What's a common occurrence in your hobby that you think shouldn't be?
What's a common occurrence in your hobby that you think shouldn't be?
For me it's driving while under the influence. If you couldn't tell, I like me some ganja. However I have long since held the belief that it is utterly insane to drive while under the influence of most substances, with maybe nicotine and caffeine being the exception. All too often I see other stoners smoking and driving, which I simply can't fathom. I've only operated a vehicle once under the influence and it was just to move a U-Haul around the block to a different parking spot, which was such a scary experience while high that I refuse to even consider getting behind the wheel again while high.
Car culture constantly being irreversibly intertwined with a bunch of right wing redneck bullshit. Its so pervasive that I have to actively avoid most social media car content because it will inevitably contain or be filled with comments of "FJB", "cry about it liberal", "Trump 2024", and repeats of 500 anti gay/trans statements that have literally nothing to do with cars. And if I subscribe to any of it on a mainstream platform, my entire recommended feed instantly gets filled with a bunch of Andrew Tate chud sexism content and a constant barrage of other nazified political spam.
I'm here cause I like things on wheels with vroom engine, not your political pisstakes. Christ. I can barely even go to local car meets either because almost all of the boomers that gatekeep such events can't get 3 words out of their mouth without jumping into a Great Replacement conspiracy. Fuck my life this hobby is a hellhole.
As a result I mostly keep to myself, drive my little shitboxes out in the forest, and work on a couple Goofy ahh engine swap projects without talking to anyone else.
And yes, I'm calling gonna call them a racist if they think the confederate flag belongs on the roof of an orange 1969 Dodge Charger (or on the front license plate cover of Generic Pickup Truck #99,412). I don't give a shit that Dukes of Hazzard was a car culture classic. Get fucked lol.
One of my hobbies is the social deduction game Blood on the Clocktower. Heavy social deduction games will draw certain types of people. Many of the people are very nice and inclusive. Others not so much.
I just played a game with a new group the other night - games usually take about 90 minutes in my experience. These people are all about playing super optimally rather than having fun. I made a sub-optimal play as an evil character, solely to create chaos. This led to mass confusion toward the end of the game. When my play was revealed at the end, people were literally yelling at me.
No one cared that it worked, and evil won, and that I completely followed the rules. I just did something no one would expect because I knew it would cause confusion. Some people take all the fun out of the game.
Pishing. Some birds will make a warning call known as a “pish.” Making that call yourself—if you do it correctly and have a bit of luck—can make flocks of tiny, hard to spot birds come close to you as they try to figure out what some ‘hidden bird’ is warning everyone about.
If you’re a bird watcher wanting to spot them this is super exciting! And if it’s in an isolated area or somewhere not many other birders visit it’s not super stressful to the birds. The problem comes with places like Central Park that are bird watching meccas, and suddenly a patch of woods might have dozens of people doing that in the span of a few hours. Repeated or prolonged pishing can stress birds out the same way that playing recorded bird song at them for hours can stress them out, because it makes them think there’s an unseen threat to confront.
To me it’s just disrespectful to the wildlife. They’re not there to be your toys or to fill out your IRL pokedex, and stressing them out because you want a better look is edging into unethical territory.
With airsoft, it has to be the fascination with using lasers. There's no such thing as a totally eyesafe laser, just "less harmful ones" and I know that many of the ultra cheap lasers on places like aliexpress are totally lying about their ratings, using lower rating stickers on more powerful lasers. Which is a problem as it's easier to make a brute force amped up laser when you want something bright to appeal to airsofters. The teens buying these lasers have no idea what laser ratings are in the first place anyway, they just buy whatever appeals to their Call Of Duty addled brains.
In addition to being inherently unsafe, which is full stop reason enough, lasers tend to be pretty useless especially in outdoor games. It is very annoying to be in the woods and randomly get swept by a lasers from somebody far away who doesn't even know where I am. I have literally heard people explain that they find where the laser is pointed by looking for it with their magnified scope. Which is completely insane logic.
When the topic comes up, laser users claim that they never aim at peoples' eyes. In a game, that's a completely impossible promise to keep. Also some people do intentionally aim lasers at faces for an advantage, and since it's impossible to avoid this whole mess, lasers should be banned entirely.
