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.
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.