Do you have any interests you can't talk about IRL?

[David Brown]

Blood Meridian, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, and Infinite Jest among other books. I am a /lit/tard.
I'm a nutjob conspiracy theorist (only the ones with documentation and evidence though), also, basically this:

the act of digging holes

I have a desire to know more.

 

[Skitarii]

I hang out with eccentric-types, so there isn't much I'm unable to talk about around them. I guess I can't say nigger or call people schizos, but I can go my whole life without being racist or offensive, so that isn't a problem

 

[SCSI]

Beyond the usual KF fare like loling at creepy troons and other cows, my top three are:

1. Artificial intelligence (both large language model neural nets and game AI) -- No1curr about all the cool shit they can do and how best to use/improve them.
   
2. Precolumbian Mesoamerican anthropology -- I once had a person with a graduate degree in this subject flee the conversation when faced with the overwhelming force of my autism.
3. Occult shit -- People get weird as fuck when you start nerding out about things like the minutiae of some medieval black magic grimoire for some reason. 'Tis bullshit.

 

[LeroyJenkem]

Aside from public powerleveling with the spicier takes on diversity topics, reloading/hard casting takes the cake for being the most self-alienating old man hobby set ever. Normies think you're an insane ammosexual alchemist who is gonna light the place up, and even fellow Gun Guys© get weirded out that you don't just pay $2 a round for 300 BLK, buy old west caliber guns to test homemade black powder, or wonder why you would want to know how to reactivate spent primers with Frankford Arsenal FH-42 you made in the garage.
(The answer is always "to shoot paper better")

Honorable mention: playing in death metal/grindcore bands. Normies find out you play music and squee in delight. They'll ask if you play live or record, you tell them with 99% certainty that they probably won't like it because it's heavy and downtuned. They say "nah brah I listen to 5FDP". You reluctantly play it for them, and they talk through the song to tell you how much they like the music but not the vocals. When you used to play shows in your twenties, it was fun. And your friends like it, but they're all varying degrees of nerd and shitlib, or they're cringy wignats who talk in American Black Metal Vernacular and live with their parents.

 

[Dr. Henry Armitage]

Gardening, lots of outdoor stuff, I keep bees, garden, spend a lot of time innawoods identifying plants and fungi. Trying to learn something about them. I also collect nuts and seeds and grow trees. I love growing all kinds of vegetables and flowers. I'm always trying to learn something new and improve. Problem is all of my friends are more into indoor hobbies and whenever I try and talk about what I'm growing or what I learned I can see their eyes glaze over. I even had one guy at my local game store accuse me of lying when I tried to talk about my garden and all the stuff I do outside. Cause apparently you can't be into ttrpgs and go outside a lot.

 

[Whatevermancer]

Game development. And the simple reason for that is nobody cares. The only people who do are other game devs, but they're often more interested in telling you about their own game.

 

[LeroyJenkem]

Game development. And the simple reason for that is nobody cares. The only people who do are other game devs, but they're often more interested in telling you about their own game.

Makes me miss the days of the Half-Life modding community. I may be wearing rose colored glasses, but I remember every mod had forums full of folks pumped for an update of shitty screenshots, an updated .wad, or a new map announcement.

Games these days feel like an oversaturated market, which means well meaning devs who are passionate about their craft get shit on.

 

[Unarmed Gunman]

There's also serial rapists that I don't talk about with anyone bc woman tend not to like rape.

I would like to nominate this for the awesome quote-scroller at the top of the site.

 

[Haint]

Cemeteries and graveyards. Even talking about cemeteries makes most folks uneasy. It's even harder for me, due to my involvement with cemeteries. I manage and restore 3 ancestral family cemeteries. All three are have several Confederate veterans and KIA. The largest was also used to bury the slaves. Yes, my family's slaves. So it's in the best interest of my family to not discuss this in the open. We even keep the locations secret. I can't even openly discuss my family's history.

i play the minstrel banjo, a type of archaic giant fretless banjo that was used in minstrel shows

Looking at getting a 4 string banjo. I play traditional music of the British Isles. Jigs, reels, hornpipes etc. on the guitar and violin. Fiddle being my primary, playing a fretless instrument is natural to me. While this isn't a taboo subject like my family history, bring up Irish music and the like and all most people know is that it's the funny music played on St. Patrick's day.

