weird things you like that are hard to recommend?

[rnottelovesowls]

when i say "weird things", i don't mean so-bad-it's-good movies, niche books, pineapple on pizza, or anything like that. no, i'm talking things like experimental jazz, rock, and electronic music. or animations of production company logos. or having an aquatic snail as a pet. those oddly specific interests. you have to be in the right mindset to enjoy experimental music, and it's not for everyone. logo animations are often as entertaining to watch as the movies, games, and shows they follow, but they're not the main attraction. and not many seek out getting a pet snail, especially since bad things could happen to water quality if they die, but they're just sooooo cute!

now that i just shared mine, it's your turn. what are weird things you like that are hard to recommend?

[Skyweaver]

i USED to like animated muscial clocks (karakuri tokei as they're called in Japan). These are clocks form primarily Japanese companies (Rhythm and Seiko) that play music and sometimes animation on the hour.

I still have a wiki about Rhythm branded clocks but it's collecting dust as i lost interest :( . In 2025 the Rhythm company shut down their US branch and slowed down on clock production in general. Seiko is doing fine, but the fanbase seems quite inactibe for some time.
https://libraryoftime.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page

What i AM interested rn in are weird sounding square wave melodies from various cheap electronics. SHame they're difficult to find/research:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL08GDCJENvyl58PZvndubwDkq_fFYI6ky

[demiurgeQuantified]

i adore model trains. they're fun to look at, fun to run, and it's a fun hobby for people that like to be creative with their hands! however,

oh my god. it is so fucking expensive. i cannot recommend this to anyone who wants to keep money in their wallet. the cheapest new HO scale locomotives will run you 80-100 USD. you can get used ones from sites like ebay for FAR cheaper, i've gotten several that way, but it's a COMPLETE gamble on if they'll work or not (unless the listing says tested or parts or whatever, lol)

i love model trains though. i should maybe make a thread about this

[MrsMoe]

This could apply to so many things I like, omg....

For one thing, Swans is one of my favorite bands of all time. Nightmarish masters of their craft, and yet that's exactly why I can't casually show them to other people. Their songs are long, scary, and often repetitive, so it's not the type of things you can turn on in the middle of a car drive, y'know?

I also love movies that are slow, creepy and atmospheric (Eraserhead, Angel's Egg, anything by Jan Svankmajer), but I feel like I really have to know a person before I show them stuff like that. Otherwise, they're just gonna be creeped out, frustrated or bored, and that saddens me.

[lakes]

A lot of experimental & aggressive music, like Death Grips, Thantifaxath, Machine Girl, etc.

I also love movies that are slow, creepy and atmospheric (Eraserhead, Angel's Egg, anything by Jan Svankmajer), but I feel like I really have to know a person before I show them stuff like that. Otherwise, they're just gonna be creeped out, frustrated or bored, and that saddens me.

I also like Eraserhead and Angel's Egg too. I haven't seen Jan Svankmajer though. But I feel like when I get into something "niche," I kinda accept that a lot of people aren't gonna like it.

[drowsy]

I really like loud and harsh, memey music like dariacore/hyperflip. It's an acquired taste, I think a lot of people I know would be uncomfortable listening to it lol... It just feels good to my atypical brain. I do listen to other music, but it is one of the genres that is hard to recommend.

[sphinx]

For me it's the His Dark Materials series and my interest in dæmons, especially. It's a series that very hard to explain without sounding crazy or stupid. If you try to simplify it too much, it sounds stupid, and if you try to elaborate too much it sounds nuts. I mean, now that there's been a HBO series on it, and many years before that there was a Hollywood movie starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, I can try to point to those as a jumping off point... but I've never met anyone in person who's said they've seen it.

But my interest in it runs deeper than the book series as a story, but all the concepts introduced in the series. Most of all dæmons and the soul, dust, and "is the universe alive or dead?" It offers so many fascinating questions with admittedly lots of use of metaphors that feel rather incomplete at times, or not an exact 1-1. It's just a lot to chew on and meditate about. Sometimes I like that about it and sometimes I don't.

Several years ago I found a few boards online that took the dæmons concept and really ran with it. It was fun going through all the different potential animals that would be a good fit for me. I'm still figuring it out all these years later, but it's a lot of fun. It's like a personality test that goes waaay deeper. And you don't just answer a questionnaire, you have to go searching. You have to be proactive. So when you do narrow down a form that is a perfect match, it's a much more rewarding discovery.

Anyways, I think it's a fun interest to have but very hard to talk about with other people. So I never do.

[Dan Q]

Geohashing. Invented mostly as-a-joke for XKCD #426, the idea is that you calculate MD5 ( today's date + latest DOW opening ), split the result in half, and use the halves as the decimal part of functionally-random GPS coordinates. So basically: it's a way of generating a random "point" that's "near" to each whole degree of latitude and longitude, around the globe.

Then you try to get there within the 24-period of that date. And then a new one's available: and because it's based on a hash of (a) the date, which is predictable, and (b) the stock market closing figure, which isn't, then everybody agrees on the random coordinates, but nobody can know them in advance. It's clever!

When you get there (or fail, trying), you write about what you found there on a wiki (which, with Randall's blessing, I run these days!) and optionally blog it (here are all my blog posts about expeditions I've been on!).

And don't worry about the mathsy bits, there are websites that will just tell you where your upcoming nearest hashpoints are. Also "apps", if that's your jam.

It's... a bit like geocaching? Except... you don't necessarily find anything interesting at the coordinates. And you might not even get to the coordinates (they might be in somebody's garden, or in a lake, or on a military base, or something!). And there's only triple-figures worth of people doing it. But we're a fun community doing a crazy and stupid sport; look us up!

[Khanofmir]

I love finding niche european

experimental

synth albums/tapes on the internet that sound like an absolute noise room and that you can hear them actually have fun recording the music and when it's in different language it sounds like summoning the spirits that will take you to an alternative hidden universe        and I'm sure it's not something you could share with other people, you might get a face that silently judges you (I'm saying it because i've experienced it)
Some popular finds: