Not liking things that are popular

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I've always been particular about my special interests. No, I never felt I purposely picked out my special interests, it was as if someone else picked them out for me. My main special interest is becoming a veterinarian, DVM, not technician/nurse. I wonder if this is what some of my older Christian friends meant when they say they felt "called by God" to do something.

My special interests have ALWAYS been animal related in one way or another. Oh sure everyone and their grandmother knows what a meerkat or a manatee is today but when I was a kid in the 90's, NO ONE knew what those were. Now everyone runs around saying they love meerkats and manatees and are obsessed with them. I don't believe them. I got bullied the most around the same age as these kids for talking about manatees all the time.

All the other girls wanted to talk about boybands. The boys wanted to talk about Goosebumps books and sports stuff. I rarely heard the girls talk about anything but which member of Hanson they were going to get married to. I was told no one talks about the same thing constantly unless there is something wrong with them. I could always sniff out hypocrisy from a mile away and didn't buy it.

My mother told me that if I pretended to be interested in Hanson or Goosebumps, the other kids would return the favor and at least pretend to be interested in manatees or animals. I couldn't like Hanson if I tried. To this day I still get nauseous when I hear "Mbop". So I pretended to be interested in Goosebumps and people fell for it. Even my family believed I LOVED Goosebumps. I didn't.

But what I really wanted was for the day my mom claimed would happen, someone would pretend to be interested in what I was and talk to me about animals. That day never happened so I quit trying to pretend and went back to liking what I liked.

But it made me resent ANYTHING that was super popular. Meerkats were my special interest since I was 12 or 13. I was being homeschooled and didn't have to mask or hide anything anymore but my family still hated hearing about them. It made me feel like they did not love me. Sorry, but when you love someone, you love everything about them that isn't harmful. Talking about meerkats isn't harmful and besides my parents never shut up about conservative politics and about this liberal politician or that liberal politician was going to destroy the country this way or that way.

I never really fit in with other fans of movies I liked unless it was a very obscure movie. Rocket Raccoon is my newest special interests. Nice, but it kinda sucks because people who know me in person think he's just a random raccoon and think I like raccoons in general now. But if someone hands me a live one as a pet, I'm not saying no.

But anyway, I've never had a problem with other Rocket fans like I did with other Lion King fans who were really into gatekeeping and the moderators of one form in particular seemed to believe the rules did not apply to them. I have not met ONE Rocket fan who not autistic or in the process of getting a diagnosis or ND. What is it about this character that attracts autistic people? I've heard the ONLY reason James Gunn took on Guardians of the Galaxy was because he liked Rocket as a character and if he took GotG, he could basically do whatever he wanted with him. I wonder if James Gunn is ND?

I liked him because I found his sassy "shoot first ask later" personality and his backstory and the fact he's not a human. All the other characters like that are either human or don't have that kind of personality which is similar to my own.

I once even had a bearded dragon who was the Groot to my Rocket Raccoon. Now, I'm actually beginning to hate Groot as a character because I collect Rocket merch. You can rarely find Rocket anywhere but you can walk into any store and find Baby Groot's smarmy little face on everything.

Anyway, anyone else try to avoid certain things because of how popular and acceptable in society, because your special interests weren't respected?

I used to have a much bigger chip on my shoulder towards things that were popular merely for being popular.

I think I've largely outgrown it.

It doesn't mean I'm drawn towards things based on popularity, but I can accept things I like (like Initial D) becoming more popular and I can admit interest in things that are more widely popular (like hockey).

I don't.
I'm a non-conformist, not an anti-conformist.

I just see certain trends as data...
If I like it, then I like it. If I don't, I don't.


Though it's way less common for me to like or dislike anything related to visual and auditory media (series, movies, music, etc.) than dismiss any. (As opposed to more sensory like taste and touch; food, fashion, etc.. which I have more dislike over likes and neutral dismissals).



I don't like short skirts and crop top not because they're 'trendy' nor the idea of 'modesty', nor the reasoning that it 'clashes my style'.
It's because I hate air and wind exposing my skin.

And I ain't a fan of any particular media. I don't take 'sides', I don't do 'shipping', I don't join fandoms...

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Most of my special interests are popular in some sense. It just isn't popular with the mainstream public to like them in particular or as intensely as I do, or sometimes for the same reasons I do.

That and I think a lot of people like things because they're popular. That's what I don't connect to. And then if the trend ends and someone else still likes it, they're like, "No, you have to stop that and like this instead now."

Disneyland is one of my special interests. It's a very popular destination. Sometimes too popular, when it's crowded! However, there are some people on the fan groups who think theming is a completely unimportant aspect of a theme park and act like I'm insane for caring about it.

Anthropomorphic animal characters are some of the most popular characters of all time, but in some circles, it's still considered strange to be a Furry. And so on.

I tend not to like popular things. A lot of the reason is that the fact of a thing's popularity doesn't make me like it any more than I would if it wasn't popular. That seems to be a NT thing. I see videos of bands where they show you these massive, appreciative audiences and I don't understand why they think that will make me like the content any more than I would if the band was just playing in an empty room. What I like is about me and the thing I like, not about other people.

Of course it's a pointer towards something that might be good, on the basis of "people get something out of it, so there must be something in it," but it doesn't always work out like that. There's clearly something in professional football but I don't see it. Everybody loved The Godfather but to me it seemed to be nothing but depressed people shooting each other. There are things I can't access.

I liked The Beatles when they started out, and was very pleased that everybody else liked them too, but I was still buying and liking their 1964 records in 1969 when other people had "moved on." I felt rather betrayed, but I know what I like and I can't hate a thing just because others hate it. I liked the "underground" music of the time, which was doing blues and progressive music while the mainstream preferred corny stuff. I can't identify with the mainstream but I do identify with some minority cults. Without them I'd feel much more alone.

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The only thing that's popular that I like is music and movies by The Beatles. Other than that, I don't really care for popular things. I care about things that make me happy.

From my personal experience, just because something is popular doesn't always mean it's good or correct.

In fact, there are a lot of instances where popular things or its community/fanbases can be....er....REALLY toxic.

I don't care too much for modern TV. I watch MeTV all the time.

Personally, I like what I like and heck with whether it's popular or not.

I’m a bit the opposite. When I was younger I was made to feel bad for liking popular things from friends and family members who thought the things I liked weren’t intellectual enough. So now I make a point of liking a few popular things to show I don’t care about people who think my interests are beneath them.