How my obsessions work (I am alone with this?)

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I have many obsessions. My interest levels will spike in many different things at random times. The way I go about it is the unique and strange part. For example, for some strange reason, I have recently become really interested in turantulas, even though spiders terrify me. I have found myself watching many videos of them, usually watching several repeatedly. Another example is thunderstorms, like supercells or tornadoes. I am fascinated by these, and will find and save pictures, download many videos and if I get videos of these obsessions, I tend to watch them many times. I do this for nearly all of my obsessions, and I have never known why. Am alone in this behavior?

In your case with the Tarantulas, some people believe that Aspies tend to focus on things that frighten them to understand them and make sense of things as a way of overcoming their fears. Knowledge is literally power for us.

For me, one of my lesser obssessions that only comes out around this time of year is 9/11. I tend to watch as many documentaries and movies and such about it as possible. I do believe this is probably due to the above theory that we need to get lots of info to understand or make sense of apparently random things in this world.

Also, thunderstorms and tornados are AWESOME.

Those behavior patterns sound identical to mine & I've also wondered if anyone else goes about their interests that way. For me it's mostly history and music that I obsess about and I also go through intervals where I download a ton of videos and watch them over and over. It consumes most of my free time when I'm interested in something and it gets to the point where I spend alot of time alone otherwise I torture my friends with my non-stop obsessing. After awhile, I tend to move on to something else as the focal point & it's like I always have these mini-obsessions on the back burner all the time.

With very few exceptions, my obsessions have all revolved around either movies or anime, so of course watching videos of them is a requirement. I also love to collect pictures of my obsessions. Most of those pictures wind up getting cropped and resized in order to be used as avatars on here.

I become very obsessed with World War II when V E-Day and D-Day roll around, and England and particularly London were big targets during that war. Also, why would an Anglophile be so obsessed with something horrible that happened to Britain and neighbouring countries 70 years ago?

I have become obsessed with manipulating different symbols of mathematics but I only stay in my field of interest and it's pertinent topics and when I do go outside it , it has to be at least math-related i.e physics or mathematical biology / economics.

You're not alone, it seems. I do that too. I can get obsessed with some topic or hobby and focus most of my attention on that for a while and I will also learn whatever I can about that topic. I may later switch to something else though. Man, if I could use this somehow to my advantage.

I mean, something silly. My wife would need a new hairdrier. I would read all I can about hairdriers for days until I literally become an expert on hairdriers. I'd forget most of it later though when my focus switches to snow-blowers, vacuum cleaners or sewing machines

Some obsessions are transient like that while some like computers, computer games, bikes and animated movies persist most of the time.

For the last few weeks I have been spending most of my time reading and collecting info about Aspergers

I think that's totally normal for an Aspie to do. I watch and rewatch the same episodes of TV shows and movies, I can listen to the same song all day long etc. I think it's to do with wanting to know/understand something inside out.