(And before anyone mentions the laserbox on my airsoft gun, it's fake. It's a hollow box where I keep the gun's battery for easy access.)
Another hobby, though I haven't been in a few years is SCUBA diving. I learned how to dive under people who took all of the safety limits and procedures quite seriously. I was always diving in a pair with a person I knew, and we always had a comfort level of communication and teamwork based on familiarity with each other.
I left that constant diving life, and later to scratch the diving itch I decided to go do a recreational dive in the US. I showed up to the place and got on the boat. On the ride out to the dive site, I was expecting a pre-dive meeting where details would be gone over, and I'd be assigned my partner so we could interact at least a little bit before getting in the water. That never happened. I was waiting and waiting for the meeting to start when the boat just stopped, the people running it announced we were at the dive spot and just started pointing to pairs of people to be "partners" basically as they were jumping off the boat. I'm used to doing an equipment shakedown with a partner, but my assigned partner was some guy who just hopped in the depths and was gone before I could do any of that.
This was a simple dive to a flat sand bottom. People were mostly looking for trinkets down there. That said, the lack of organization was shocking. When time was up, people just started shooting to the surface. Nobody else was doing safety stops on the way up, and because of me doing it I was the last person out of the water. It was very scary sloppy and I did not go back to any open-to-the-public recreational dives after that.
The "macho" attitude to safety. From soldering to woodworking. In soldering, there are fumes created when burning a substance called flux. There are commercial fumes extractors to purify and remove these fumes, but many refuse to use them, even if they're cheap. Saying stuff like "What's a little tree sap gonna do to me?. Chances are, none of them could run a mile due to the irritation of their lungs.
Another one is woodworking, especially around power tools. Table saws can shred your fingers before you can blink. It can pull extremities towards itself, and can launch wood fast enough to perforate organs. Yet there are still people who insist "I don't need no push stick", "don't bother with a crosscut sled, just free hand it".
In photography, its overemphasis on the importance of gear. While it’s true that some shots require specific equipment, the average photographer will not improve with better equipment, and an experienced photographer can take brilliant shots with a phone.
You can’t buy skill. It comes with practice.
I have a pile of hobbies and I guess one common thread is obnoxious dude shit. And I say this as a male type person.
3D printing is a weird one because 3D printers are hella good for all kinds of stuff, from the more "femme" coded hobbies to the "dude" hobbies. But somehow the not-male people I know engage with some of the same communities as I do and for some reason I always get a lot more useful answers to my questions. There's a certain aesthetic to homebrew open source 3D printers and it's kinda industrial.
Electronics hackery is worse because it's a lot more "masc" coded. Even software stuff isn't quite as bad because at least there there's been concerted social pressure.
Photography is sad because if I work with a female model I have to go through a whole process for her to make sure that she's going to be safe during our shoot, some of which I didn't even fully realize that was part of the process for a while. And pretty much all of the semi-pro-to-pro experienced models have at least one story and sometimes Names Are Named and it's someone I've met, so I have to be constantly on guard.
"All the gear, no idea".
This applies to pretty much every hobby or interest I've had. It describes people who start a new thing, and immediately go out and buy "the best" equipment, which they do not have the aptitude to use.
For example, a few years ago I started kayaking, and joined a local club which has kit hire available for most kit, especially the expensive bits (kayaks, paddles, helmets, paddles). Kit hire is insanely cheap, literally £1 an item per day, so you'd need to hire a kayak hundreds or thousands of times for it to be cheaper to buy your own boat. Hiring also allows you to play around with loads of different makes, models, and shapes of boat to find what works for you.
When new people join the club they have two intro sessions, in which, in a purposefully stable boat, best case scenario, they do a mile on calm, slowly moving, water, some figure 8s, and don't capsize.
Context for people who have never kayaked before, at this stage literally no one can paddle in a straight line. Hell, most people end up spinning around 180 degrees after 3-5 stokes as their dominate side overpowers. Trying to turn the kayak is scary because you have to lean over (like a bike) but you don't want to go for a swim in the river, so you don't lean far enough, which makes the kayak feel less stable. Overall for most people starting out it's an enjoyable time, but with a lot of nervousness and trepidation.
The club provide a list of kit recommendations for people starting out, all of which is related to clothing to keep you dry-ish, and costs max £100. Both the club officials, and the members, continuously tell people to not go out and buy loads of stuff immediately and how the majority of members hire the boats.
