No, he was making a joke about Fight Club. But if you are determined to feel persecuted, I'm sure you can find a way. The anime club at my workplace meets weekly in a conference room to use one of our projectors. Several coworkers have figurines or wallscrolls in their offices. And yes, this is in America.
Hi. I did recognize the joke about Fight Club at the time. But please do trust me, the tone and context made it a mild form of geek-shaming. His effective statement was, "Yeah, I liked that stuff too when I was a kid."
Further instances included people, starting with the same man, explicitly stating that they preferred the X-Box 360 to the Nintendo Wii because the Wii is childish. This was around the time "Elder Scrolls: Skyrim" came out, so there was a bit of a buzz about the new game release. I had mentioned being excited for the new "Legend of Zelda" game, which was contemporaneous.
I wasn't "determined to feel persecuted". Remember, if I had felt persecuted when interviewing, I would never have taken the job. I had really been excited for that job, actually.
I had never expected my coworkers to share my out-of-work hobbies, but I had expected that if the topic came up in casual conversation, I wouldn't be labeled childish or immature for what I like doing outside of work (particularly since I was, at that time, the youngest person in the office... but still old enough to be a college graduate who can legally drink working a salaried job and living independently).
A poster further down has mentioned "My Little Pony" (which, thank God, I didn't even know about back when I worked at this office). It's another fairly good example. If you ever reveal to most people that you enjoy that show, they will say to your face that you're some kind of manchild JD Salinger character, or someone with severe gender identity issues.
Which brings us right back to the issue that you should not be talking about this stuff in a job interview unless the interviewer has actually established that they are a good-natured and tolerant person who cares more about how you answer than what you answer. And I would hold that the same standard should apply to being a far-right Tea Party member, or having a cockfighting hobby.
I had never expected my coworkers to share my out-of-work hobbies, but I had expected that if the topic came up in casual conversation, I wouldn't be labeled childish or immature for what I like doing outside of work
That sounds reasonable. But I wonder if it's always true that you can't label anyone? What if someone mentioned that they spent all weekend doing a <super childish activity> :) Would you not label them as childish? (I'm not saying anime is childish)
More to the point, I think it's fine to express disinterest or even dislike other peoples hobbies etc, as long as it's done in a non-hurtful way. I don't think that's labeling people. It's just finding common ground. It's a way to stop people from going on about things you know you have zero interest in hearing about.
There's friendly environments, and there's professional environments. You can label freely in a friendly environment, but you have to actually get to know someone socially to create that. You don't label in a professional environment.
No, he was making a joke about Fight Club. But if you are determined to feel persecuted, I'm sure you can find a way. The anime club at my workplace meets weekly in a conference room to use one of our projectors. Several coworkers have figurines or wallscrolls in their offices. And yes, this is in America.