Which Hobby Attracts The Most Tedious Wankers?

In My Humble Opinion
41

So many choices, so many that you already mentioned such as audiophiles, gamers, wine fanatics and Civil War re-enactors.

I’d like to add Japanophiles. The people I’ve met who are really into Japanese culture and language, anime, manga and the like tend to be the geekiest of the geeky; the most socially inept, doughiest or skinniest, borderline Asperger’s-ish geeks of them all. Despite their admiration for a culture that values cleanliness, Japanophiles also don’t seem to bathe too often, based on the funk that permanently wafts forth from the anime/manga section of the local Borders.

Great. You memorized every line in Akira. That places you on the same level as those other students in your computer science classes that have memorized Monty Python sketches. Not only that, but you also know the characters and plots of practically every other story out there. You learned Japanese so you can read anime as it was originally written. You stuff your body into costumes that are several times too small for cosplay conventions. Now take a bath, please.

42

Yes. Quite often mixed in with severe personal criticism about how you look, and how much better it would be if you only started lifting and drinking protein powder milkshakes.

Thanks. I was going to say fly fishermen. But fly fishermen rarely recommend (at tedious length) huge changes to their listeners’ lifestyles.

43

My borther’s a gun collecter/reloader/target shooter. He gets pretty tedious sometimes, excitedly describing the nuance of matching powder load to slug. Then he takes me elk hunting. Still tedious, but in that love-ya-bro kind of way.

44

elmwood, I assume you’ve seen this. :smiley:

45

Gun enthusiasts who want to talk about guns rather than shoot them are tedious, to be sure. But if you really want tedious, you need to talk to a collector of Case brand pocketknives. These guys will obsess over handle materials and blade markings 'til you want to put on a purple shirt and take one of their collection and plunge it into their eye socket.

46

Fantasy Football…does that count? Sports can be fun, when not taken too seriously, but it’s beyond pathetic when someone’s only interest in life is watching the scroll underneath an actual sporting event just to see that some player (oooh, his player) in a game not televised rushed for 75 yards.

Then they log onto the Fantasy Football website all day and just watch numbers refresh.

47

Television enthusiasts who devote entire evenings to TV programming.

“Ooo, it’s Thursday, and you know what that means?”

No, actually, I don’t.

“Well, there’s CSI, and then Grey’s Anatomy and then Survivor.”

*Get a fucking life.

*(This message actually intended for my wife.)

48

We’ve missed one of the most egregious offenders.

Art Enthusiasts.

No, I don’t give a flying fuck if that simple red splash on a piece of canvas was painted by so-and-so. It’s not Art, it’s a fucking red splash of paint on a piece of cloth. Get over yourself.

No, you are not superior to me because you’re cultured and sophisticated. Your worship of that red splash on cloth is proof of your deluded wankery.

No, I don’t need to know the entire history of Art in order to have an opinion. If that is so, then may I suggest that you need to have a degree in Political Science in order to criticise the government as you were just doing? (This last paragraph from an actual conversation with an art snob, circa 1986.)

49

Statues symbols? Statutes cymbals? I’m confused…

50

Audiophiles… gads, yes!

They can’t just sit their ass down and listen to anything, much less enjoy it.

A few years ago, I wandered into a stereo shop and encountered a guy who looked like he’s not had a date since the transistor was invented. Having time to kill, I humored him when he encouraged me to have a seat in front of some speakers that looked like part of Stonehenge - seven-foot tall flat obelisks connected with what looked like braided garden hoses to a temple, err… stack of amplifiers dead-center between them.

From the get-go, this was a very antisocial setup - there was ONE chair, so the implication is that you can’t share the experience with anyone. I sit down, he deftly drops the needle on an LP, and, yes, it sounded good. Did it sound better than my $600 system at home? Of course it did. Did it sound roughly $99,400 better? Well… Not enough to justify the price or the years of debt I’d be in.

He seems unimpressed as well, muttered something about the cables, and re-adjusted their position on the floor. Apparently they weren’t laid out quite straight enough, and the notes were getting hung up. He crouches down behind me, listens a bit more, springs up and leans on one of the towering monoliths, and shifted it perhaps two threads’ worth on the carpet, then came back to hover behind me to determine if he made things any better. More muttering.

I was about to say something about how anyone that’s breathing on my neck had better be prepared to give me a reach-around, but decided that would be a bad idea, so I got up, thanked him for showing the system to me and left.

51

I think scuba divers have to rank right up there with the worst. Not only do they bore the crap out of you, but they try to spice it up with the threat of imminent death. And they’re as nasty a sewing circle as audiophiles. And they have lots and lots and lots of pictures. Oy!

