The ability to talk to people about things that interest them but not yourself is a very important skill to cultivate. The intersection of yourself with "people worth knowing and talking to" is bigger than the intersection of yourself with "people who share your interests".
I have the ability to talk to people about lots of things. I talk to all kinds of people about all kinds of things. If someone only has one interest which is sports, I can politely demur or listen depending on whether I have the time, exactly the same as if I met someone who wants to monologue at me about locomotives for 6 hours. But I'm not working in sales, and I'm sure as hell not obligated to anyone to fake enthusiasm about some narrow subject that simply never had any interest for me.
What's awful is that you get to inflict this interest on everyone with general social approval, and you even get to tell people on HN that they are socially defective if they don't pretend to share that interest - but by no means would the same courtesy ever be extended to some kid who wants to talk about Minecraft for hours. That's nerdy and gay, sports is for real men.
Excuse me if I don't take your "advice" seriously.
I would (and do) give the same "advice" about being able to enjoy talking to people with non-mainstream interests. People in general aren't great at being interested in people who aren't interested in the same things as them. Nerds are better at it than most, because nerd-dom is largely defined by having wide swaths of interests, but sports seems to be a widespread blind spot, possibly because of resentment at having their own interests scoffed at by many sports fans (at least I'm pretty sure that's where my past anti-sports feelings came from).
I am not into most sports, and know nothing about football/basketball/baseball but somehow can manage to make conversation with whoever. It's not like the general populace is monomaniacally obsessed with sports to the point that they are incapable of communicating with people who aren't sports fans.
> The ability to talk to people about things that interest them but not yourself is a very important skill to cultivate.
Isn't that a two-way street though? If I must feign interest in the saga of Manchester United or the troubles of Peyton Manning, why mustn't others likewise be expected to feign interest in Njál's Saga or the tale of Luthien & Beren?
Well, the pragmatic reason is that most folks care about sports, and most folks don't care about fantastic fiction. And you're quite right that there are benefits to knowing and connecting with more folks than just those who share one's interests.
But it's annoying to have to conform to their interests and never have them conform to one's own nonetheless. Kinda like being annoyed at gravity, I guess, but it's still annoying.
It's definitely a two-way street, but you can only control your own side of the street. Here's how I think of it: I don't particularly enjoy talking to people who can't find any interest in things outside their normal bubble, so I don't want to be the kind of narrowly-interested person that I don't particularly enjoy talking to.
I wouldn't be surprised if the intersection of people worth talking to/with and people who can't or won't want to talk about sports is pretty close to the empty set.
