"Socially unacceptable" special interests

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Have you had special interests, that people have seen as "socially unacceptable" for some reason?
One of my SpIns is Halloween and while it doesn't creep people out, they find it as weird because I live in the country where Halloween isn't that common.

I've had quite a few special interests that were regarded as weird by most people.

In my teens I was into vampires, not just vampire fiction and movies, but also learning about traditional vampire folklore, the history of vampire hunts, etc.

In college I was a gay rights activist, long before the LGBTQ+ rights movement became at all fashionable.

I would suggest seeking out other people who share your "weird" interests, and with whom you can enjoy talking about them.

While shared interests, alone, are not a guaranteed basis for friendship, they can certainly be an excellent first step towards friendship.

I used to have a special interest in "serial killers". I would read every article, whatch every documentary, read every psychological analysis about them. When I would attempt to talk it with friends they would start making fun of me that I'm a serial killer myself, lol.

Dungeon & Dragons, and role-playing games in general. My conservative, sports-minded family full of gun-loving manly men could never understand my interest in acting and “Let’s Pretend” games.

D&D sessions are, paradoxically, the only times when I can be myself and not be wrongly judged for it. People my age seem to be expected to do gardening, play poker, and watch lots of TV programs, instead.

I understand that.

Fortunately I was able to land with a crowd who happily gamed at all ages, children to grandparents.

As my health has declined from several endocrine, neurological, mitochondrial, problems I've backed off both the RPGs and miniatures games. Never was in to computer games. Man, it has been a decade since I've done any RPG. Doesn't feel that long, though. But I do still paint miniatures from time to time.

And I have since moved to a different town that when I knew the folks mentioned above.

I'm not sure if I'm interested enough to label it as a special interest, but I like reading about North Korea and stories of the (North) Koreans who've made it out of the country. People tend to find that off putting, it seems... they seem to think that reading a book or two of such things is okay, but when you've read and own a dozen of them, that's somehow weird. Same with reading about the survivor stories from WWII's concentration camps and such and stories of women who've escaped/fought the misogynistic cultures in the Middle East in modern era.

One of my SI's is racial mixes. A wokemeister would probably find this racist if I began talking about my fascination with the way a person's looks "come out" if their parents were, say, one-half black, one-half Asian and the other was, say, one-half white and one-half East Indian. They'd be like, "WHO F--- CARES????"

Well I do, because I'm intrigued by genetics! I mean, thick caramel skin, naturally blonde curly hair and almond-shaped green eyes .... if I see a child who looks like this in a store, I'm going to be looking for the parents!

Only because of their intensity and their relatively uninteresting nature to "normal" people. So the world probably sometimes felt that I spent too much time on them instead of sitting around staring at their faces, smiling, performing rituals with them, and asking them who they thought would win the cup final, how their families were going on, etc.

But the subjects of my special interests have never been particularly creepy or objectionable. Nothing weird as such about building multi-track tape recorders, playing musical instruments, singing, recording and performing fairly good music without needing to spend tons of money on it, writing computer programs to take the hard work out of doing certain vaguely useful things, developing food recipes that work.

I usually have at least one in the category of body horror, the most gory and gruesome subgenre there is I’m particularly into Hellraiser.

I see I just past 30,000 posts here, that should be a giveaway.

Not exactly a special interest for me but I do find the topic interesting. When I'm watching tv shows there's usually someone who looks a bit different that I wonder about genetics. For example: Sophie Deveroux on the show Leverage.

Star Trek

Nothing wrong with that.

I just googled her; she doesn't look racially ambiguous or "mixed." She can pass for Italian or Greek maybe, or maybe Armenian, but if her last name is her maiden name, she's at least part French. EDIT: I thought that was her actual name; I now see it's the character's name. The actress's name is Gina Bellman. Well, most "man" names are Jewish. I looked her up on Wikipedia; she's Russian and Polish. Some Russians can have dark hair, dark eyes and light olive and even medium olive skin.

Now that I think about it, I suppose that literally anything can become an unacceptable interest if one makes too much noise of it, like taking every conversation to their interest one way or other, refusing to talk about anything else or always wanting to do things related to it, even to the point that it brings trouble to one's life, like using so much money on it that there's not enough for food.

*joins the conversation without being asked*

My half sister's grandma was from one of the areas Russia took from Finland in the 40s, and half sis has black hair and really dark eyes (the rest of us sisters don't.) Some people even say that she looks a little Asian, but there's no Asian blood in her lineage for as far as we've managed to track it.

nothing wrong with it....but very socially unacceptable