oh hey look, its my childhood trauma that led to me being unbearably boring in conversations

Just painstakingly craft different personas based on the people you're around, including a bland generic person for mass appeal, because you simply can't handle the unending stream of ridicule.

Unfortunately, that fear is not based on instincts, but on prior experience

After "fear of getting ridiculed or mocked" I'd also add "or told you're going to go to hell."

Ugh.

I remember saying "I don't listen to music" in high school and half of college because I didn't feel I could listen to the music I enjoyed without being made fun of. I basically didn't listen to music until I was in college and I had space to explore what I liked and didn't like without peer pressure.

To this day I don't listen to music in front of anyone other than my wife and kids. I still remember the exact derogatory quote that a person I thought was my friend said in regards to me showing them some music I liked... from about 40 years ago.

That's one thing I instill in my kids, everyone is allowed to like and not like what they want and they should not be made fun of for any of their preferences.

It hurts the most when it's your family :/ I'm 30 years old and I still have trouble saying "I want to watch this movie" when it's just me and my husband having a movie night. Literally anything I wanted to watch or do in that house was somehow the weirdest thing anyone had ever heard of. That's growing up in an Arkansas white-flight suburb for you.

I actually forgot how to be interested in thingd

I'd rather not give my family anything on me. I don't like being judged or tasked to do things for them because I'm the techy one.

Also hate the spotlight

I too grew up in a southern military family. Interests other than football or otherwise hurting other people? That's a paddlin

I still feel I need to hide when I am interested in something. Am I not the only one?

Kids in my sons junior high school are unapologetic weirdos now and are embraced for it. Normies watch anime.

Contrast when I was in high school and you were called homophobic slurs for liking Star Wars or reading manga. Bizarre times indeed.

So what's it called when you get picked on for being outside the norm so you decide to try get the interests of everyone else but go too far in that study and end up with so much knowledge, hobbies and interests that you go right out the other side of not being relatable anymore. And while people no longer directly mock you for not having their interest they find you weird and untrustworthy to be in their social circle because they don't think you actually belong there?

Thanks op, I really needed that psychic damage out of the blue.

But one thing that I have noticed is that the people that are mocked for their hobbies are also the one's that are the most accepting of others.

My guess is they know the pain of being the butt of other people's jokes and empathize with others more.

My proudest moment as a teacher in my career so far was when one of my grade 9 girls quietly confessed to me that she liked K-pop, and that people had made fun of her for it.

Coincidentally, I had done some teaching in Korea, and loved it. So, I excitedly said (at a nerdily loud volume) "I LOVE K-POP!!"

She didn't believe me at first, but eventually did when I named my favourite bands/songs.

She looked so happy! I told her that even if no one else thought so, we both knew each other were cool 😎

Don't ever let anyone shit on your enthusiasm, kids. Your interests are part of who you are, and it's not ok to make fun of that.

Let your freak flag fly, and you'll be a much happier person.

And to anyone who has ever been discouraged from their interests: I'm sorry you went through that, it's not OK. It's never too late to get back into it, whatever it is. And I will know you're cool 😎

Liking things is so cringe.

Or that others would take an obsessive, invasive interest in it that sucks the joy of of it.

Technically. I don't like other people getting all up in my business. So while it is part me not wanting to be mocked, it is also way more me not wanting them be excited and trying to join.

Having to deal with people positively means adjusting both your paces to work together. You can't do what you want and when you want, you gotta coordinate. And that's a pain in the ass.

I get no leisure from having to include someone else's feelings in my personal enjoyment.

If "normal" means "needs to attack anything slightly strange to receive validation from the in-group", I do very much like being weird as fuck, thank you very much.

Just gatta find people to vibe with. With the internet being so prevalent now it should be fairly easy. When I was in highschool and the internet was basically just instant messenger and rotten.com it was hard to find people that were into bugs and insects and other invertebrates.

Absolutely, and it was uncomfortable trying to invert that concept especially in an unfamiliar setting like first dates and such.

I remember playing an anime game on my phone in high school, and this one classmate made fun of me for it. Not because of anime, he already knew I watch them and didn't (seemingly, at least), care one way or the other. But because the game has a hub-like area where the characters are shown in a chibi design. He kept pestering me after that to try out Barbie games.

The "best" part? Dude literally said the game looked fun when he saw me playing the actual gameplay, and even asked me to let him play a round. Then the round ended, saw the hub, and he did a 180 on me and on the game.

To this day I don't feel comfortable watching certain anime in public. I'm not even talking about ecchi here. Just basically any stuff that is "girly".

I always had to hide the fact that I like to draw at home.

First because I was doing kinda cringy anime drawings and didn't want the ridicule, but at some point I actually got pretty good in a "classical art" sense. I couldn't let my family find out even more after that, because my mother had already claimed drawing as "her thing". She would have been absolutely awful to me due to jealousy (because that's exactly what happens every time).

She wasn't even good at it, she just traced designs from the Internet because she has never been willing to take the critique & feedback that is necessary to actually become good at art. Her stuff literally looked like AI art nowadays, completely soulless and disinterested. She was always just after the praise of having drawn something, no matter the integrity of her work.

At least it was easy to hide my interest. I'm still baffled how people can be such control freaks but also care so little? Like they found my graphic tablet in the back of my closet at some point, but totally accepted the excuse of "oh that's just a thing to digitally sign pdfs"

That is supposed to change?

Normal means healthy. The first example isn't healthy, because the environment wasn't healthy. You can be healthy. It just takes time and a lot of dirty work (looking and working with painful things, and finding tools to deal with them, them doing so).

I don’t even have weird interests. I don’t want people to talk to me. Reduce the attack surface, you know.

I remember I had to fain interest in various sports which supposedly I'm supposed to care about. What do I have for the local team won or lost?

My family and friends are all at least as weird as me, so I don't know how to answer this question.