Naw, man. Oldtime string band. When we want to sell out for the masses we stray into bluegrass! 
I think most of the stuff you’re not interested in is also shared in disinterest by at least 30% or so of the population so you might be in a minority but you’d still find two other people in a room of ten so hardly a unicorn.
Tech is sort of a weird lump since few people want the newest “everything”. I like upgrading my PC but care little about my phone or Live Assistants. I know people who can command their house to change the temp, open the garage, order more Doritos, etc but have an old Dell Optiplex as their home computer. My wife likes buying new phones but leaves anything else tech oriented to me. I know people who seem to have a pretty non-tech home but fawn over their Tesla, etc.
Facebook would have be believe that introversion is the hot new fad of the 2020s. In reality, I’m sure it’s more people expressing that it’s okay to not being outgoing and want to stay home but it doesn’t feel rare either.
In my middle-age, I have a number of online friends into video games but don’t have any same-age peers in real life who do any serious gaming. At best, they might have a few family/party games for the game console they own for the kids. Some of your “out of touch” seems like you’re comparing yourself to younger people.
raises hand
Well, I don’t have a smart garage door opener, but I definitely can command the thermostat with my voice.
But the general point on tech is sound - some people care nothing for smart homes but get the newest iPhone every year. Some don’t do that but have every streaming service. You mentioned the Tesla fans who don’t care for other tech stuff. There are gradations to tech stuff.
One point of clarification: I said above that I love live music, and go to many concerts. But I don’t go there to socialize — I go to hear the music. So it’s common for me to not speak a word to anyone at the show, and that’s just fine with me.
And I’m the opposite. I have 3 laptops that i regularly use (plus some retired ones knocking around) and while my phone isn’t the latest, that’s only because the latest is too big, and I’m hoping the next one will be smaller. It was a flagship phone when i bought it. But I’m avoiding home automation. I don’t really want to talk to my house, and i think it’s creepy that it listens to me. Bad enough that my phone does that.
I think where I feel most of out touch with people is the desire for great wealth. I don’t get it. I’ve never felt the need to have more wealth than for what I need. Now, I recognize that by world standards I am incredibly wealthy. I live better than a king might have in days gone by. I’m definitely 100% in the work to live category, but it feels like most people are in the live to work and get ahead and get the promotion and get and get and get. I don’t understand that. It feels like a good way to be miserable. And don’t get me started on the ultra wealthy and the obsession with corporate infinite growth.
I’m sorry to burst the bubble of some people here, but I think most people would be able to list several things that “everyone” likes that they don’t get. A lot of time, those “everyone” things are just a substantial portion of the population, not even the majority, and there are a lot of them, so there are bound to be some things you’re not into.
And there’s a selection bias…we’re not very focused on the things we have in common with the substantial majority of people.
Anyway, here are mine 
- I was very late to romantic relationships, I didn’t have my first “real” girlfriend (as opposed to friend zone and other not-quite relationships) until I was almost 30. I’m 44 in a few days and I still have never been married (or even come close), no children.
- I was never into watching football (soccer) which was unusual among my male, working class cohort. I couldn’t fathom in particular men literally crying over the result of a game
- I was never religious…which isn’t so unusual here in the UK, but I went to Catholic school, so again I was quite unlike many of my peer group
Valid point. But I’m not perceiving a great many significant issues that I DO share - other than TV watching - and I’m not a fan of much of the violence/crime/fantasy/etc.
Agreed - VERY much.
Also agreed. I consider myself very comfortable. Doubt I will/can spend all I have before I die. While I wouldn’t MIND being stupid rich - winning the lottery - I’m not buying any tickets, or otherwise trying to put in the effort to attain greater wealth.
Same. My husband comes from a very wealthy family and I spend a lot of time hanging out with rich people and I still don’t see the appeal. Though I’m in a situation right now where I wish I had more money. We are trying to build wealth but we turned out to have a medically expensive kid, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen to some of our bigger plans. I suspect a lot of people want to be rich so they never have to deal with these kinds of trade-offs.
I guess that is a factor. I’m Canadian so I don’t worry too much about being wiped out by a sudden illness for me or my family.
A lot of people who have no experience around great wealth expect it to feel like a perpetual life of the carefree summer vacation kid in a candy store. Of course they don’t think of the sacrifices required to get there, the difficulties of living that way with that peer group, nor about the inevitable tummy ache that follows every candy store bender any kid ever had.
Moderate wealth, the sort where there is no plausible personal problem your bank account can’t solve, where “budget” is a totally unfamiliar concept, now that’s a much more useful and attainable goal. Millions of US households live that way. Of course vastly more millions of households don’t / can’t.
The moderately wealthy set certain could saddle themselves with e.g. a yacht or mansion they can’t afford that would rapidly sink them. But if they avoid that level of mistake, there are simply no money-related worries other than “What if the gravy train stops uncontrollably?”