 

[Russian Bot]

I have precisely one person I can tell literally anything to. Sadly we live in different cities now so that's been relegated to only online as well.

Honorable mention: playing in death metal/grindcore bands. Normies find out you play music and squee in delight. They'll ask if you play live or record, you tell them with 99% certainty that they probably won't like it because it's heavy and downtuned. They say "nah brah I listen to 5FDP". You reluctantly play it for them, and they talk through the song to tell you how much they like the music but not the vocals. When you used to play shows in your twenties, it was fun. And your friends like it, but they're all varying degrees of nerd and shitlib, or they're cringy wignats who talk in American Black Metal Vernacular and live with their parents.

Oh so much this. Sooo much this. Plus the metal scene seems to be full of the worst virtue signalling fags there are. I think it's because it's made up of so many fat incels. When my band does a T shirt run, we always have to make sure to order majority XXL size shirts.

 

[Arietis]

Game development. And the simple reason for that is nobody cares. The only people who do are other game devs, but they're often more interested in telling you about their own game.

Friend.
I'm guilty of talking about my shit a lot, but I'm also genuinely interested when someone spergs up about their passion projects. I consider that positive autism (as long as we are talking real developers and not just "idea guys") and something to be cherished. I also enjoy discussing design or implementation nuances. I love the craft.

Other than that, amusingly, I have less taboo topics IRL than on the internets. IRL I rarely really go out of a conversation unsatisfied (unless it's for lack of time or interruptions), and people actually look for me for random chitchat (at times more than I'd like). People knows I'm a weirdo and are surprisingly fine with it.
I've even met more people that has played games I worked into IRL than online. Like, what the fuck.

But on the internets I can't talk about fucking anything and nobody ever talks to me unless it's to fix shit, lol. If I try to bring up nerd topics it'll either be too obscure because I'm somehow surrounded by troons and zoomers (make it stop) that only know female characters they want to fuck out of games, movies or shows, or have absolutely shit takes like "Castlevania and LoTR are the same universe" (I shit you not). Stuff like robots, technology, shmups, older games or movies (or music)...are so obscure, and talking about the most innocent topics makes someone flip out and start lecturing about politics or woke shit. I'm pretty sure it wasn't like this before.

EDIT: Wait I remembered a thing. Mythology, occultism and religion. It's a ridiculously difficult topic IRL. I enjoy it because it's a good source of concepts, names and such for my hobbies, but haven't really met anybody into it. Astrology may fly at times.

 

[Matt Damon]

I've gotten quite competent at audio engineering over the past decade and while everybody likes music, nobody anywhere wants to hear "you know, the interesting thing about mix bus compression is..."

 

[Tomboy Respecter]

In terms of what I can actually talk about IRL but very few people are interested, that would be my interest in physics and the other natural sciences, math, engineering, computer science and technology and the anthopological aspects of them. The history of these fields are incredibly deep and full of drama, comedy and breakthroughs that make more sense when you look into how they were inspired. My favorite era to research is the age of medieval scientists like Roger Bacon, Robert Groteste and Nicol Orseme and the period from the mid 1800s to modern day since these eras were MASSIVE paradigm shifts in the realm of physics and math and control theory in the latter case. These periods of time, along with Newton/Leibniz's era to that of Laplace/Lagrange/Cauchy/Galois are the basis of all the technical knowledge we have today. Plus, looking at mathematics from antiquity along with physicsl theories from that era is kinda cool.Same thing goes for vidya too, especially the technical aspects of how the engine works. I just like how far we progressed as a species from rubbing sticks together to make fire to what we have now, not to mention how beautiful and ordely nature is despite how chatotic it may seem. It almost inspires a sense of religion in me.

