A mega anorak is not your garden-variety enthusiast — this is someone who has taken niche obsession to a level that inspires genuine awe in other anoraks.
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Anorak mode is the state of being fully locked into your niche obsession — tabs open, notes accumulating, completely unreachable to the outside world. You've gone so deep into your specialist subject that normal conversation is impossible and frankly unwelcome. Time stops, hunger is ignored, and three hours disappear into researching the livery history of a specific British Rail diesel class. Anorak mode isn't a choice so much as an inevitability — it's what happens when the interest takes over. Friends and family learn to recognise the signs and know not to disturb you until it passes (or until dinner is ready twice).
(UK, slang) A person with an unusual or obsessive interest in a niche subject, especially trains.
(British, informal) Obsessively absorbed in a subject, especially an unusual or obscure subject.
A mega anorak is not your garden-variety enthusiast — this is someone who has taken niche obsession to a level that inspires genuine awe in other anoraks. The mega anorak doesn't just know their subject; they know the sub-disciplines, the edge cases, the disputed histories, the obscure variants, and the forgotten footnotes. Their collection, archive, or database is probably the most comprehensive in the country, possibly the world. Other anoraks refer queries to them. Documentaries seek them out. They are simultaneously celebrated and lightly mocked within their own community, which is the highest honour available.
He's a mega anorak — wrote the definitive guide on the subject and moderates six related forums.
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An anorak arc is the character development — usually visible to everyone except the person experiencing it — where someone gradually becomes a full-blown niche obsessive. It starts innocently: a passing interest in vintage cameras, a single Wikipedia page about canal boats, one YouTube video about rare coins. Then the subscriptions multiply, the specialist books arrive, the vocabulary shifts, and before anyone can stage an intervention, the arc is complete. Friends watch it happen in real time, helpless and mildly entertained. The anorak arc is inevitable for certain personality types; the only question is which subject will claim them.