How well do you interact with your special interest people?

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For me I try to stay active within the fringes of the group, obviously there are others who are much more social and represent the vibe of the particular community. At regular functions I tend to seek out the familiar faces and check in with them before feeling like a puppy dog. New faces have to have something I'm familiar with and I usually can spend an hour talking to them and never tell them my name. Weird thing unrelated is 1 time I had an accident and felt no anxiety introducing myself to the people that stopped to help.

I don't currently have any steady contacts in the music interest but when I do it's about once a week

If by "special interest" you mean hobby/obsession I don't. I occasionally read forums to find information I just talk to my dad about military planes and aviation, he's trying to help me understand this really complicated book I have about combat flight maneuvers. With others who may a passing interest in aviation I'll listen to them for awhile and I might interject if I feel the need to correct them but usually I'm so intimidated and scared I just slink away. Most of the planes I like researching are more obscure anyway, most people talk about boring new stuff or how this plane will kick that plane's ass . Like I said, I dislike the aviation community for a multitude of reasons and am happy enough just reading books and talking to my dad. Lot's of opinionated a**holes.

My other obsessions, well..I don't know. I've never met anyone into the kind of music I enjoy (shoegaze and ambient), the closest I've "sparked" with people were if we both were obsessed with a particular video game, like this one guy in a physics class I took LOVED Silent hill so we ended up liking each other a bit. He was sort of a nerd but def. wasn't on the spectrum (at least ,not obviously) but he was always considerate and nice to me.

My main special interest is music. I'm in multiple bands and frequently do live shows. I still have difficulty with new situations, but in general, I have much less difficulty socializing with these people than with others. Any friends I currently have all are in bands with me or play music with me frequently.

For me, it comes and goes. If I'm feeling good, I can have a pretty long, passionate discussion about my interests, as long as the person I'm talking to is as obviously passionate about it as I am and has some information about it that I didn't all ready have. If I don't get that kind of feedback, I can sometimes talk for a minute or so before walking away. But I don't introduce myself in these scenarios and don't usually care who they are, we talk about the common interest and that's it. But I'm too solitary to participate in 'regular functions' like you mentioned. Functions tend to imply too many people and even if the subject is one of my special interests I don't think I could handle that. Online, I enjoy reading about my interests and hearing other people's opinions on aspects of it, but I don't engage in any kind of discussion. I'm always what they call a 'lurker' on message boards and such.

Part of my AS I've come to understand - I've been in multiple bands at once but very few out-of-gig contacts; I would read about my favorite bands hanging out together and become envious, didn't seem to be such a big deal in my local crowd. My last real band as I'd call it, I told them I felt like I was just punching a time card, most of the other members were going to parties and taking road trips without me at the end. Not like I was clingy, I just wanted to be included

I used to go to We Are Change. I would be nervous going but it was great to talk things over with people who were on the same wavelength politically, I'd usually stick with the same people who I'd talked to before. Unfortunately there would be a lot of people getting drunk and I stopped enjoying it.

I usually don't like to socialize with other people who share my interests. My mom says I have never liked it when people had the same interests as me because the more people who are into it, the less special it makes me feel. Sometimes I even force myself to quit being into an interest if I believe that it has become "too popular". The most recent example is that I used to be way into My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but I forced myself to stop for that reason.

That is also one reason why I sometimes struggle with my main special interest, which is the movies that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have collaborated on - their movies are very mainstream now and have literally hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions (depending on the movie) of "likes" on Facebook. I try to force myself to stop being interested in those movies because I'm scared of people perceiving me as being just another crazed Johnny Depp fangirl, though I always fail in trying to force this interest to stop because I'm way too deeply emotionally invested in it.

Another reason I struggle with sharing my interests with others is that they don't obsess over them the same way I do. My special interests have always revolved around works of fiction, because of the strong emotional attachments I form with my favorite characters. They essentially become my imaginary friends and I love them as I would love real people.

It's difficult to find other fans of my favorite fictional works who understand my deep involvement with the characters. Fortunately, I have somehow managed to find another fan of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp's movies who does understand this, and because of that, he is probably the only person in the world who I don't mind having the same special interests as me.

I enjoy working with my special intense interests by myself. Although I use to play music in various music groups, I now enjoy performing solo. In the church I attend, I am the organist, and I am fortunate that the pianist I work with is someone I find very easy to perform with and easy to get along with.

I am SUPER competitive with my most intense SIs, so I often don't choose to socialize with others who are "big fans." I must show that I have the most intense passion and know the most about the SI. I will get very defensive and have to prove my knowledge. I enjoy talking with others who like my SIs, so long as they don't act like they know more than I do. I'm the most like this with I Love Lucy, my biggest SI. I have had several "knowledge showdowns" with people who think they're as big of a Lucy fan as I am.

I like it.

It's easier to bond with people over a shared interest.

When they start acting like a know-it-all, I avoid them. Until then, we're cool.

Yeah I've killed it there all through my life. It's like I see it, want to plug it, then watch myself make the same mistake all over, in 3D.

What special interest people? All my special interests have passed by without any other individual's interest or attention - and we're talking six decades of them there.

Too many errors to bother correcting, hence I don't bother.

The people I'm obsessed with are bus-drivers, and yes I talk to one of them. But usually it's from luck. Obviously he doesn't mind me fancying him, and luckily I'm good at reading people, so I could tell he liked me from the beginning and so I made a play at it more and gave him ''the eye'', which he liked, then he started making small talk with me before I got off the bus, and before long, we ended up talking to eachother a lot in between his shifts.

It's such a shame when his manager put him on another bus and I haven't seen him since.....

My special interest is London Buses and I contact people with similar interests though Bus forums and Facebook.

When they start acting like a know-it-all, I start grilling them to extract every scrap of information from their brains and put it into my own.