your most niche/"weird" \interests

[WishUponACzar]

Well this is supposedly one of the more common hobbies irl but i have literally never seen anyone else online who collects coins. Probably because I'm on the wrong side of the Internet for meeting other coin collectors seeing as it's more of an old people hobby (and I'm not old at all)??? Idk. But even with this hobby I'm an oddball bc I'm not as hardcore about it as seasoned collectors and oldheads are. Grades/conditions of coins don't concern me so much at all- I'm really just after the designs on the coins I like best (I love wheat pennies especially) and their place/time of origin! I also like collecting damaged/corroded coins because those too have truly unique and one-of-a-kind designs (...in the form of damage and corrosion lol). I love me some parking lot patina pennies sometimes. If I encounter coins from other countries I keep those because they interest me (I have a Yemeni coin, a coin from the UAE, a Canadian penny, and several Mexican coins I found) and I also keep otherwise regular coins if the mint year is of some interest to me (I keep 60s coins just because and 40s wartime nickels for their silver content, and I keep coins from my birth year), and often times these criteria for keeps overlap- my friend got me a 1906 silver 10 kopek coin from Imperial Russia as a birthday gift! I'll edit in pictures of some of my coins later if I can find the files in my gallery.

I also am very interested in WWI specifically though it's been some time since I deep-dived on the topic so I'm a little rusty. I do have a desire to collect objects from this period too though, but so far I only have my m1917 British Brodie helmet (again adding pics later) for my "collection". It sits on my shelf and is likely leaking asbestos because the wool in the top interior has long since rotted away 😍 I hope to get more items from the period soon, and one day I hope to have both an original uniform/kit for any country, and a reproduction US kit (I wanna go for an AEF 82nd division impression, because my own grandpa was in the 82nd airborne much later during the Vietnam War) so I can actually wear/use it without potentially damaging historical artifacts. But it can be a very expensive hobby so that's why I haven't added to the collection any further, as well as me having a space issue, I just don't know where I'd keep anything large at the moment. If I add any more pieces to my WWI collection it's probably gonna be smaller items like patches, shrapnel/small trench art pieces, buttons, pins, etc. or things like original period photos and letters.

[synthpuppy]

80s pizza place animatronic bands… not FNaF but the real ones. My favourite is the Rock-afire Explosion made by Creative Engineering Inc. for restaurant Showbiz Pizza
I know way too much about the history of Chuck E Cheese’s despite not actually having ever gone… I’m in the process of writing an article on the official fan wiki for a location that had no info whatsoever onlinr but was local to me so I can just ask around older folk.

I’m also SUPER into abandoned places, urbexing and researching the history. Especially dead retail stores (thanks Dan Bell and Bright Sun Films).

Slightly related but I’ve been super fixated on lost media/music recently… especially the lesser known ‘found’ media. The most mysterious song on the internet kickstarted this for me… I find it so fascinating how media can exist with no other information on it. Everyone Knows That is my current favourite ‘found’ media as there only exists a few seconds of it.

Not super niche, but anything from the 1980s has my heart… especially technology, toys and music.

[salmonpuncha]

uh i have several lol

i absolutely despise geography and i am not good at it at all but im currently hyperfixated on tornados, i know too much about them aaaaaaaaaaaa. like i have to resist the urge to open 10 different wikipedia tabs of every tornado that happened in the usa specifically this year and read through them all no skipping. like theyre terrifying but arent they just magnificent? giant swirling sickly gray air that can reach heights that make our houses look like pebbles, its so scary to me but at the same time the concept fascinates me. theyre insanely powerful forces of nature that just appear from seemingly nowhere and dissapear like a ghost that has been caught. awesome isnt it?

i think another weird interest i have is mathcore music, my fav metal genre next to deathgrind. its metalcore but you can barely make out anything thats happening lol i mean the difference between falling in reverse and the callous daoboys is apparent. its difficult to explain and i havent met a person that knows what the hell it is from the get go so let me nerd out. metalcore combined with elements of math rock characterized by odd time signatures and compound signatures, sudden tempo changes, a lot of dissonance(although some stuff can be melodic like pupil slicer), improvisation(especially in guitar), odd chord progressions, and generally just unconventional. my first love was the callous daoboys when i was looking through spotify reccomended by adding nouns while of unsound mind to an empty playlist, like that album is noise rock and i got reccomended stuff like weatherday and parannoul but for some reason they showed up and i instantly fell in love and i havent escaped since. i dont really know why i enjoy it like at certain times songs are just pure noise from all the chaos(ahem, l’appel du vide - pupil slicer, the elephant man in the room - the callous daoboys, magic that i held you prisoner - dillinger? never heard of em/s) like i dont know what im listening to but i love it for some reason. i will dance like a child if anybody likes mathcore aswell and i dont think im overexaggerating. my obsession right now is pupil slicer and converge but ill always have the daoboys as a fave :]