52

Hm, i think I used my waterproof camera exactly once … and I never talk about diving other than to the people I like to dive with [though I did recommend to a co worker that they should invest in prescription swim mask, fins and snorkle because after every cruise they go on they complain about the loaner stuff from the boats…and the cost would work out as they cruise 2 times a year.

53

Well, I’ll leave sports aside since I don’t want to have to put everyone who starts a Pit thread about me on Ignore.

Single-malt scotch-o-philes really grate on me when I encounter them, but it’s rare that I do. Typically I only have to hear it when two pear-shaped 50-something businessmen chat about it for hours on a plane.

Beer enthusiasts can be bad at times, but again they’re rare to meet IRL. You know, the sort of people who go out of their way to interrupt you because you didn’t pronounce “lager” the way they like, or who ask you what your favourite strain of hops is (WTF? Yeah, I got it on an index card in my purse here somewhere…)

Lawn and grass enthusiasts abound at my work. Early this summer I thought two men were going to come to blows over lawn aeration (these are the sorts of people who have a 25-hp riding mower to drag a giant spiked steel roller all over 0.1 acres of lawn…)

Travel and cruise enthusiasts can be tiresome. Several in my office go on cruises every year to the same place (a nice, safe place like the Caribbean), and talk endlessly about the dinner buffet, the bar, the pool, the cabins, etc. Not much mention of actually doing anything in the places they go to. They’re the sort of people who interrupt you telling about how you hiked along Loch Ness or went out clubbing in Madrid with what they feel is the more interesting anecdote of “oh that reminds me, they had buffalo burgers for lunch one day on the last cruise I was on! And Samuel Adams beer! Sam Ad! Sweet!” :rolleyes:

54

I don’t know what they’re called…but people who make a hobby of carrying stacks of pictures with them to show to people unrelated to the events/people/locations shown in the pictures.

If I’m not in them, or close to anyone in them - I’m not interested.

If I don’t even KNOW anyone in them, I’m not even going to pretend to look at them.

My Aunt does this the most, she likes to get everyone involved in what’s going on in the lives of people she knows - but she forgets that most people are not interested in ‘that girl who used to live with her five years ago, you remember her, don’t you?’

No, no I don’t. If this was a family event five years ago, I was probably drunk or zoned out while playing video games with my cousins.

55

The problem with audiophiles is that few of them actually know anything about their subject.

If it cannot be measured, then there is no effect, it is that simple. The idea that cables sound more ‘open’ but then cannot actually come up with some measurement that explains it is laughable.

Human hearing is very limited and relatively insensitive compared to measuring instruments - even the very basic instruments, and if it cannot be detected on spectrum analysers and the like, trust me there is no effect.

Sometimes there is a measurable differance, but the differance is so small relative to human hearing, that it is utterly meaningless, though maybe if you were sending a statellite off to Mars, it might be important to take the variances into account.

We are talking changes in quantity of an order of ten millionths and less and yet the audiophile will claim to hear it - total bollocks.

You do not see many, if any, EE’s who are audiophiles to the extreme levels of paying huge amounts of cash for cables, after all, we design and build cables and we know how they are specified and what factors are critical.

It takes years of learning to understand electronics, and then there are specialisms in acoustics etc, but all these take time, and a lot of work.

Audiophiles hear about certain terms such as skin effect, capacitance and reactance and then harp on about them, not understanding the slightest thing about them. Human hearing does not go up into the MHz range, and many of these effects only become significant at these frequencies.

Meantime, they spend an incredible amount of cash on their chosen hobby, which would pay for them to attend live music many many times over.

56

Status symbols.

57

Sydney, eh? You doing anything… how the hell long does it take to get to Australia? Let’s say Thursday, just to be safe. You doing anything Thursday evening? I’ll bring my dice. I can explain attacks of opportunity and then we can explore the sweet nuances of the grappling rules.

58

Oh, guys. You don’t even know. Audiophiles? Oenophiles? People who play World of Warcraft like it’s a second job? Amateurs. You know who’s obnoxious?

Gene-fucking-alogists.

Nobody, yet NOBODY, will tell unsuspecting librarians quite so much about their hobby. Yet nobody’s hobby is that uninteresting! I love looking at old newspaper microfilm. I hate looking up your great grandmother’s obituary in it. You know why? 'Cause it’s boring. The front page? Fascinating. The ads? Enormously entertaining. Great Aunt Mary? Shoot me now before you tell me all about her, thank you very much.

59

People who give a damn about the difference between a ‘Bimmer’ and ‘Beemer’ are tedious. The one who lecture me for not knowing the difference are wankers.

60

I just keep in mind what my husband once told me: “when someone asks ‘how are your horses,’ they really don’t want to know ‘how are your horses.’”

This applies to the dog as well. I usually just say that they’re fine.