Right. I think it's a different conception of being interesting or dull. It's probably the distinction between people-oriented and thing-oriented people.

When some people say that a person can make a dull topic be interesting, they mean that the person can craft and narrate engaging human stories around the activity or topic. The payoff is not really learning or discussing the details of the topic itself but human failure, overcoming of struggle, human connections forming, or betrayal and so on. It just happens in the context of that hobby.

On the other hand, thing-oriented people like two car guys or computer guys will just discuss that topic itself down to the tiny detail, and an outsider truly has very little gain from this. I've sat in bars discussing CS, programming language features, algorithms, math etc. deep into the night over beers with pals throughout college, and I'm aware that this is deeply off putting to most people-oriented people and would find it extremely dull. But as you say, it works the same way backwards. For me it's like, okay thanks for telling me what happened in the last days, you went to a party where normal party things happened, sure, but when do we get to the part where we talk about eternal themes that aren't bound to the here and now of whatever happened recently? Tall tales, one upmanship and namedropping things for street cred just feels so dull. Why not talk some substance?