This was motivated by a thread in which folk were debating Tolkein. There was a time at which The Hobbit/Fellowship were my favorite “book”. I probably read them at least 5x - more than I’ve read/re-read any other book. But my brain kinda went blank anytime anyone started quoting the Silmarillion and appendices. I feel somewhat similarly when folk start debating the various colors of kryptonite.
In fact, I’ve always sorta been dubious about anyone who has tons of arcane trivia on any particular subject. Maybe just because my brain doesn’t work that way. There have been a few areas in which I’ve thought I knew quite a bit, but in every such instance I encountered folk who took matters to a degree I hadn’t even considered.
Do you consider yourself a trivia “expert” in any particular area? Literature? TV/film? Comic books? Sports?
Whether you are an expert or not, do you think some areas of expertise are more worthy of “respect” than others? For example, do you think it cool or impressive if someone can rattle off no end of baseball trivia, but find debates of comic book arcana silly?
Tolkien is one of mine.
Used to be Baseball, but I haven’t kept up and I’m forgetting stuff I knew. Same for original Star Trek.
I don’t really find knowing trivia cool or silly. It is just something some people do.
I used to be impressed by a friend that knew almost everything about cars from the 50s through the 70s, but that was actually very useful back then. Long before Google and YouTube.
I find most anything associated with comic books and super heroes to be silly, especially debating pitting this one against that one in a fight. But as long as I don’t have to participate, it doesn’t affect me at all. Similarly, taking fantasy stories waaaay too seriously leaves me shaking my head. Sometimes I get the impression that the fantasy is more real than reality to some people. My ex-son-in-law couldn’t seem to deal with real life, but mention one of his favorite stories…
Sports trivia doesn’t interest me, but I get it. Same with movie or music trivia. Yeah, there might be discussions of “what if this one in place of that one” but it never seemed to get heated. Each to his/her own.
Now, science and technology - that’s fascinating stuff! Trivia about engineering is just cool!
I watch a lot of Marvel movies. I tend to be impressed with comic book fans because I feel they are able to enjoy (or be annoyed by) the movies on a deeper level that I can.
I’m a trivia expert on all things Star Trek. But that’s pretty much by default because I put Star Trek on the TV as my “go to sleep” show.
I’ve watched every episode so many times I have practically know the dialogue to every show.
In general, I enjoy listening to people who are really keen on a particular topic.
I think I would probably disdain someone who exhibited expertise on the ins-and-out of a daytime soap opera show though (but I’d be fine with someone who was a Tolkien nerd or A Game of Thrones nerd…I probably am one).
Same here for the same reasons (I thought I was the only one). I’m a bit thin(ish) on DS9 though.
I have no strong feelings one way or another on what I consider trivia. It’s a hobby that some people are into.
But there is a range of things that I think people should know, but would probably be considered trivia by those uninterested in the topic. Is it trivia to know that a meter is a little more than a yard? That F = (9/5)C + 32? That kinetic energy is 0.5mv^2? That gravity is about 9.8 m/s^2? That atmospheric pressure is about 15 psi or 100,000 N/m^2? That V=IR?
These (and hundreds more) are all really basic facts, taught in high school, that I still use daily because I like to work out various problems that need them, or even just have an intuition about what a science article is saying. On the other hand, someone that has zero interest in this sort of thing would consider them trivia: isolated facts of no particular use. But on the third hand, not knowing these kinds of things guarantees that you can’t work out any problems that depend on them.
So I do have a little… well, not disdain, but perhaps some pity for people that have forgotten everything scientific/mathematical they learned in high school and beyond. I don’t consider it trivia but I can see how some would.
I am impressed by people who have extensive knowledge of things I’m interested in. I am bored by people who talk about minutia of stuff I’m not interested in. I suppose i might have disdain for people who talk about their extensive knowledge of things that i have no interest in and think are silly things to be interested in. But… Actually, in some sense, i respect expertise, and if you can tell me weird minutia about nail polish or gem stones or how the various aqua-man timelines interact with each other, you might catch my interest and my respect. So maybe i tend to respect trivia.
