My initial thought is video games, everything has pros and cons, sure. However, it feels like anyone not into video games views them extrodinarly negatively. Any other hobbies parallel to that in your opinion?
poll dancing
People get together and dance when they vote? Weird - no shade or anything but haven’t heard of that before.
Wargaming or anything that brings people to a hobby shop. Trains, RC vehicles, and kites are most acceptable and understandable to people on the outside but still looked down on.
The Satanic Panic never went away. I still deal with it on occasion.
Apparently Hell is full of gay people playing dnd and other tabletop games. Sounds like a fun place, honesty!
Having known many, many religious people all my life, when my time is up, I want to go wherever they aren’t.
Not really looked down on, but every time I mention that I have an indoor greenhouse everyone assumes I’m growing pot.
I see that you didn’t say that you weren’t growing pot
Not really looked down on
You mean near universally championed as cool?
Is your ganja good, though?
How much are your electric costs for the greenhouse per month?
Drawing fetishist NSFW art. A friend of mine was (and probably still is, I just haven’t had any contact with them for ages) pretty good at drawing. If you’re into hentai and/or furry stuff, there’s a non-zero chance you’ve seen his work. He also did some more “exotic” drawing.
He (allegedly) wasn’t particularly into it himself, but he was good at it, and it gave him a couple of extra bucks per month.
Apparently there are quite a few art majors who turn their “useless” art degree into a living by making hentai, especially furry stuff.
I’d go one further and say kink itself!
Sure it’s not for everyone… But people act like it’s some crazy abomination, when most of the time it’s just some variation of sex + roleplay.
I had a friend of a friend who is a bona fide Dom. She was particularly wealthy considering the reputation of the sex trade. Her practice catered to Financial District and C-Suite types who could afford her services. She told me these powerful people invariably develop a kink where they want to be dominated and humiliated as a “grass is always greener on the other side” reaction to their usual position of power and dominance. What blew my mind is that she said sexual release during sessions was a minority. Most got that at home from trophy spouses. They craved the phsychology of bondage, domination and humiliation. Clientele included women too.
Humans are weird.
I’ve heard this stereotype before of “powerful people want to be dommed.” But I feel like I need more compelling evidence. My null hypothesis is that power accumulated in real life either corresponds to or has no relation to the desire for power in a sexually charged space. However, the “powerful people wanna be dommed” trope persists because:
- It’s memorable for the dom/me, so they are more likely to remember these instances and talk about them later.
- It appeals to some kind of sense of “cosmic fairness”.
- We never hear about poor people hiring professional dommes. Why? Because they are expensive. Thus, most domme clientele will be wealthier.
- We never hear about wealthy people hiring submissives. Why? Because they have no problem finding submissives in their lives more than willing to “work” for free.
As a woman very involved in the lifestyle scene (as opposed to the professional scene). Yeah, there’s a lot of reasons people wind up into it, and what your friend describes is the cliche stereotype of the person who pays for pros, but a lot of the lifestylers are similar to a lesser degree.
And yeah it’s not a given that you’re even allowed to have sexual release in a kink event, and sometimes it has to be in a specific room. The sensations, the mind games, the role play, the pain, etc. is often the primary thing happening to the exclusion of other stuff. A surprising amount of bdsm events are just discussion groups and classes.
Thanks for sharing. Can you characterize the people beyond the cliché I spoke of? Is it everyone from all walks of life or do certain people gravitate to it. It makes no sense to me and I don’t know anyone other than this friend of a friend.
I suppose that’s possible, but I feel like I’ve talked to a lot of people in the kink space who developed their particular interests from a young pre-pubescent age, before they were even really sexually aware. A shocking number of kinksters will tell you that they feel that their fascination came “preinstalled”. 😅
This makes sense to me in the context of the story I relayed. Executives tend to draw mostly from a pool of high functioning psychopaths. That is preinstalled. So presumably the kink would be too.
I’m reasonably vanilla myself, but I know that if I liked something “weird”, people judging me for it wouldn’t help anyone, least of all myself.
In my experience with kink communities, shame can really do a number on people’s psychology. It feels like there are always two camps of people: the ones who simply learn to say “fuck it” and embrace their weird side, and those who really become very depressed and self-isolating because they’re made to feel like an aberration. That level of internal conflict, where you spend your entire life fighting against your own (otherwise legally and ethically non-problematic) desires due to internalized shame is a dark and dangerous path.
And like… I get it. To an outsider, any kink that you don’t have can definitely seem weird, gross, undesirable, etc. But then again, even vanilla sex acts can seem gross when you imagine other people doing them. Still, I think a lot of people in the kink space end up struggling with negative feelings about themselves.
Plus, there are a certain group of very puritanical and judgemental people who desperately want to describe (without any psychiatric qualifications) any behavior they don’t understand as being “mental illness”, but ironically, I think the most mentally healthy thing any kinky person can do is simply to accept and embrace their kink.
My message to any kinky people out there is to do whatever you can to accept yourself. Unless your kink involves something that is seriously dangerous to yourself and others, or otherwise legally or ethically dubious, then odds are that the best thing that you can do is just come to terms with being, as Rick James said, a “superfreak”.
