Evaluating the acceptability of hobbies

Cafe Society
1

In a thread in the Game Room, people are currently discussing why people who like to play video games are given a lot of flak, and why its more ‘acceptable’ to be into some hobbies vs others. I’ll preface this by saying all interests and passions (so long as they are not explicity harmful to one’s self/others) are purely subjective and thus the Stamp Collector’s passion is just as legitimate as the Weekend Warior Football Fan. However, I have noticed some patterns on what the average person finds ‘acceptable’ as a hobby.

The hobby fits within the person’s gender/age group/culture- This is probably the biggest factor on whether people will get judgy/make fun of someone’s hobbies. Its hard for people to accept someone having a hobby that isn’t consistent with how we expect them to act within society. For instance, if you are a 30 year old man that likes to build dollhouses, you might enjoy it because it allows you to play Amateur Architect, designing a little custom house that would be totally impractical to build as a full-scale dream house. But to other people, you’ll probably come off like that creepy Molester guy from the Lovely Bones (who also builds dollhouses :eek: . In this example, technically there’s nothing wrong with making dollhouses per se, but people are inevitably going to associate it with something negative, because they figure little girls like dollhouses, so people who like collecting/building dollhouses must like collecting little girls and wearing their skin like a parka :rolleyes:

The hobby isn’t primarily associated with children- This is an offshoot of my first example. I wanted to expand on it because I think its the main reason people are critical of certain hobbies. If they think its a ‘kids’ thing, then seeing an adult thats super into it makes people think he must be a total manchild. This often happens to things that were originally marketed toward kids then expanded to all ages, but the perception hasn’t evolved with the demographics. Two good examples here are anime and video games. Some people are going to assume if a grown man likes cartoons he must be immature. This judgement is based solely on the person’s false assumption that 1.) Only children watch cartoons, and 2.) No mature adult will be interested in cartoons. This creates annoying situations where people freak out about cartoons that have gasp violence or sexual content, without putting into context that those cartoons were only intended for adults. Unfortunately, regardless of intent, if people think the hobby is a ‘kid’ thing, its hard to get them to see that adults can enjoy it on an adult level. I was talking with some of my in-laws about how soccer (“football” to everyone else) isn’t as popular among caucasians in the US vs other countries. I suggested maybe the reason is the sport got crowded out by other, more heavily marketed sports (baseball, basketball, American Football), and also the association that playing soccer is thought to be a sport kids play. I agree its just as legit of a sport as any other, but when people associate it with something little kids do, its harder for them to take it serious as a legitimate professional sport.

The hobby has broad appeal- This one is tough to gauge, but the meat of it is people find hobbies that many different people can get into more ‘acceptable’ than hobbies that make it look like you have to be some kind of savant to appreciate. In the case of sports, I see a lot of people under a big tent- active people that enjoy playing the sport, people who enjoy watching it, and people who enjoy statistics/trivia/tracking stuff in the sport. A lot of people don’t realize plenty of geeks like watching sports just fine (A Simpson’s episode illustrated this) because there are a lot of parallels to tracking stats as there is in more geeky games. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work the other way around- “jock” type people getting into geeky sports. While I guess you could say stuff like LARPING is active, much of it tends to be too obscure to have broad appeal. Hobbies that can get a lot of people interested, thus, seem more ‘legitimate’ to people.

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I have trouble with “Broad appeal” being used as a judge here.

Not many people go fly fishing (and while this is partly a result of availability, it’s also just a result of ‘not wanting to’), but I don’t perceive that as a hobby that is ever judged as somehow ‘unacceptable’.

In fact, I think you’ll find a LOT of hobbies that not many people participate in which folks will consider acceptable. Oddly, most of these hobbies are OLD.

3

The hobby is seen as addictive, and a distraction from necessary work or study. Video games suffers from this as a hobby. The stereotype here is the guy living in his mom’s basement who spends all day playing video games, rather than looking for a job or studying for a degree.

Allied to that, if the hobby is seen as an attempt to escape reality, it is more likely to suffer. Playing role-playing games, the SCA, and video games all suffer from this. This isn’t the case with hobbies in which the “escape from reality” comes in the form of contemplating nature or other similarly socially-high status pursuits (such as watercolour painting or fly-fishing).

4

Or worse, the “stay at home dad” who neglects the children, or pawns them off on someone else, so he can play World of Warcraft all day.

I have also heard that there are a huge number of men (and a surprising number of women) who, if they were left to their own devices, would spend every waking moment watching online pornography. Is that really true?

