it's my inability to relate to people. I have a "friend" who sends me pictures of garbage he sees on trips or animals his camera trap finds, and I want to say "Stop sending me this. I don't care." but they are pretty much the last of the people I haven't driven away, so maybe I'll just put up with it and keep saying "That's nice."

I tend to also assume people are not interested and apologise when I realise I am going on too much only to often be told that I was not. With people I am comfortable with however I cannot tell and tend to go on for way to long before they politely stop me. I guess you can't say I can tell in the first scenario either, I am just more careful in it.

I am one who believes that everyone is interested and I just refuse to believe that people are not. Everyone likes model railways don't they? (I insist!)

I liked model railways when I was learning how to build them. The model railway club at MIT turned into an early experiment in computers and robotics, blossoming fantastically in subsequent careers. Similarly, Burt Rutan built model aircraft before building big ones. Once, his mom bought him a kit, and he just laughed, chucking it in his materials pile.
I'll rant away about my special interests for a paragraph or two at a time, but I remember to ask if they are interested in the next chapter. Mostly, I tell stories that are somewhat similar to the ones I've just listened to, and ones that can get a laugh.

If you are unsure of the attention span of your audience or specifically of the audience to the topic you would like to raise, you may make a statement of less than 30 seconds and see if if captures anyone's interest. It is like floating a trial balloon.

Most people will give you a few seconds to speak even if they find it boring. If there is no interest, one can return to silence and allow others to speak. Even if you are responding to what someone else says, it is a good idea to keep communication short.

This can help one also deal with information from others. One does not need to only maintain two categories, "interesting" and "not interesting". The establishment of a category called "briefly interesting" can be helpful not to hurt the feelings of others.

This is the story of my life. My mother would bellow "Stop it! Stop it already! Can't you tell that no one is listening to you?!" And I would continue anyway.

I only had one real friend in college. She would go on and on and on about some crap no one cared about. It would be the strangest thing, like one remark in a movie that had really amused her. Not even the movie itself, one line in it.

It was maddening but she was my only friend so I had to listen.

One time, a roommate had her parents visiting, and the father, a history teacher, was telling me a long story in the kitchen. However, I heard the other roommate leaving for the day, and had a message he needed first, so, after a couple of attempts to interject, I simply walked out on the speech and headed to the front hall. After I had done so, the mother looked around, and said "You are here, and she is here, and he is here, so WHO IS HE (my husband) TALKING TO NOW??"
"Myself, I'm afraid." I replied. He had not been able to stop talking.

There was also a fellow in the British parliament who was known for making long speeches. He was in the middle of one of these when he was told that the measure he was speaking in favour of had already passed. He was unable to stop until he finished.

I met a woman at a 12-step group for recovering from dysfunctional families who was a complete chatterbox. She quit going to meetings, and spent all day on the phone, monopolizing one conversation after another. She never listened at all. Visits went the same way. I'm pretty sure she was NT.

When I was very young, I was having trouble with a drawing, so I decided to ask my mother's advice, since she was a photographer. At the time, an honest answer would have been "Sorry, I'm busy cooking, but I'll look at it soon." Instead, she said "Oh, that's nice." I never asked her for advice again.

I think that when I'm listening, my memory is prone to popping up things that are only related by chance for me, not others, but which seem really important. I try to watch out for changing the topic too much.