It's hard to really get into conversation with people about things that fascinate you, but not them. For example, I'm really an astronomy nerd, and I guess the rest of you are not, huh? So if I started to explain to you why the star designated Mu in the rather southerly constellation of Columba is one of my favorite stars, would you be interested? Would you like to know why I get a kick out of a galaxy called NGC 3310? Will you listen if I talk to you about the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, about supernovae 1a, about the cosmic microwave background or about string and brane theories? Guess not!
It's really hard for me to find people who I can really discuss astronomy with, because my problem is that I'm extremely interested in these things, but I can't talk about them in mathematical terms. And most people who are really astronomers like to rattle off numbers or formulae or equations, or else they explain, down to the minutest detail, about their latest extremely accurate measurements of something which seems unimportant to me, like the number of ions they managed to detect in the upper parts of the atmosphere of Titan. So the astronomers lose themselves in the math or in myopic details of their science, and the non-astronomers couldn't care less. And how do I talk to anybody about astronomy in a way that interest me?
Don't worry, people, I'm not trying to make you see astronomy the way I see it. Similarly, I'm not trying to make anyone I actually know here in Sweden interested in Superman, or in Lois and Clark. It's no use. You like these things, or you don't. I talk to you FoLCs about Lois and Clark, not because I believe you think of Lois and Clark the way I do, but because you can understand the things I want to say better than anyone I meet in my daily life. And that, I guess, is what this kind of boards and forums are all about: that you get to talk to people who share your interest in something that you can't really talk about with any of the people that you actually meet in the flesh.
Ann