5

The OP left off an important one: was it enjoyed by people in the upper classes?

Horseracing was the sport of kings. Every high-born individual had his own hunting and fishing preserves. Stamp-collecting and coin-collecting were the hobby of kings and presidents. Golf and watercolors are common denominators among an amazingly large number of presidents and prime ministers.

We live in a different culture, and not only do we spend less time paying attention to kings (princesses are different) I don’t even know what upper-class hobbies are today. But all the older practices are going to retain some aura. Maybe a kid would get made fun of for collecting stamps, but among adults with millions of dollars to spend it’s still a very high-end pursuit, along with maps, incunabula, and of course art. Even below the super high end, some specialized collections have a cool factor. I picked up a good portion of the rocket mail stamp collection of a 1930s German rocket pioneer for a song.* That’s right. Stamps put on mail flown in rockets in the 1930s. Next best thing to 1920s-style death rays. And those are hard to put into an album.
*The song was “Fly Me to the Moon” naturally.

6

Maybe we should consider “broad appeal” as applying, not just at present, but over time. i.e. a hobby has “broad appeal” if a lot of people participate (now) or have participated (over the last few centuries) in it.

7

I think collecting art is still considered high-class.

Obviously in a bygone era, what the rich and powerful did in their spare time definitely dictated taste. I think things have changed a lot since then however. A lot of rich and pseudo-rich hobbies are looked down upon as coming off as ‘vain’ or ‘impractical’. Take cars for example-

The rich collect expensive, rare cars. They have the time and money to invest in actual rare or exotic automobiles. But when Joe Blow tries to do this, he tends to drive some beater with an expensive spoiler/rims/exhaust, tooling around in his highly polished turd. Hobbies that require a significant investment in both time and money (emphasis on the latter) are seen as impractical if pursued by anyone but the wealthiest of backgrounds.

My wife perceives people this way. For instance, she likes riding a bicycle on weekends. But her idea of cycling is buying a $99 Huffy from Target. Bike shorts? expensive helmet? Goofy shoes? all this stuff seems really over the top to her, especially when you find out how much you can spend (a good bicycle can easily get more expensive than a used car).

Any hobby can get expensive, but some hobbies definitely seem like the rule, not the exception, to requiring you to empty your wallet to fund it. These hobbies are more likely to be seen as ‘impractical’ by laymen.

8

I collected First Edition books - for the most part I never got any blowback.

I also play guitar and have some old ones - I am much more likely to get questions about my playing or the guitars themselves. Definitely a “cooler” hobby in my experience…

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A few years ago there was a similar thread about which hobbyists/enthusiasts were the weirdest. I believe the conclusion was that your serious audiophiles- they of the $1,000 stereo cables, listening rooms costing as much as a house, etc.- were the one group who no one on the Dope would defend. This hobby fails the “broad appeal” criterion of the OP, but I think the main reason it got so much scorn was because of the obvious (and scientifically proven) scam element and its practitioners’ attitude of willful ignorance toward same.

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I think I remember that one. I would also nominate ‘people who smoke fancy cigars’ since most people would agree that smoking is unhealthy but it also bothers other people with the smoke. Some would argue that its just the same as people who like fine wine, but drinking fancy wine doesn’t make the whole room stink of ass (if you cant guess, I hate the smell of smoke).

Speaking of wine, I noticed liking fine beer is less acceptable than liking fine wine. Wine is considered ‘high class’ but beer is considered ‘blue collar’. I noticed that far, far fewer restaurants have a ‘beer menu’ vs the abundant fine dining establishments that have extensive wine lists. Among these places, vinophiles(sp?) have the advantage of getting wine by the glass, flight, or bottle, with descriptions of many of the types which encourages you to try something new. Compare that to the listings of beer, which are limited to ‘domestic’ and ‘imported’, rarely categorized by ales, lagers, wheat, etc unless that is the gimmick of the restaurant.

I think the popularity of ‘crappy’ domestic beer also hurts this- if you tell people you like beer, they probably think Budweiser or Coors. Talk about the difference in taste between a good lager vs a good ale and you’ll probably get blank looks.

11

…and god forbid you ask them the ‘corking fee’ for bringing your own case of Sierra Nevada to a fancy restaurant :eek: But bring a fancy bottle of champaigne and they’re fine with it if you’re willing to pay a $15 corking fee. Same BS with bringing your own cake for a birthday party.