I have always wondered about people with narrow interests. I’ve been exposed to it a lot more lately because of facebook - people whose posts, at least, seem to be about one, possibly two subjects. Consistently.
I’ve always made a joke about myself that really isn’t that much of a joke, and it’s that I’m a little bit interested in just about everything…except team sports and cars. Mostly I’m happy about it, because the world is an endlessly fascinating place that always has something to show me. On the other hand, it can be a overwhelming. If I live to be 200 I won’t have enough time to read the books, listen to the music, see the movies, try the software, cook the meals, plant the gardens, go to the places, learn how to _____… but because I’ve got ADD I tend to think I will anyway. I drive myself a little crazy.
So is being narrowly focused on a couple of subjects liberating? Does it ever get dull? Do you wish you were more interested than you are?
I won’t say that I have narrow interests, but I’m not interested in pop culture as much as my peers. I’m into music, tv, and movies…but I’m not INTO music, tv, and movies. Meaning that I may be into a specific band or tv show or a movie here or there, but I don’t like tv shows, movies, or music in general.
How’s it like? I find it pretty hard to have conversations with many people.
My Facebook status updates are almost always about one subject, occasionally I’ll mention something different. It’s mostly because that one subject is a hobby of mine that I enjoy showing people and discussing; my other hobbies, like reading, aren’t really something I like discussing. I don’t post much about politics, because I’m just paranoid enough to not want an electronic history of my political views available to anyone to see, and I have many friends who don’t share those beliefs and who I don’t really want to piss off. I also don’t really like posting about work, since when I’m not working, I don’t want to be thinking about work. I also have my mother, aunts, and other relatives as friends on Facebook, so I avoid bitching about family or talking about interpersonal relationships much since I don’t really want them seeing that.
So, in other words, just because something only posts about one or two things on Facebook, it doesn’t mean that’s the only things they’re interested in. It’s just the only things they want to discuss on a public board like Facebook.
This has the somewhat depressing effect of making me feel like there must be someone out there who’s into what I’m into, but I still can’t really connect with them.
I’m not sure I know anyone with really narrow interests, but people do sometimes get caught up in one or two particular ones before moving on to others.
For instance, there’s a woman online who would only post about her issues with the judicial system…
I think narrow but deep might be more interesting than my preferences, which tend to be wide but shallow. I like a little bit of just about everything, but no matter how much I like X1, I probably don’t like X2 3 5, etc. I might like X4 though.
Very much a jill of all tastes.
I try not to get too deep in any one area. On one extreme you can try to go extremely deep in one area, knowing more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing, or you can try to broaden your horizons, knowing less and less about more and more until you know nothing about everything. I say just do what interests you at the moment, go deeper in some areas than others.
I know people who joined Facebook only to promote a specific cause. They have plenty of other interests, but they’re not interested in Facebook itself, and use it only as a means of flacking the cause they signed up for. That lets them make contacts and distribute info faster, so they can get their activism done, log off Facebook, and go participate in their other interests in person.
Have to agree that Facebook is not a good yard stick for measuring people’s interests. Especially for us “older” folks, there are many constraints in posting public information that can be viewed by a wide variety of people, depending on your “friends list”. Anything I post there is generic enough to be seen on the front page of a newspaper basically since I have siblings, nieces and nephews, my kids, cousins, old high school friends, parents of my kids’ friends, etc. and there’s no anonymity. Many people use Facebook to promote their causes or businesses and because they are doing that, they may keep their other posts non-personal. I have one friend who posts about one or two causes she’s deeply involved in and her kids and that’s it. She is a much more well-rounded person than that in real life, though, with many varied interests.
I’m personally definitely a “jill of all trades” type of person and love to learn new things of all types. I have my creative endeavors including music and writing and my mechanical/engineering interests, including repairing anything, and sports and arts and crafts and gardening and pretty much anything in between. Except quantum physics. No. Never.
Perhaps this might be the ticket. Perhaps someone whose sole interests are literature, food and music doesn’t consider his interests “narrow” because there is so much of it.
I don’t know the source of it, but more than one of my college profs quoted to me the adage that “A specialist is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing. A generalist is someone who knows less and less about more and more until they know nothing about everything.”
I appear to be of the generalist mold. The head of my current department has commented to several people that he thinks I have something interesting to say on any topic he can think of. I don’t know if that says more about the generality of my education or the specialized focus of your average banker’s.
I find that people with genuinely narrow interests often have a fascinating depth of knowledge on those interests.
True. I myself find that they’re often incapable of making connections - with other bodies of knowledge or with people - that would make that knowledge more relevant and living.
A specialist, ultimately, is a kind of hoarder. He’s not interested in putting his knowledge in context or perspective, so very often no one cares about it.
Win.
I have lots of varied interests, but I only post about one or two. I don’t feel the need to prattle on about all of the things in my life or any associated navel-gazing. I just post things that I know my friends are interested in. Sort of as consideration of their time, which people who send me all their FarmVille updates seem to lack.
IOW, don’t judge the interests of people just by what they post on social messaging sites.
I merely used the facebook thing as an example, I know that some people deliberately limit themselves there, but there are also people who are very single-mindedly focused on one or two subjects.
… until they don’t. When it’s all they can talk about, and they can talk about it for hours and hours and hours, it goes from fascinating to boring really fast.
Well, sure. If a specialist is incapable of carrying on a conversation about anything else (or unwilling to), it’s incredibly tedious. But I don’t think that’s any worse than a generalist who can’t have an in-depth conversation about anything. Both are extreme cases along the continuum.