I’m still not sure if that’s exactly how I want to put that question, but it’s the best that comes to mind at the moment. This isn’t asked as though you’re totally oblivious to or avoidant of pop culture (see defining terms), but closer to like maybe someone on a casual diet or something.
defining terms
For the purposes of this post I mean pop culture in the mostly literal sense of popular culture, so box office hit movies, big sports events, major album releases, big budget video games, etc.
It seems kind of hard to figure out how or what to relate to people with if it isn’t through questions like, “Hey did you see [the game/recent big movie/etc.]?” or other times like, “Do you play or have you played [major game release]?”
You don’t want to kill the conversation before it’s even started, but it can be almost unavoidable when opened like that and you haven’t yet experienced that bit of pop culture or whathaveyou. It gets a little more clunky if you may have (a little) and you didn’t really click with it, but at least there’s a little more room for conversation then.
I don’t mean this in any way to be condescending, but it sounds like your question could he rephrased as “How do you make small talk about something other than media consumption?”
And the answer to that question is to have interests outside of consuming media. Not only does it give you other things to talk about, it gives you other people to talk to.
Outside of that, in a more general sense, it isn’t hard to just prompt people to tell you about whatever they are into. You can literally just be like “So what are you into?” And let people just tell you point blank what they like talking about. From there it’s super easy to just keep them rolling along with questions like “how’d you get into THING?” or “that sounds cool, what’s a good way to get started in THING?”.
Everyone has SOMETHING they’re super into, so just get them to talk about it. It doesn’t have to interest you at all - it’s just cool to hear people talk about what they’re into - and it gives you a lot of insight into whether or not they’re the kind of person you want to get to know better just from how they talk about their interests.
You’re good, that was sort of a variation on how I considered phrasing the question. Another form of the question in my head was something like, “How do you relate to others when your interests tend to be niche” or something in that vein, because your advice is solid for an avid pop culture fan, but it only kinda gets to the other side of this with asking about others’ interests and having other interests beyond following media.
Part of the reason I asked this was less to do with my interests only revolving around pop culture & following media, and more to do with so many others’ interests seeming to do so, or at least that being the way some have tried to relate to me.
The second part of my answer is how I go about it, as someone with some weird niche interests. I just try to get people to talk about their interests.
Sometimes though, people use safe standard topics as a way of setting boundaries, and that’s cool too. Especially in a work environment where competition for promotion exists, people aren’t very chill about letting their genuine freak flag fly. The same goes for weird awkward situations like the plus 1 conversation pit at a partners work (adjacent) event. Gotta be on the best behavior and talk about the ball game, the movie premiere, and the Hollywood strike instead of things you don’t know people’s reaction to when it could hurt your partner’s career.
But in truly social, zero stakes, situations, I just try to get people talking, and if they toss the question back to me, pick some interest of mine that seems less weird to chat about and see how they react.
I mean, your niche interests can’t be THAT weird if you’re looking to connect to people about them, so just stick one of them out there and see how it’s received.