Socially acceptable obsessions

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My wife and I were at a restaurant the other evening and overheard another fellow at the adjoining table going on and on (and on) about the (American) civil war. He seemed to know everything about every battle that was ever fought. It then occurred to me that the Civil War is one of those interests that people can have where it's socially acceptable to have an obsession over.

Can anyone think of other subject areas where a person's obsession to learn details is considered socially acceptable? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is sports teams. Some people's ability to be able to know the starting lineup of the NY Yankees in 1953, for instance, is considered to be prized.

My 11 year old's obsession is all things weather. Luckily.

Here in Oklahoma, we get some nice strong storms often...He comes alive on those days.

All things art.

Sports. Very socially acceptable to be obsessed with.

Weight, acceptable for females to obsess over until it gets to the point where they are so obsessed about their weight they are starving themselves but it seems acceptable in Hollywood because they want everyone to be thin, be a size 0 or they are considered fat.

For men: politics, cars/motorbikes, computers, sport.
For women: soap operas, celebrities' lives, fashion, cooking, pets, the neighbors' lives

Unsocial obsessions topic

All of mine are either controversial/sensitive or quite strange.

Except maybe for clouds! !

I'll add gardening to the list. Lots of people like to putter in the garden as a hobby. But it is also socially acceptable to have gardening as a special interest and know the Latin names of many plants and know minutiae of their soil and food needs and spend hours weeding and pruning. People won't think it's weird. People will be amazed in a good way. For men or women, gardening is one of the special interests that will make other people say "I wish I had a green thumb like you but I just kill plants by accident".

(Why yes, I do have a nice garden, thank you )

Sportscars is a bit of a sticky wicket.
If I bring up Ferraris some bloke will always start in about Jags, or worse, Vettes.

Trains, real and model, huge on the internet.
Lotsa books about them too.(don't ask me how I know that, I'll lie)
Same for trolleys, trams, subways, busses, ships, boats.

Architecture. Bunch of books and websites out there. Just for fun here's one;
Skyscrapercity

Environmental matters

Genealogy.

Airplanes.

Quilting.

Scrapbooking.

Comic Books.

Computers.

Okay, time to shut up before people start thinking things . . .

I second that

I keep waiting for this to happen to me. But it never does. I just get odd looks from neighbors and sarcastic comments about "wasting my time" from family members. Maybe it's the fact that I like to garden in the middle of the night, because it's often the only free time I have. Maybe it's because I tend to garden while ignoring other responsibilities, or show more care and attention to my plants than the people I know. Hmmm...

I can tell


Another socially acceptable obsession would be numbers. Finance, specifically. My dad (very likely an undiagnosed Aspie himself) is recently retired from a successful career as an accountant. He is a maniac for crunching numbers, and is always hyperfocused on his work; shirking family and friends to work late at the office... An ideal employee for the accounting department at a big telecom business. It seems very socially acceptable in our culture to obsess about money and the mathematics of it.

Last edited by Acacia on 20 Jul 2009, 6:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Mine too, since about the same age - now 35 years and still going strong (and it's an active day here in the north central US). In the early days, it wasn't so popular a special interest, at least among those growing up in New York. Once received anywhere from indifferently to being seen as uber-nerdy, the meteorological special interest has become not only acceptable, but downright cool in many circles. Storm chasing has come a long way from 14-year-olds on bicycles.

What is not cool today may some day come into fashion. Not everything, mind you, but time has an amazing way of shaping cultures and tastes.

You guys are lucky you don't live here in the SF Bay Area. The weather is so dull. I lived in upstate New York when I was a young adult, and used to come back to the Bay Area to visit my mother at Christmas, and I was always struck by how unbearably dull the sky is here. It's either blue or grey, and nothing else. If there's enough pollution in the sky, the sunset is a bit on the red side, but even the prettiest sunsets here are really ho-hum compared to other parts of the world. I'm looking out the window right now. Grey and bright. Snooze.

I don't think knowing everything about wars/history is actually socially acceptable unless you are older.

I believe books are socially acceptable, as well as television and movies. Fishing, sports, hunting-- these are socially acceptable. Music can be as well.

Dance is an acceptable obsession.. in someone able to dance. *sigh*

For that matter, most obsessions become acceptable when they can be applied to something at least semi-practical.

[I vote on developing a completely new school of thought so far as the treatment of ASDs.. Focus it all on sublimation. They need to start using career counselors instead of therapists, and shift the whole thing away from changing aspies' mindsets and towards finding something useful to do with the mindset that's already there. Therapists don't have a mindset that will ever be able to comprehend the aspie way of thinking. They think statistics is useless and boring, for cryin' out loud! All because they can't understand it. (Even psych students who are good at math can't understand statistics.. it's bizarre.) And it's not like aspies can really become therapists.. talking to people all day?! yea, right.]

Main points:
1. Obsessions are acceptable when they're useful.
2. Therapists cannot understand the aspie mind.

Let's knock off the stressful therapy that doesn't work and come up with some way to make more obsessions useful.

That's the whole problem with therapy.. it's all focused on changing the person completely, rather than finding ways to fit the person into the world.

I have a minor special interest in fragrances. I imagine wine would be another socially acceptable one.

Something Ive noticed is that if someone earns money from their special interest then it is more likely to be acceptable. And if they earn lots of money from it then society acts to include that person in the social hierarchy, eg Bill Gates, Steven Speilberg (are they Aspies?) or artists and musicians like Ladyhawke.

How does knowing the starting lineup for every season of the NY Yankees (my earlier, real life example) 'useful'? As far as I can tell, it's used to "one up" someone other sports fan. "Oh, you think you are a bigger fan of the NY Yankees than me. Well, I bet you can't name the starting lineup for any year between 1950 and today, can you?"


Unless they are aspies themselves, I suppose. But then they'd probably make horrible therapists.