But every year one or two of the newbies decide they absolutely love it and next week come back having spent a few grand on their own kayak, paddle, and high-spec clothing (dry suits, etc), and proceed to spend the next 2 months absolutely hating their lives because they don't have the skill to paddle the kayak they've bought, continually capsize because it's "so unstable", and ultimately quit through frustration.
The record for this is when someone bought three boats - whitewater / river, sea, and playboat - each of which require different skills, some of which are mutually exclusive (in a river kayak you lean left to turn left, in a sea kayak you lean right to turn left). To their credit, they've stuck at it, and were either very lucky in buying boats which fit their style, or are just sticking with them and learning how to paddle them through sheer insistence. Either way, fair play.
There are a lot of cosplay elitists, that think you need to be a supermodel or look exactly like the character to cosplay them. Bruh, this is about creating art of our favorite Fandoms. I'm allowed to make sexy versions of characters, people are allowed to cosplay characters of different ethnicities as long as there's no blackface, people can make costumes of anyone, even if they don't know every bit of info from the source material. Let people have fun... this isn't about you and all your gatekeeping is doing, is stopping you from having awesome and talented friends.
For the more "masculine" ones, say video games and roleplaying games, really wish guys were less fucking rude to me or even just ignoring me. Or also lovely is me suggesting an idea, ignoring me, then agreeing when someone else takes it and suggests it.
Some people online are oddly hostile about American recipes using cups/tablespoons? I do a lot of baking, so much I do have a scale, but that's extremely uncommon here. Most cup recipes are fine. Even weighed recipes need tweaking sometimes.
Knitting is a solo hobby because oh man old ladies can be really weird about what yarn you use or needles you use or even why you're knitting so young. I was 30 when they were saying this. Sure, younger than them but???
I like to play Magic the Gathering. I also won’t play with randos at local game shops because more often than not they’re socially awkward, outright rude and act like 30 year old children if a game doesn’t go how they want, or they fucking reek. You can find actual normal people who play the game, but the amount of fucking weirdos way outnumbers then, to the point where going to events is not an option for me anymore.
Oh, I got one! The hobby is browsing advice subs. The fucked up practice is just how common and easy it is for some people to tell a complete fucking stranger to end a relationship. People are disgusting. I remember way back when Reddit told me to leave my now-wife of ten years because she had the unforgivable condition of... depression 💀 and I still see this shit every single day. OP reported some choice words? Break up. OP isn't sure? Break up. OP loves them but their partner blah blah blah? Break up. Every valley too low, every mountain too high, no relationship can work out to a Redditor. The fucking gall of these people to constantly be telling complete strangers to make a major life altering decision, and how flippantly they do it... it just pisses me off. They don't know a damn thing about "red flags".
In the 3D printing and modelling space there's a growing amount of tribalism amongst people. Its still not too bad, but it seems to be getting worse. It worst with printer hardware and cad software but I see it with slicers, filament, bed material too.
If someone is having issues (and hobbiest grade machines and materials are going to have issues), it's not helpful to say "well your first problem is you bought a _____."
Ham radio: treating newcomers like idiots, and general gatekeeping.
Archery: spending way too much for stuff and pretending that it'll make a huge difference in your performance.
Cycling: see archery
Backpacking: see archery
Fishing: see archery
Marksmanship: see archery (except kinda true for optics)
Quadcopters: pretending it's easy. It's not fucking easy! You're going to break your quadcopter five dozen or more times before you can fly without crashing if you don't learn on a simulator first.
I guess that's it
So many bedroom audio producers are all about having the latest and greatest gear, and then don't make shit beyond a tech demo or two. There's nothing wrong with that I suppose. It just seems a bit odd to me to collect a pile of expensive, useful tools, and then not even use them.
Or not even know how to use them. I remember one guy in particular. He had a $10000 Moog One, and used it to make a piece of music where he held an A minor chord for 20 minutes. There was almost no modulation or movement at all. Just the same chord for twenty minutes. I like outre music, but come on!
There is an often reposted study that shows people who are worse at video games are more likely to harass women. Though these are some issues with the study and it's scope, this more or less matches my experience. However, this is usually transformed via a game of telephone into suggesting higher skilled players are less misogynistic.