Maybe that’s why I’m so OK with people with non-default sexual preferences: I’m pretty weird myself, I just happen to be reasonably mainstream in terms of sexuality.
Pretty much anything that’s considered “childish”. Apart from video games, Lego comes to mind.
Lego is a great one, good answer.
Any children’s TV show, anyone who still watches My Little Pony as an adult is seen either as childish or as a creep (if male).
Because it is weird, to be honest. There’s no shame in watching children’s cartoons in general, but the problem is when people go out of their way to promote it. A lot of us don’t really need to know, especially those that go the extra mile to re-create their saturday morning routines down to wearing PJs and eating cereal to watch cartoons. If you’re going to put that out there, then you can’t expect people to not judge you a little over it or get a head tilt.
There are just somethings that should be reserved and enjoyed in private.
Skateboarding
Rollerblading as an adult if you’re not femme-presenting
Video games are a bigger industry than Hollywood now, are they really looked down upon still?
Yes.
The difference is between “things that are acceptable to do” vs “things that are acceptable hobbies.”
It’s like saying “I watch trashy tv as a hobby” - it implies that it takes up a considerable amount of your time, you put a non-negligible amount of effort or money into it, you might be trying to improve at it, or you consider this a significant part of your identity. It isn’t just “how you unwind” or “a guilty pleasure” - it is a significant part of your life.
What is the difference between acceptable and unacceptable hobbies? Acceptable hobbies improve the individual engaged in them and the world around them, while unacceptable hobbies degrade the individual and the world around them (as measured by the amorphous cultural consensus of the time). Hence:
Acceptible hobbies:
- Woodworking
- Cooking
- Soccer
- Dancing
- Painting
- Gardening
- Reading
- Playing the guitar
These hobbies have the effect of making the individual more active, more social, more creative, and more learned, while also often providing things to others.
Unacceptable hobbies:
- Watching TV
- Playing video games
- Drinking
- Smoking
- Gambling
These hobbies have, at best, a neutral effect on the individual or society.
Of course, many here will be offended, and will say “hey, I use gaming as my main form of social interaction with friends who live on the other side of the country - you’re making invalid assumptions here!” Well, sure - but this isn’t about my personal opinion of gaming. It is about society as a whole’s general perception of it. Argue with me all you want - it doesn’t change the perception of all of society.
Similarly, many will rightly point out “Hey, that middle aged mom spends hours every day on Candy Crush! I shouldn’t be judged any worse than her!” Sure - but again, she doesn’t consider Candy Crush to be a hobby. It is just something to kill dead time in her day. She might be an addict - but she isn’t admitting it, even to herself.
Ok Boomer.
lol rekt
Where does homebrewing using ingredients I grew in my garden sit on the scale of acceptable/unacceptable?
I think all these things fall squarely into “socially acceptable”.
I think bee keeping is super neat! But as you said, can be expensive. And from what I’ve heard, can be more difficult than you anticipate due to modern pathogens.
At the end of the day, you should just do what you think is cool and what interests you. But maybe just don’t list DOTA on your Hinge profile.
I am into most of those “acceptable hobbies” but would throw reading and gaming into the same bucket. I read, the kids game and both engage your mind. Husband watches TV to unwind and that seems much less mentally engaging to me.
@Korhaka@sopuli.xyz homebrewing to me falls squarely into Cooking category. I also put cocktail making, and any fermentation in cooking. So “drinking” as a hobby isn’t necessarily passive, can be creative like cooking. Putting Drinking in unacceptable hobbies, they might as well include Eating. The consuming of it isn’t creative but the creation of the food & drink is. Also learning about wine, etc.
I’d agrue that it is about social perception, not reality. If you say your hobby is reading, everyone assumes you are reading Steinbeck, and if your hobby is gaming, you must be playing COD.
Also, saying “I’m a foodie” is socially acceptable - people might think you’re pretentious, but will understand there is a level of intellectual engagement, skill, learning, and exploration that goes into it. If you say “my hobby is eating”, on the other hand, they will be a bit nonplussed, and might imagine you taking great pride in eating 200 McNuggets in one sitting. Same with “I like wine tastings” or “I’m a brewer” vs “I like drinking”; or “I like to dance” vs “I go clubbing.”
Now that there are parents that grew up as gamers, it’s settled down some, but many still respect watching TV or movies for a few hours more respectable than playing games for a few hours.
Absolutely
If you were to poll 100 people you’d probably have a generally favorable view. Those not in favor though are wildly anti, look at the people still pointing at it in relation to real world violence. I also have a good bit of anecdotal experience in which it’s considered everything from a complete time waste to an actively highly harmful behavior.
I would tend to think that the escapist and addictive qualities of some games contribute to negative perceptions. There really are gamers that take it too far, for the worse.
But on the whole, I believe studies show that gaming in moderation has a host of healthy benefits.
Watching Youtube videos. It’s as good as college for anyone with a little savvy. I’ll bet that Youtube employs more PHD philosophers than any three universities.
Depends a lot on what you are watching
Ha! Employed PHD Philosophers. That’s a good one!
Yeah, when you say ‘I like watching YouTube’ sounds exactly like ‘I like watching Tiktok’.
You have to say it differently: I like to watch online learning content. :).
What are your to ho channels?
Juggalos
That’s not a hobby. That’s degeneracy.