Pursuing that seems at least semi-sensible on its face. The sad part are the many people under our economic system where that’s impossible, but they don’t know it and/or refuse to beleive it. So as a result they throw a lot of other forms of potential happiness away pounding their head against this one large but unbreakable rock.
I suppose based on those criteria, no? I like most of those things.
I don’t know that those things makes someone “in touch” with people or modern society. Technology, computer games, media, dining out and conveniences are things people use. Most people are perfectly capable of using them in isolation.
Feeling “out of touch with most people and modern society” is being in touch with modern society IMHO.
When I first read the OP my take was “An introvert suffering from late-career / mid-life mild depression.” Four days and 15 more posts by the OP I’ll up my estimation of introversion and reduce my estimation of depression. A little.
I noticed a factor common to many of the OP’s specific areas of out-of-phaseness with what he sees as larger society. They are all areas mostly driven by advertising. He sees lots of ads telling people to do [whatever], and believes therefore that people at large are doing [whatever] as much as the ads exhort them to. Hint: they’re not. They are doing some, but not as much, nor as enthusiastically, as the advertising would lead us to believe.
Many people are in fact highly advertising-driven. And will buy, spend, do, think, and talk about whatever commerce orders them to. Others are very much immune to those pressures via mostly ignoring the ads they see and by largely avoiding situations where they are exposed to ads insofar as possible. Whether that avoidance is conscious or unconscious, a deliberate plan or an artifact of other aspects of their life.
Or, like me, they are prone to concluding that since substantially everybody is an idiot therefore if [whatever] is popular it must be a) bad, and b) beneath my non-idiot station. My new wife (very much a non-idiot) is highly susceptible to the contrary message: If it’s popular, that’s proof positive it’s good. It has been a very eye-opening experience for both of us to experience the opposite worldview. There is much mutual incomprehension on this topic.
Interesting analysis, LSL. Probably some validity to your observations. Re: the late-career/mid-life aspect, I’m not sure any of my “preferences” are recent developments. Pretty sure they’ve been mostly lifelong. Re: introversion, the idea of attending a big party and making small talk is hell to me. But I do regularly spend time with a limited number of friends, and enjoy gatherings related to my interests.
I was thinking that a common thread for many of my preferences had to do with how I prefer to deal with information. ISTM that we currently have a great deal of information directed at us, much of which we have not actively solicited. I’m thinking of advertising, directed on-line “suggestions”, audible phone notifications. (It always sorta amazes me when people feel they need to look at their phone every time it beeps.). I feel like I prefer to more actively control the information I receive - if that makes any sense.
As well as being relatively “anonymous”, and wishing to retain control of who has access to MY info.
That makes complete sense. I am much like you in that regard. Even as a teen I often commented I’d gladly pay whatever it took to get a special version of the newspaper or magazines I read that were completely devoid of advertising. I hate stuff pushed at me. If I want it, I’ll go find it. One of the promises of cable TV was that it would be advertising-free. The price you paid to the cable company would be 100% of the revenue stream for everybody upstream. I would have loved that world. The www was a fresh chance for that to happen and instead the advertisers are running the asylum.
As to this I wasn’t suggesting your preferences had recently changed. Rather that as a consequence of age / depression / burn-out / etc, you were withdrawing somewhat from what’s out there and as you turned inwards, the outside felt ever more weird and alien as your reaction transitioned from you being indifferent to it to you being repelled by it. But it was your shifting perspective rather than that the stuff out there was really changing.
At the same time, some of the external manifestations of your old non-preferences really are new.
Like me, you dislike now and always have disliked push notifications of whatever nature. “Don’t call me; I’ll call you” has been our shared motto.
What has changed out in the world, is how much the world is pushing at us. Largely mediated through the push advertising receiving device so many people carry with them everywhere. When being not only push-receptive but push-responsive defines the zeitgeist, it’s no wonder you/we feel out of step with it.
That’s because they don’t know if the message is going to say:
“We got pills to make your dick bigger!”
Or
“Your wife was just in a horrible accident. Get to the hospital as soon as possible.”
The beeps usually mean something that can wait. Until they don’t.
Ha, we just bought a new washer/dryer (Miele) which can be used via an app. I can’t even imagine why I’d want to do that. LOL.
I find my smart phone useful, but I’d rather bring a book to read in the waiting room (I don’t like reading on a screen), because even on my “big” smart phone, it’s too small for compelling viewing for me.
That’s interesting, because I found my 7 inch and 8 inch tablets too big for enjoyably reading text-based, non-pdf books. A phone screen is approximately the same size as a mass-market paperback page.
I didn’t explain properly. Reading on a screen, any screen, is harder on my eyes than reading print on paper. Watching video on my phone, the screen is too small. Screen size is not the issue for reading text.