None of my friends, as far as I know, ever owned a Sega console, much less played Sonic; they were all strictly Nintendo and later Playstation. I was the only one. One of my friends did watch SatAM due to Sally having a "sexy voice", but I don't know that that reaches a "that kid" threshold. I went to high school at a school where you learned pretty quickly to hide any weird obsessions you had because the jocks and/or spoiled rich preppies wouldn't hesitate to use it as an excuse to beat you up, so I didn't really see kids in school talking about video games at all except for some guys organizing Goldeneye multiplayer parties. The fact that I didn't start making a serious effort to do anything other than play the games for fun until I was well into adulthood probably also had to do with my not encountering those who took it too seriously. There were a couple of crazy yaoi fangirls in my college anime club, but that's not really Sonic related.