In terms of what I probably shouldn't talk about but do anyways (if I frankly don't give a shit about the banal topic people are talking about)? I talk about weird anime, manga and games like Bobobobobobobo and Drakengaard and Japanese gravure models like Agnes Lum and Agnes Chan becuase why the fuck not? Granted, if I like the person in question, I work with them ona larger project or the conversation is in the previous camp, I can control my sperging and keep relatively on topic with tangents that are still socially acceptable. I don't want to scare them off unnecessarily, I will give pretty blatant cues that I don't care what they are talking about if none if the above is true. For fucks sake this is my personal wallpaper for my phone and desktop (when I am not at with friends, family, work or school):



I am a very busy man.

 

[deerPropaganda]

I would like to nominate this for the awesome quote-scroller at the top of the site.

Put it in the quote suggestions thread

 

[♦️ King of Diamonds ♦️]

I have a very extensive and pretty rare collection of Occult Books (spellbooks, ritual manuals, pagan prayerbooks, scans of alchemical manuscripts from the middle ages, etc.) back from when I used to practice alot of that stuff.

I can't exactly bring my copy of The Corpus Hermeticum or The Gospel of The Prophet Mani into a pawn shop to get rid of it, however- so I've been trying to find people willing to buy it off of me. The collection itself (and some books) are worth hundreds of dollars so I would much prefer to sell them than burn them, plus there is a huge taboo against burning books so I am averse to it however wicked I view their contents nowadays.

 

[ResidentHousepet]

I've gotten quite competent at audio engineering over the past decade and while everybody likes music, nobody anywhere wants to hear "you know, the interesting thing about mix bus compression is..."

I had a similar thing except it was about spacial audio in music production. I get ya.

 

[Whatevermancer]

Games these days feel like an oversaturated market

Yeah, it seems like 10-15 years ago people were more enthusiastic, but now that Unity, UE and other tools made game dev more accessible, it stopped being something special, so they became uninterested.
Or maybe my circle changed. Or maybe we all grew up.

Friend.
I'm guilty of talking about my shit a lot, but I'm also genuinely interested when someone spergs up about their passion projects. I consider that positive autism (as long as we are talking real developers and not just "idea guys") and something to be cherished. I also enjoy discussing design or implementation nuances. I love the craft.

If you meet up game devs IRL, they seem to be genuinely interested, but online it looks like everyone wants attention and feedback without giving anyone else attention and feedback.

 

[BONE_Buddy]

I am lucky in that I am in an environment that allows me to sperg relentlessly about defense technologies. If I worked in any other industry, I would be getting regular visits from various law enforcement agencies.

_
The interests I have that I can't seem to find anybody to talk about with are a lot of historical topics, I have a broad taste, but small wars and revolutions hold a special place in my heart. But there are very few people who can talk about anything other than very surface level details of WWII.

I like people watching and sociology. People really don't like knowing their behavior is far more predictable than they think it is. People stereotype themselves, and are shocked whenever you talk about how they are doing that. I find it all fascinating.

Aside from that, there is the usual, lolcows, politics, and religion.

 

[deerPropaganda]

I have a very extensive and pretty rare collection of Occult Books (spellbooks, ritual manuals, pagan prayerbooks, scans of alchemical manuscripts from the middle ages, etc.) back from when I used to practice alot of that stuff.

I can't exactly bring my copy of The Corpus Hermeticum or The Gospel of The Prophet Mani into a pawn shop to get rid of it, however- so I've been trying to find people willing to buy it off of me. The collection itself (and some books) are worth hundreds of dollars so I would much prefer to sell them than burn them, plus there is a huge taboo against burning books so I am averse to it however wicked I view their contents nowadays.

list it on ebay or something

 

[Darksy DePhil]

Nearly all of them. Then again, people here only care about football.