Sorry, mind if I chime in on this?
First things first, gotta feel good about yourself and what you do. Then WHATEVER your hobby is, you can own it. And you’ll find a girl that loves you for it.
2 extremes:
- Hiding something you are interested in, dancing around/downplaying a hobby.
- example: “Uh, video games, what? Are those on computers now? Ha ha, no not for me.”
- Going too far the other direction and clinging to a hobby as your sole identity.
- example: “I am a GAMER and we do/say/wear GAMER THINGS and if you aren’t a GAMER then you don’t GET IT!!!1”
Both, I think, come from insecurity about your own identity, which people (girls) will pick up on. A nice middle ground is: “Here is a thing I do, and I love doing it, and why. How about you, what do you do for fun?”
When I was younger (old talk), I would tend much more towards #1, especially around girls. Luckily, I was more mature when I met my current girlfriend, and everything was on the table right away: “I play this game called Streetfighter. I go to tournaments and everything! It’s fucking awesome!”
I owned it, no reluctance, and she thought it was awesome too. She’s come to tournies and thinks the whole thing is great, even though it certainly was not a thing on her radar before (and she even had some negative associations with past boyfriends and constant computer gaming… she considers SF a different thing, based on community and socializing and leaving the house, which is true). She has her own hobbies; she goes to swing dances, so I go check those out too. Not nearly every time, and vice versa. It’s healthy.
Also, there are plenty of girls out there that, while maybe they aren’t part of “gamer subculture” per se, certainly used to play video games with their cousins or whatever, or maybe they read comics, or watch nerdy tv-shows, or whatever. Or maybe not, and that’s super cool too! Our external forms of entertainment, while fun to talk about, don’t define compatibility, and most differences become exciting, as long as they are in the context of an otherwise compatible relationship.