I never really cared for trivia until I met my partner, who is a trivia nut. Now we go out to trivia nights a few times a month. I’ve learned to appreciate the esoteric knowledge some folks have, especially when I actually get to learn something interesting from them (and not just some celebrity’s name or former spouses).
She’s great at the pop culture stuff (zero respect — who cares), geography (cool!), some animals and trees (super cool) and anatomy (very impressive to me, not knowing anything about the human machine).
I hate the sportsball rounds (totally alien subculture to me), tolerate the comic sci-fi/fantasy geekdom ones (it was cool when I was a teenager, I guess), enjoy the history & general interest ones, and particularly love and look forward to any science rounds — but those are exceedingly rare. I get annoyed at the video game and computers ones because the hosts don’t always know what they’re talking about, lol… and it’s hard to argue with them and not come off as a dick when it’s a subject you know a lot about.
Eventually some local groups started themed ones. I went to a wildlife & natural history one and got second place (missed by one question) and was kinda proud of myself… it’s the one time I felt like my college degree in environmental science actually paid off, lol. (I went on to become a computer programmer, sadly).
Now there’s a purely science one that I go to every month, with rounds ranging from electromagnetic radiation to glaciology to Star Trek to quantum mechanics to sci-fi starships to cryptids (Bigfoot, Nessie, etc.). I don’t think I’ve ever gotten more than 40% of the questions right in any given night, but it’s still loads of fun. Now I’m spoiled and don’t think I can ever bear to hear another celebrity name or sports term again…
I respect trivia that is useful or part of something useful. If someone has some trivia fact to offer about how German soldiers in WWII kept pet hedgehogs in their bunkers for fun, or something of that sort, I’m all ears.
But if it’s about some knee-deep fictional universe like whether Merida from Brave has 111,000 hairs on her head or 112,000, I’d worry a bit about whether they have OCD or some strange state of mind.
Not me. I have a completely random appreciation of completely random facts. And even though I haven’t done a deep-dive study of LOTR and I lost any interest in comic books right after Crisis on Infinite Earths, I enjoy geeks talking about geeky stuff, even though I’m now at the age where I forget it by the next morning.
I agree. That is knowledge and knowledge most people should know from basic schooling. Up there with 2+2=4.
(To be fair I always forget the F → C conversion…I was taught it, I just can’t remember it most times…also V=IR…I never remember that one…it never is something I deal with.)
I couldn’t care less about, say, Days of our Lives but if I met someone who could tell me how many characters have had amnesia or who has faked their own death two or more times, I would still be impressed-simply for the weirdness of it, if not for anything else. The only time I’ve met an obsessive like that who has bored me to tears was a blind man I was paid to read to when I was a kid. Half the time was spent reading the liner notes on Jazz LPs, which was fine. The rest of the time was spent reading old bus schedules -definitely weird, but not interesting.
I’m thinking back to the days when the Trivial Pursuit board game was big. As a lad I was good with science, geography, and literature to an extent. Absolutely loathed the sports and entertainment wedges, though as an adult I’d probably have a better shot with entertainment.
Trivia is fun. If discussing trivial subjects brings you pleasure, have at it. Just don’t bore me with it. Keep it among like-minded individuals. I have my own trivial topics that can turn into long bull sessions when I encounter someone of a similar mind.
When Trivial Pursuit was a thing, I could best any challenger and excelled at multiple categories, especially in the Baby Boomer edition. We had a friend, a highly intelligent woman in an intricate medical field, who simply could not play the game. It infuriated her. She took it as an attack on her intelligence, a somewhat extreme reaction, I thought. We tried telling her that recalling trivial facts had very little, if anything, to do with intelligence. She said “I have no mind for such things” and simply refused to play.