All of my roommates are really proud of their 40K gaming and I'm not. Every time their family or girlfriends or whathaveyou comes over, they're always 'Oh, this is what we do, check out our hobby room, you should try a game!' whilst I spend all of my time trying to hide my gaming.
I feel uncomfortable every time I see a person who's genuinely not interested do that vague look of 'Oh, sure, look, it's a little model man', but I honestly can't tell if it's real or if a lifetime of my prejudices are just causing me to See patronizing where there's actually just curiosity.
I've had this issue with all my hobbies my entire life. My social awkwardness compounded the feeling of dread I first felt when I realized I was ranting at my parents and, while professing interest, I realized they were not interested at all. Now, it drives my wife crazy, as I'll be playing a game and she'll ask "what are you playing" to which I'll respond "a game". Because I feel weird saying the name of a game I'm playing. Part of my self development is to work on this, and to remind myself that I like my hobbies, and that's all that bloody matters. I am making slow progress, but progress nonetheless.
Yeah, I react the exact same way, except I wouldn't normally call myself an awkward guy. I'll just be having a conversation with a mate, and someone will pick up a model or something and be like 'What's this?', and I'll just say something like 'Oh, nerd stuff, don't worry about it', and shift the conversation.
I think the problem is that this was fine when I was still big into sport and pretty active, because I kept gaming from people so they wouldn't make assumptions that I was just One Thing- but now I'm not and gaming is pretty much my life, so all other smalltalk kinda dries up.
Worst moment was recently when I was playing W40K with one of my mates (huge ork player), and his uncle walks in to watch. His entirely redneck uncle. So I'm sitting there watching this guy stare at our game with a half-grin, basically just making my rolls as quickly as possible so I can gtfo- I say to my mate 'Last round for now, we'll put it on hold for a bit after that, I could use a break' (Standard occurrence), and he's like 'Hell no man, my next turn is going to be awesome!' The next turn rolls around, he screams out 'Waaaaaagh', and I leave the room. Takes about 1 min before he chases me up and tells me I'm completely ruining his fun unless I get out there and continue playing in front of his VB-drinking uncle.
Some of the differences I have with these people are just massive.