i think my weirdest one of all is ikea layouts. im not as interested anymore but early this year for some reason i was super into the manipulation of ikea layouts and would watch vlogs observing where every sector is. like i would come up with a bunch of theories on why the cafetaria is there, how cheaper stuff like plushies and small decor are often the first thing people see, the countless twists and turns, hell i even tried analyzing their use of color and i did this cuz there was well obviously not much info about it on the internet. i think its just autism but wow

[hunderslash]

Well this is supposedly one of the more common hobbies irl but i have literally never seen anyone else online who collects coins.

oh I love coins! I went through a major coin phase and I'm not fixated on it right now, but I could talk for hours about the history of US coins. and yeah it does seem to be an older person thing, they seem to lean conservative too and are the type to hoard silver in case the world ends. I definitely care a lot about condition of coins, I've spend hours going through literal boxes of pennies/nickels filling binders with the best condition pieces I could find. (I'm not going to go into detail about how dirty that kind of thing makes your hands)

Recently I've been collecting pens/mechanical pencils I find on the ground everywhere. I will usually find at least 1 a day, and I have a pretty significant collection. (or an organized hoard if you will, again, you don't want to see my hands after the 3rd pen has exploded on them)

Oh I also am very interested in older technology, especially the type of things that have become inaccessible as a result of the technology being outmoded. I have a decent collection of vhs tapes, cassette tapes, weird cds, stuff like that. It is very fun to find some obscure thing nobody remembers and digitizing/sharing it regardless of whether or not people are interested.

I guess the final thing is probably anything furry art related? I know such a surprise considering the game we are playing here. I've had a really hard time pursuing this interest irl because out of everything I do drawing furry art is the thing people have the hardest time understanding. It's definitely more of a social hobby compared to the other three which is hard because in my area people either have no idea what a furry is or saw the subject in a cringe compilation or something. Definitely the hobby I have the hardest time openly pursuing if that's the benchmark for "weird".

[mnou]

oh this is a topic i can shine in.
some of my niche interests include:
- the whole topic of physics. yes i know it's not niche, but my interest in physics goes above and beyond. it's more of me being enamored with it at this point, there are multiple videos of me half-awake talking about string theory or centripetal force etc etc. include a video of me crying because physics is so beautiful and talking about how everything sings.
- the book the alchemist by paulo coelho. i collect copies of it! my dream is to own an easton press copy. currently i own seven copies, three harcovers, two normal print paperbacks, and two gift editions.
- pretty privilege. if you're pretty, how weird can you be before you're not pretty anymore, and just weird? where's the line that you have to cross? i've written a couple essays on it, and i do experimentation with it all the time.

[AuroraFier]

I love Tea Cups & very old books. Tea Cups remind me of my Grandma who passed December 7th of last year. She used to collect them as well. XD I absolutely love old books!! It doesn't matter if it's in English or not. I started collecting old books when I learned I was going blind. I can't read regular books anymore and Braille books are insanely expensive! It helps me feel better when I look at them. ^-^ (I have books from 1847-1921.)

I also love old, abandoned buildings. Specifically ones being taken back by nature. I'm working on being able to draw and eventually paint them through my vision. I want to share with the world how some blind people see. XD Fun fact: Only about 5-10% of people who are legally blind, are 100% blind.

[RosyWindFox]

Genetics! Taxidermy, Articulation, Insect Pinning, Wet Specimens, Diaophinization, Evolution, Animal Husbandry/Welfare, Animal Training/Behavior (not super niche but I have met very few as into the actual science as myself), Reptiles (to an insane degree) Ethical Animal Breeding especially reptiles, Reptile genetics, garter snakes, the ethics behind zoos, scientific research I also find animal reproduction fascinating wiht my interests in genetics and evolution. Not in a creepy gross way I jsut think its super interesting. RWBY - show

[RosyWindFox]

i'm super into reptile & exotic animal care and husbandry! i breed snakes myself.

i also have a big true crime genre obsession..

apart from that i am a huge softie and love collecting squishmallow cows.

Im a big reptile nerd myself! what species do you keep and breed?

[The_Caitallo]

Reviving this thread I guess lol

Idk if anyone else has said it but puppets and animatronics

[Herrings]

id say my most weird is i have a really weird fascination of parasites (tapeworms, ticks, etc)
theyre so funky and interesting to me idk why lol