on hyperfixations + ur going to have to read about my current one

i was inspired to write this after becoming so obsessed with something in the past couple of weeks that i genuinely needed to sit myself down and get it all out of my system on paper because i feel like a flesh eating virus is taking over my brain. it started out intended as just a dump of information i’ve gathered about my current obsession (that no one else would really care about), but i had a lot to say about the nature of hyperfixations in general, so that’s kind of how i got here.

since turning 19, getting a job, and generally easing myself into normalcy and adult life, i have been adamantly trying to avoid falling into fangirl-like obsessions. yes, being an obsessive teenage fangirl is a rite of passage, and media consumption is fun and generally harmless (despite the tendency to trivialize media enjoyed by teenage girls while respecting the interests of boys but whatever). but in the range of what is considered ‘being a fan of something’, with one end being a casual liking and the other being a hyperfixation so deep it takes over every aspect of your life, i tend to find myself on the latter end of the spectrum.

hyperfixation explanation but it’s in a normal way not in a diagnosis way

i would like to emphasize that i have no mental illnesses/diagnoses/diseases/divergence from neurotypicality of any kind and am normal and calm and collected about everything. i am simply choosing to use the word ‘hyperfixation’ to describe the tendency of my brain to focus intensely on obscure subjects for an extended period of time and be unable to think of anything else. this is normal for me and just how my brain works and i think of it as a positive thing because it helps me feel very PASSIONATELY and INTENSELY about various topics and what a beautiful thing it is to care so deeply! plus the ability to hyperfocus is awesome when employed correctly.

unfortunately, i have absolutely no control over exactly what that hyperfixation may be. i’m sure my life would be much more in order if i could spend every day obsessing over something like my career, my health, even something mildly educational, but as of right now, i have not learned how to control my mind to that extent. some may find it embarrassing to admit you’re spending all your time learning about the life and death of an obscure 90s child star, studying the lore of a indie horror game, or arguing with people on twitter over which ships in a netflix original sci fi series are endgame (all of the given examples are unfortunately from personal experience but don’t tell anyone). but if you choose to ignore that and let yourself be cringe, finding a community of people who are into the same stuff and can talk about it with you for hours is just so much fun. it’s one of the many reasons i love the internet and in my opinion, a vastly underutilized aspect of search engines in the 2010s/20s (i have so much to say about search engines). it’s just so easy to learn and learn and go down these rabbit holes of obscure knowledge about whatever you want. living in the 21st century is awesome!!!!

in middle school and high school, especially over the summer when all i really had to do was read a book and take some notes sigh, i let my obsessions really run wild. to be clear, i didn’t plan them - i can’t sit down and tell myself to start caring about something. rather, it’s kind of like a moment of realization when you’re enjoying a piece of media, a moment i’m very familiar with at this point, that this is going to become a problem. you’re watching a show or looking something up and are hit with this wave of “oh my god i need to learn everything about this and this is the best thing ever and nothing else matters”. so when i felt this urge, i embraced it to its fullest extent and it kind of took over my life for anywhere from a week to a couple of months.

eventually, at some point, i would hit a wall and what piqued my interest for hours at a time would become a bit stale to me. the hyperfixation would fade while the rest of my life emerged into the forefront and i would begin to care about things in the real world again - sunlight, nature, outside, rejoice! important point to mention here: it wouldn’t ever really go away, but rather stay dormant in the back of my mind. paraphrasing someone else’s tweet here when i say that i’m essentially a sleeper agent, and when i hear the trigger words of my past hyperfixations, the deep lore which i have consumed about them all comes running back (a blessing and a curse. i’m really good at trivia).

now you can imagine at this point that at my big and grown age of nineteen, i can’t really sit on twitter all day and twirl my hair and giggle about tv shows or teen heartthrobs for 3 months straight like i used to or at least that’s what the government wants you to believe. unfortunately i am in the real world of adult where no fun is allowed and all i can do is internship and study and leetcode and job and such. so when i feel a hint of obsession coming on, i actively force myself away from it to the best of my ability. just earlier this month, i started rewatching the series skins (if you are unfamiliar, a british late 2000’s euphoria). suddenly, i had the deep urge to go down the rabbit hole of researching the behind the scenes of each episode, watch cast interviews, create a folder on my phone for edits, maybe even get on ao3 shamefully. i indulged myself as a little treat for a couple of days but ultimately stomped this obsession down back into 2021 where it belongs - mostly because it’s kind of poorly written, and the ingrained trauma of the mindset that this show has brought upon me in the past makes me want to not go near it with a 10 foot pole. (seriously this show is dark. it’s like euphoria but filmed with actual teenagers and a couple of them drop dead.) WHEW crisis avoided that was a close one am i right guys!!

