What really counts as a narrow intense interest?

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I’m trying to figure out if I really have AS or if what I have is actually NLD. The only real difference in them that I can find is the thing with the interest, which is the one thing I was unsure about with myself and AS. How narrow and how intense dose an interest have to be to count as such? Thank you for any feedback.

Not sure but if you have a rare interest that 99.9% do not care about that maybe an
example of narrow interest.

I'm not an expert on it. I guess its a very AS thing to give a d*mn about a precise DX
when in the real world it will make little difference in your life.

An example given by expert Tony Attwood was of a man who was
interested in trucks to the extent that on his journeys to & from
work he would count the number of Volvos,Mercedes etc and then
arrange them into 'league tables' . I think it's really something that
those with AS do on a personal basis to try and bring a sense of order in a chaotic world. If people have an interest that they can develop
from being a solitary pursuit to something they can share with others
then it's a step forward. The example of the man with his league
tables of truck makers is narrow and intense as no-one else but him
would be interested !

I know that the king Charles XI of Sweden always wrote down the exact clock of any event on the day, just to try to find a pattern between what was happening. Some people claims that both Charles XI and Charles XII of Sweden suffered from AS, or something similar *history buffing*. Moreover, a lot of scientists and philosophers have had very narrow and odd pecularities, for example as Immanuel Kant, who walked down the streets of Königsberg exactly between the very same clock beats every day.

I have a narrow, intense interest. I've mentioned them, many times. All you need to do is look at my avatar and you'll know what I'm talking about.

I count. Everything.

i count things too..when countin sheep the best way is to count the number of feet and divide by four.
cattle is the same except you count the number of nostrils and divide by two.
see im an aspie intellectual geniuos.

I am looking at the numbers making up specific combinations and then adding them together. I generally avoid the result of 4. I cannot explain why.

im so smart i dont have time to spell.

yeah, once i was bleeding and i thought i was so tough i didnt have time to bleed, nd i nearly died, bt yeah i frickign goineous i am.

Well, I didn't know my interests were intense until I found out that most of the kids I knew who also liked dinosaurs (loved them for a long time) didn't look up things about them or read much about them. They just liked them.
But that's an interesting question, I sort of have that doubt as well. But aren't sensory issues also exclusive to AS? (although some aspies probably don't have them)

I was a little confused abought this as well...lots of people are collectors and have "interests".I think for me, the difference is how unusual the interest is in your peer group(like...I would spend hours looking at rocks and bugs and looking up what they were when most my peers were playing with barbies.I also think it might be about if the interest is interfearing with the function of your daily life(like an addiction)
If you focus on the interest at the exclussion of getting dailey tasks done and feel very agitated when interupted or made to stop....maybe that would be an "obsession" vs "interest?I can spend hours or days, focusing on an interest(making art,computer,reading)other people would get burnt out and need to go socialize or "get out of the house" or do something else for a break...I dont want my focus broken.....but then again....I may not be aspie...might just be a "freak"?

My intense interests are serial. For a while it was gothic architecture, and I'd spend hours and hours perusing books and sites about gothic churches, learning all the names of arcitectural features and styles, comparing and contrasting images of different ones and sticking pictures all over the walls. I picked this subject for my degree work but got so bogged down in obsessing on the subject I couldn't actually do any work about it. I'm over that one now. As a kid and young adult I was obsessed with a seemingly endless series of bands and pop stars, and would talk endlessly to disinterested people about every detail of whatever band/artist it was at the time. I was very unpopular largely because of this habit. I have learned to keep my obsessions to myself as I have grown, and have more friends (or at least people who enjoy my company somewhat) now as a result. I still obsess, but confine my discussion to specialist forums where others share my interests. My current interest is Asperger's Syndrome, surprise surprise and I'm on here from morning till night if I'm not doing anything else.