I have played at the top level of multiple games over different genres and it is incredibly misogynistic up there. The key difference is most of the nerds up there are less likely express it so obviously and publicly. In a lot of cases this is purely about self-preservation, teams in competitive games will be collectively penalized so there is a degree of self-policing (nobody wants to have their team disqualified with all that money on the line) and in PvE games there is usually a great deal of time (and lets be real, often money) invested in an account people don't want to lose.
It's gotten a lot better since the "tits or gtfo" and "there are no women on the internet" days, but the last time I was in these circles was only during COVID and it was still wildly misogynistic behind closed doors.
I do beekeeping with an educational project and my bugbear is hygiene. Bad habits had set in before I joined the group - not cleaning hive tools or beesuits, not properly cleaning and storing feeding and honey extraction kit, it was all pretty filthy and gross. They tease me for being a martinet, but we sell the honey FFS! And the bees themselves deserve protection from people casually risking the spread of disease.
Common in the hobby of tabletop RPGs, or especially Larping, is Main Character Syndrome. People think that their character is the most important thing in existence. If things don't go their way, they complain, claim cheating or bias. If the larp is setup for it they ask for appeals for the decisions and investigations against the person who wronged their character. They spend more time just arguing over what great things should happen (or what bad things should not happen) to their character than they actually do just ... playing the game.
I'm big into sailing, and the sport still has a major problem with integrating women. There's a lot of (for lack of a better term) mansplaining, condescension, men who figuratively elbow women out of the way to run the boat, and a lot of super-thirsty men who scare women away. Both the 1992 movie Wind, and the 2018 movie Maiden, can give you a sense of the problem.
Don't get me wrong, it's a lot better than it was years ago. Women like Tracy Edwards, Ellen MacArthur, Jeanne Socrates, and Kristen Neushäfer have done a lot to put old prejudices to bed, but still frustratingly common. (Like the commentary on Jessica Watson's circumnavigation attempt.)
I fly a paramotor. For me, it's reckless behavior. Other pilots doing dumb shit like flying over hazards with no "outs". That just means flying in a way where if your motor were to die, you'd be forced to land in a bad place. Causing you to injure yourself or others, and also potentially damage property. Also pilots who are a nuisance and piss off the public. It makes us all look bad.
A common saying in the sport is DBAD, didyn't be a dick. But some don't abide, and be a dick.
There plenty of things being a hobby musician that my community does but the one lesser talked about one is Musicians will makes plans and 90% of the time there is no follow through. “We will be in touch” “we should do something” “you would be good for…” “give me your number” “email me” all essentially go nowhere. The only other people who might be less reliable are contractors doing home improvement.
Misogyny amongst tabletop gamers. Apparently it's especially prevalent outside of urban centers, and with the kiddies being so into d&d 5e there's less now. Maybe it has to do with mainstreamification or the pandemic? IDK I'm old. The only kids I know are relatives and they were mostly adults before the pandemic turned me into a paranoid shut-in.
If you follow pro wrestling, if you go to small independent shows, there is almost always one guy in the front row, with a WWE belt, taunting wrestlers. Because you see, those wrestlers are nothing, and no matter how cool they are, whether or not they win the match, whether they win that indie promotion's title, they'll never be the WWE champion. And, sure, I guess? But not everyone cares about that. And even if the wrestler isn't going to be WWE champ, they're far closer than that guy is.
I make content for VRChat. The amount of people that do not do the bare MINIMUM to optimize their avatars/worlds makes me sick. And when you try to give them advice (I really do try to word it nicely) they hit you with the "i don't care lol".
I learned finally to just ignore them and make better stuff then they could ever hope to, cause I actually put in effort.
Mine is music. And the common occurrence is the myths. Just sooooo many myths, from tonewoods, to signal chains, to techniques.. if you're into recording in any way typically you have the tools actually in-hand to test these myths and 99% dont. They then get rather angry at those that have and adjusted their outlook.
Gear Acquisition Syndrome is most common problem in most of the hobbies I have had. Folks need to calm down and work with what they have before diving further down the rabbit hole.
Regarding your driving under the influence thing, I am amazed I didn't die or kill someone when driving all over the USA while on LSD after Grateful Dead shows back in the 80's and 90's.
