I have a passion for things like otaku media, video games, literature, and a few other interests that I've held for many years. These interests are often on the more obscure side, and only a few people share them. My problem is that I spend most of my time not engaging with these passions, but instead wasting time on things like YouTube videos, Twitch streams, or imageboards. I don’t have anything against these activities per se and still want to enjoy them, but for me, it has become a huge problem. And many people today seem to struggle with this issue.

I think I know the reason for this, at least in my case. The passions I mentioned are mostly solitary activities, while the "distractions" are more or less social in nature. I yearn for human connection, recognition, and so on, but my interests usually aren’t compatible with that. People who have more social hobbies in real life, such as playing popular music, often find an audience or at least don’t face as many barriers as someone who speedruns games. In the latter case, a small handful of people may receive recognition, but they’re usually the absolute best players, especially in the most popular speedrunning games. Meanwhile, nobody cares if you’re "only" in the top 10% of a relatively well-known game, or even first place in an obscure game.

For people who, for example, play music and have a social circle in real life, it’s often different. Even if they’re not the best, their friends or family members are happy to listen, play together, acknowledge progress and so on. Activities like speedrunning are so niche that the relatively small number of interested people all over the world have to connect over the internet. In real life, people may know world-famous musicians who "play better," but they still appreciate their acquaintances’ playing just as much or even more. On the internet, it’s different because everyone is a stranger first and foremost. If someone is interested in the speedruns of a game, they go to the leaderboards on speedrun.com and look at the top 10; for most, anything below that essentially doesn’t exist.

Even when you have internet friends, most of the time, they don’t care either, because these are things that only resonate with very few people—otherwise, like playing music, they’d be popular in real life, too. An online friend might say, "Good job," or something similar, and that’s it. You could have poured hundreds of hours into a run, and in the end, it doesn’t matter to anyone. Eventually, you even stop caring yourself. You just don’t feel appreciated. And unfortunately, I’m not autistic enough to not care about that. I seem to be unable to do anything about it. Over the years, I’ve become increasingly isolated, feeling less real and more dead inside. The motivation to do things that actually mean a lot to me and fulfill me is fading, replaced by distractions that make me feel like someone is there with me.

That’s why I want to try to create a group that does care. A group for whom speedrunning or watching Moe anime from the 2000s isn’t just "hm, whatever." I value and admire people for those things. I love seeing MyAnimeList profiles with hundreds of days of anime watched, or someone grinding thousands of hours in a game, even if they’re not the best. Or someone making an extremely detailed video about such a passion. I want to be part of a group where everyone thinks that way, where we encourage each other in these pursuits. Where it becomes a competition to see who can "no-life" something the hardest. A group that comes together for these things, like hosting anime marathons. Like how people at the gym encourage each other to push for one more rep, this group would push each other to watch one more episode or do a few hundred more runs. MAL stats and gameplay videos should feel like badges of honor.
And I also think that it wouldn’t make much sense for this to be anonymous. People should make a name for themselves. Maybe we could make this happen.

I think it's impossible for someone to care about your own passions/endeavors as much yourself. Most people in my life don't know what I'm talking about when I'm info dumping the repairs done to my Japanese arcade machines, and the difference between a low res MS29-9 and a D9200 trisync monitor.

I have fallen into the trap of "social" distractions as well. I like to draw, but my drawings are not the type of drawings I want to show my real life friends. I find myself craving drawing ideas, critique, replies on imageboards, etc. because it "feels" like I'm engaging with the hobby, while only using a fraction of the brainpower. Drawing is hard, and every one takes me forever. I think it's residual social media brain. I don't use any social media platforms, but I won't pretend that I don't like seeing number go up.

tho my interests are a bit different than yours, i feel this. when there's only a few of your kind (that you'd want to hang with.) out there it's hard to find them. i can't offer any unique or substantial advice on where to go to find your ppl, but you're not alone in feeling this way. tbh it kinda of comes w the territory of being into niche stuff. (more so if you're really autistic abt it.) still, finding similar folks has always has been a strong point for the internet so i believe you will find them if you keep reaching out.

It's quite simple really,
1. start an anime blog.
2. Read/Comment on other anime blogs, and/or send private messages to the writers on discord.
3. Start a podcast w/ anime blog friends.
4. ????
5. Profit

That's what I did. People still don't give a shit about what I do or say much but sometimes when I re-read my own anime blogs I kind of get that feeling of community and accomplishment.

Bonus suggestion: Write novels somewhere like RoyalRoad.

>>4 If you are looking for somewhere nice and simple to make blogs I recommend blogger.com and substack is fine too though you might get distracted by political nonsense. Well, since you use imageboards I am sure you can figure something out which works for you by yourself tho.

>>4
do you have a podcast?

>>6
Yeh. Kinda bad though.

>>7
link?

>>8
It's sorta right wing so I don't think it would suit denpa-chan's tastes. Sorry.

>>9
give me the link faggot.

find people who care about your interests not because they are also interested in them, but because they like to see you be interested in stuff. Anothe r thing that ive found out just recently is that if you think about it we are kind of primitively hardwired to like a set of spcific stuff. That way people might think that their interests are not similar but in reality be simply wrong, a person who, for example, likes to optimize speedruns might have a lot more in common with a person who likes to "optimize" the way they code, play an instrument etc. my recomendation is to associate with people who respect your interests and are interested to get things from you, and you should also do the same to them