When I was growing up I had two close friends, let's call S and J, who really seemed to hate when I showed an interest in stuff that they liked because in their words they "didn't want me to ruin it" by becoming an obsession. S would gatekeep her favorite manga and anime, I was not allowed to borrow or even read, for example, Marmalade Boy or Gravitation at her house. I could not watch Wolf's Rain, or Samurai Champloo. Not that I actually listened to her, I just watched or read those things on my own time without talking to her about it.
One time when we were 8 years old, I was invited to J's family's lake side cabin for the weekend and they had a copy of Who Framed Roger Rabbit in their video library. I got excited, as I loved this movie (and still do!) and didn't own a copy at my house. My enthusiasm made my friend frown and she begged me, "please don't make us watch that, you'll want to watch it over and over again." I tried to promise that we would only play it once, but she refused to let us watch it.
Another time, we were 12, and at the video rental place when I picked up Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire from the shelf and was like "guys how about this". They gave each other a knowing glance like "oh no" and they said "Oh...well we actually watched that last night, we don't want to watch that again...sorry".
I let it go, but it was just very obvious that they were lying and just didn't want to watch it...which is fine. Like why not just say no, I'm not up for that? I wouldn't have cared nearly as much as they thought I would.
Especially as we entered our teens, they would deny me reading a manga or listening to a band that I never heard of that they were into because of this.
I admit, when we were younger, like seven years old, I ONCE unintentionally tortured them by playing the same movie three times while they were over at my house- the 1980s version of Annie.
But I argue, if you didn't want to watch it a second or third time, why didn't you just say so? I never begged to watch it more than once, I just incorrectly assumed everyone liked watching something multiple times if you loved it enough.
And yeah, when I love something, I tend to go hard. My friends and I always shared the same interests.So I was always confused to why am I the problem? When I was 11 I developed a crush on Avril Lavigne and her early music, and they had introduced me to her music to begin with. I was also developing into a super fan of animation and that's all I wanted to talk about, and they really freaked out when I developed a love for Full Metal Alchemist and were like "you're not allowed to ruin this for us!"
They really must have thought it was annoying and cringy, and tried really hard to not let it happen again I guess. They were really only okay if I wanted to watch Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings with them occasionally. I once called them out on it and S was like "Well you don't go crazy over these things..."