and then came that silly little book

that silly little english class book by the name of The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton which i, like every other 12 year old in the united states, was assigned to read in the summer going into 7th grade. do you remember my note about the dormancy of these obsessions? yes, it turns out all it took was one measly tiktok which mentioned this book and its characters and suddenly, the code word activated that little section of my brain untouched for the past 7 years.

in the aforementioned video, a girl makes a point about how conservatives’ attempts to ban subject matter they deem inappropriate in english classrooms is useless given that every year, kids are required to read The Outsiders, which has quite possibly the hottest male cast of any movie ever, all at their peak (her words, not mine, but can’t say i disagree with that one). and every year, a new wave of preteen girls go absolutely insane over rob lowe, ralph macchio, matt dillon, c. thomas howell, patrick swayze, and other guys too i guess (a young tom cruise is in this movie and he is somehow the least attractive cast member, which is saying something). now, 7 years ago, when i first saw rob lowe as sodapop curtis getting out of the shower with nothing but a wee towel covering him, i have to say yes, absolutely my world was changed. i remember putting the movie up on the TV with my friends and screaming every time he would come on the screen. it’s truly peak preteen girl experience. like, my friend changed her wallpaper to a picture of sodapop immediately after finishing the movie, and it’s still unchanged to this day. it has been 7 years.

and it is worth acknowledging that the book and movie are in fact renowned young adult works, and the gorgeous cast should really just be a footnote in my discussion of the material. don’t know if spoiler warnings are needed here because i think absolutely everyone read this, but we all know where we were when johnny died. many tears were shed. absolutely beautifully written and shot and a timeless classic.

anyway, watching that silly little tiktok brought back some fond memories of a much simpler time. oh, 2017, how i miss you. as i felt myself gaining unc status as the gen alpha children call it nowadays, i was hit by a wave of nostalgia and decided to rewatch the movie for old time’s sake. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. the movie basically went like, when i stepped out into the sunlight blah blah blah. yeah ponyboy is adorable etc. ponyboy is jumped by the soc’s. the gang’s all here, these lovable rascals. then i see him out of the corner of my eye. has dallas winston always been this hot or am i watching a different movie? what is going on here?? was i blind at twelve??? i shamefully admit that i felt that aforementioned tinge of obsession coming on and i could not allow it to come to the forefront. i have a job. i have passions. i have career aspirations. i am a grown responsible adult.

but the thing about personalized algorithms is that unfortunately, they’re really good at knowing what it is that you want to see thanks to the brilliant minds of social media algorithm developers. that’s their entire purpose and i can say much more about the evils of this business model but i won’t here. after 8 uninterrupted years of daily scrolling through musically/tiktok, i think that algorithm knows my subconscious thoughts before i am able to bring them to the surface, so needless to say, they were able to pick up on my little interest. the already heroin level addiction i have to my tiktok for you page becomes instantly fatal once it starts showing me videos about my hyperfixation. you get that biggest hit of dopamine when something is new and exciting and you keep chasing it with more and more consumption to get the initial feeling back, and thankfully, the for you page goes on FOREVER!! or at the very least i haven’t reached the end of it, but coming soon.

i get in what could be best described as a comatose state when i’m chasing this feeling. watching the movie becomes watching analyses and video essays about it, reading entire forums, every single post and comment, doing extensive digging on the background of each character and actor. i will admit i watched so many of matt dillon’s movies that i would have never before cared about, just because he was in them. these are not movies i would ever watch so the only explanation is that i am currently being possessed by some other entity. like, i hate watching movies, i have such a terrible attention span, and yet i have consumed like hours straight of just random movies. due to this, i made a post detailing my thoughts on every individual movie and him as a whole and had great fun doing so.

it’s never a good sign when you’re redownloading wattpad

so i’ve been brought to the point where i have to make the shameful admission that i have, against my will, rejoined the “the outsiders” fandom which is entirely composed of twelve year old girls. and this is evidenced by the fact that i have revisited some of the ahem content which i had consumed in my first iteration of this phase on websites such as ahem wattpad and ahem tumblr, and for the first time in my life, i feel like i’m too old for that.