As a hobby welder i have to say its ignoring basic safety for the sake of speed like not having a proper lens to shield your eyes or long sleeves and gloves to keep spatter and slag from cooking you. Even with all that its a dangerous activity but you can extend your ability to do it by protecting yourself
Artists who have to act “out there” because they are an ‘artist’ and seem to be way too intense and anbnoxious about it. Some even abuse others and defend themselves as an artist as if it’s necessary. It is so bullshit and unnecessary.
I know plenty of artists of varying techniques whom you wouldn’t know they are artists until you see their work because they don’t act out.
Great question.
For me it’s homebrewing. It’s so simple yet there is so much disinformation and people encouraging others into following old wives tales that aren’t necessarily proven to do anything.
Also, so many anglophones using imperial measurements it’s ridiculous. Metric makes way more sense especially for volumes.
I’ve had to go through and write my own procedure because it’s just ridiculous otherwise.
Pillow shading and what I refer to as "dull shading" where a person just exclusively uses pure black to shade. The former can look good in certain situations but otherwise looks a bit odd, the latter can make a picture look dirty if they're otherwise using bright colors.
I frequently lose in Overwatch 2, which is an outrage!
A lot of people in the field of code communication or whatever you call it tend to think of the Turing machine. They think of equations that they're supposed to convert what they say into, only to give the instructions on how to unconvert it to the intended recipients. While that's nice and all, if going by their train of thought (which I contrast with mine, I say all this under the context that I see communication as communication), would it not be more ideal to be invisible than wear a Groucho Marx mask?
As for my other hobby, there's a famous debate about that, with me being the Artist B in question.
I am an ultimate raider in FFXIV. I'll wait hours for a party and people either fuck up and wipe or play way beyond their ability and wipe us. I just want totems or help people close to beating the fights. They are hard. I give them that. But it's super frustrating when you just want people to know what they are doing.
i'm really into cars, and want to own (maybe modify) an MR2 1st gen.
problem is: the german government is trying its best to make owning a car impossible or unattractive.
nowadays you have to pay 1.90€ a litre of gas and rent a parking space (the ones that used to be free get converted to charging stations for BEVs or are only for people who live near it)
getting a license has been increasing in cost for a while now, and we're at the point where it's up to 5000€ (i have one already, but it's increasing the barrier of entry)
modifying the cars is also basically illegal, i won't get into it here though. the comment is long enough.
additionally, the only political party that's worth voting (in my opinion) is increasingly making cars the national enemy and is trying to introduce a speed limit on the autobahn.
so the frequent occurence is basically incompetent politicians fucking over the consumer, giving right-wingers even more fuel.
On the point of driving whilst stoned. Confidence comes with experience. It may not be safe, but i used to smoke at a friends house and had to drive home. Originally we would make a point of giving it a few hours after the last joint tbefore i left so i could sober up a bit. As time went on that last smoke got later and later and i still had to leave by a certain time. Eventually this evolved into me smoking a joint whilst driving because it just made no difference (seemingly) to drive sober or stoned.
To your question i would say learning a musical instrument.
I spent years using a basic yamaha keynoard worth about 200 pounds at the time (when i was young) and until i found i was getting good and was joining a band i just used that. Eventually i bought a much more advanced synthesiser for around 700-800 and still have that 15 years later, im only just thinking about getting a replacement. (I had a few random pianos and synths in between and have a full size (basic) electric piano as well)
I worked in a rehearsal/recording studio for a few years and played in bands there and it was amazi g how many times you would see a new band of kids come in who could barely play baa baa black sheep but had spent easily 1500-2000 on their guitars and amps and insisted on bringing the amps and full drum kits to jams despite there being some fairly decent kits and and amps in the rooms already which were better for practice.
Some of them got good, but most of them would try to sell their gear to us before too long.
Im not saying you need to buy a cheap instrument and use it for a decade like me but dont spend 2 grand out of the gate and expect the skill to just fall into your lap.
Some substances help with tasks such as operating machinery for extended periods e.g. stimulants in the amphetamine class of drugs, methamphetamine, dexamphetamine, etc. Cocaine is probably also helpful.
The U.S. Air Force uses dextroamphetamine as one of its "go pills", given to pilots on long missions to help them remain focused and alert.
