I’m still not sure if that’s exactly how I want to put that question, but it’s the best that comes to mind at the moment. This isn’t asked as though you’re totally oblivious to or avoidant of pop culture (see defining terms), but closer to like maybe someone on a casual diet or something.
defining terms
For the purposes of this post I mean pop culture in the mostly literal sense of popular culture, so box office hit movies, big sports events, major album releases, big budget video games, etc.
It seems kind of hard to figure out how or what to relate to people with if it isn’t through questions like, “Hey did you see [the game/recent big movie/etc.]?” or other times like, “Do you play or have you played [major game release]?”
You don’t want to kill the conversation before it’s even started, but it can be almost unavoidable when opened like that and you haven’t yet experienced that bit of pop culture or whathaveyou. It gets a little more clunky if you may have (a little) and you didn’t really click with it, but at least there’s a little more room for conversation then.
I don’t mean this in any way to be condescending, but it sounds like your question could he rephrased as “How do you make small talk about something other than media consumption?”
And the answer to that question is to have interests outside of consuming media. Not only does it give you other things to talk about, it gives you other people to talk to.
Outside of that, in a more general sense, it isn’t hard to just prompt people to tell you about whatever they are into. You can literally just be like “So what are you into?” And let people just tell you point blank what they like talking about. From there it’s super easy to just keep them rolling along with questions like “how’d you get into THING?” or “that sounds cool, what’s a good way to get started in THING?”.
Everyone has SOMETHING they’re super into, so just get them to talk about it. It doesn’t have to interest you at all - it’s just cool to hear people talk about what they’re into - and it gives you a lot of insight into whether or not they’re the kind of person you want to get to know better just from how they talk about their interests.
You’re good, that was sort of a variation on how I considered phrasing the question. Another form of the question in my head was something like, “How do you relate to others when your interests tend to be niche” or something in that vein, because your advice is solid for an avid pop culture fan, but it only kinda gets to the other side of this with asking about others’ interests and having other interests beyond following media.
Part of the reason I asked this was less to do with my interests only revolving around pop culture & following media, and more to do with so many others’ interests seeming to do so, or at least that being the way some have tried to relate to me.
Talk less, listen more. You’d be amazed at what you find yourself getting interested in.
This is my new years resolution every year.
Fwiw offline I primarily listen, which is why I find it a little difficult to handle the talking part (sometimes literally, speaking is weird after an extended period of minimal speech!).
“Huh! That’s really interesting… [ask a follow up question]”
The second part of my answer is how I go about it, as someone with some weird niche interests. I just try to get people to talk about their interests.
Sometimes though, people use safe standard topics as a way of setting boundaries, and that’s cool too. Especially in a work environment where competition for promotion exists, people aren’t very chill about letting their genuine freak flag fly. The same goes for weird awkward situations like the plus 1 conversation pit at a partners work (adjacent) event. Gotta be on the best behavior and talk about the ball game, the movie premiere, and the Hollywood strike instead of things you don’t know people’s reaction to when it could hurt your partner’s career.
But in truly social, zero stakes, situations, I just try to get people talking, and if they toss the question back to me, pick some interest of mine that seems less weird to chat about and see how they react.
I mean, your niche interests can’t be THAT weird if you’re looking to connect to people about them, so just stick one of them out there and see how it’s received.
There was a meme or tweet or ex or whatever that went around a while back that asked something like, “People who ‘don’t do small talk’, do you just go home and say ‘Hi honey, I’m home, do you think free will is real?’”
Or something like that.
And I saw that, and then got in the car with my partner of 20+ years and we talked about the epistemic behaviors of antivax groups vs. people with dementia.
Like, I don’t know how the fuck to get on with people who don’t want to talk about ideas and only want to talk about politicians or movie stars or butts.
But I think that’s probably okay. The world is big enough for both gossip-fuckers and philosophuckers.
The trick is that you don’t have to like the same thing as someone else to relate to them. Humans are really good at relating to things in general. Talk about what you’re interested in, and definitely ask about what the other person is interested in.
Talking about pop culture isn’t meant to be the end-all-be-all of getting to know someone, it’s really just a quick filler conversation for if you want to catch up with someone but don’t have the time to hold a long conversation.
It depends what you’re trying to get out of it. If you’re trying to relate with them then you can’t really force that and you’d just have to try and steer conversation and hope to strike gold on a few things you might like in common.
But yeah, if you don’t know if their interests match yours it turns into a prompting, then listening, then replying game. You conversate or ask about something general, maybe something going on around you, or something that is happening in current events, or hey, maybe you can even mention some pop culture release you haven’t experienced, and ask them if they have.
If they have, then they’ll tell you so and you can enquire about what they like about it, or if they don’t like it, and you don’t like it either, bam, relatable. If you ask about more general stuff then you can always make it more relatable by telling your experience when they’ve finished sharing theirs. You could ask if they paint, and if they do you can learn about it and follow up by saying you’ve never tried it or that you have and you’re terrible, or whatever.
And then, of course, calling back to things they’ve mentioned previously shows you’re a good listener and will get them to like you. Something like if they mention spending time with their mom recently, the conversation continues into other areas, you can later use that to pivot if the conversation dead ends by recalling, “so do you get to spend time with your mom often?” Mine doesn’t live around here/I do all the time, too/what have you.
I don’t.
IRL, I speak mostly in obscure TV and movie quotes and turn everything into a joke.
