https://www.brewdog.com/uk/diy-dog

I am thinking specifically of broadcast tv kids shows that I have no problem with my kids watching, but that are broadcast with kid targeted ads in my country. I much prefer to rip them and let the kids watch them without commercials.

Any content that exists solely to put ads in front of my kids is 100% fair game and not just ethically allowed, but creates an ethical necessity to remove it from it’s advertising.

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.

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.

The history of food culture in Asturias in northern Spain.