A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
I am learning lockpicking for fun. It helps me relax. I used a practice lock at first, then a cheap real lock. I've just learned that my firearms lock...yup, can be picked open in about 10 seconds. Equal parts cool and terrifying. Locks are waaay less secure than people think.
It has the same "internet hacker" stigma so I avoid talking about it.
I miss lockpicking, it's so cathartic. I used to have a small set of picks and folks near my desk at the office would often try to pop a padlock I kept around when we were bored. I liked how everyone seemed so interested in the ease with which you can pop many locks.
I like learning about random ass hobbies without ever indulging in them.
I watch an ungodly amount of aquarium / terrarium videos, lurk a ton of aquascaping communities. I owned a betta fish in an empty bowl when I was 12 and that's it. (poor fish)
I read all you could know about book binding fanfiction, never done it.
I read a hundred pages long horse breeding guide for the game black desert online and I have no idea why. I only played the game for a month, spent most of it reading a google doc about horse. I'm not even sure I owned a horse in the game.
Sometimes I try the hobby, for example mini painting, and don't have the patience for it. But I still watch some random dudes on youtube paint for hours and sometimes they don't even talk!
No idea why I am like this
I do the same! And you know, I think this is a hobby by itself. It's also very useful when talking with strangers if they tell you they practice one of the hobbies you've binged on. You can ask them more pointed, interesting questions and it makes for great conversations!
Model trains. I don't bring it up because it's obscure, but I've definitely found there's a stigma. "Oh he's the guy who plays with trains". Screw the haters, I like to relax after work and do a bit of escapism. Eventually I got over it though and talk about it with friends, but it's not the first thing I bring up either
Working on my (private) servers is a hypnotic activity for me. It can be interesting or I can hate it and still want to do it. It can also be relaxing. Last time when I was sick in bed I played around with wireguard VPN configs all day to get a routed VPN for my VPS. I'm going to fix it today because something doesn't work the way it should.
Also, I learn Japanese. ζ₯ζ¬θͺγ倧ε₯½γοΌ
For me it's coffee. Most people see it as a daily need. When I say my hobby is coffee they always say things like "that's not a hobby".
Contributing to OpenStreetMap. I try to bring it up because it would be great to get more contributors to the project, but either I have to explain "It's Wikipedia, but a map" or they come out with misunderstandings about the project that aren't worth correcting. E.g not liking the icons used to display points on the map.
Programming... Maybe not the most quirky, but just doesn't make for good conversation
At the date...
... Funny thing this reminds me of the time I had to refactor my API to accommodate three whole new call types, you should have seen the json generator code before ...
Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. Usually gets an, "oh" and a sideways look
I actually came here to say it USED to be D&D, but now it seems like every time I bring it up it's followed by a full conversation about either them playing as well, them wanting to play, or questions they've always had about the game. It's a stark difference from what it was just 5 or so years ago.
Geocaching used to be really big but now is pretty low key and niche.
A lot of people I talk to have no clue what it is, and the rest know what it is but have some wildly wrong preconceived notions about it. Stuff like "It's only for hikers" (no it isn't) or how the geocaches are only in the woods. I had a friend who literally did not trust me to go geocaching with her because apparently she thought somebody would be waiting at the location of the geocache to murder us. I had to sit her down and show her that a large majority of geocaches are located in bustling cities and on the sides of major roads.
Sucks that a lot of people also just did not understand it. I once told a friend that there's no monetary reward and they looked at me slackjawed. Like yes you just go find things and then when you find it you have the satisfaction of having found it and shared your find with your friends online. You don't make money doing it lol.
I speak Esperanto and I am quite active in the movement and write for the Esperanto Wikipedia. In 2011 I had quite a cool trip to an Esperanto Youth Congress in Kijiv. But it's hard to talk about it because most people see it as a failed project from the early 1900s, not as a modern subculture.
In a way, my interest in internet privacy is almost always met with uninterested "ah" IRL. Even when I dont come off as preachy, when I just try to sell it as "watching YT without ads", people often don't care.
I kill and butcher animals for myself and sometimes friends together with my boyfriend. Mostly pigs, some sheep and goats, poultry. Sometimes injured animals who are too injured or in too much pain.
The idea is to save the stress of transport to animals who are raised in good conditions as part of diversified restorative small-scale agriculture.
The killing and butchering is just one part of a circle of activities around the farm throughout the year, but probably the most unmentionable in any social setting other than among meat fanatics.
I've been playing Second Life for almost half of my life. I used to run a blog about it and often spend a few hours every day online chatting with people. Mentioning that I know anything about it inevitably triggers people to either ask "wait that still exists?" or "isn't that a sex game?"
I have a hobby that I can't even truly mention the name of it because the name is shared with the book Lolita.
However the lolita fashion clothing I wear and collect from Japan and China has nothing to do with the book so I often have to refer to my hobby as "Japanese Street Fashion" and that actually covers the other J-Fashion I wear too, which includes lolita dresses.
They're just specific types of dresses with a certain cut, they are often described as cupcake dresses and were more popular in Japan during the Harajuku Girls craze, so like around 2010 to 2013ish. I actually picked up the hobby in 2015 and started building a wardrobe, learning how to use color theory to match pieces of clothing, learning about different fabric types and how to care for them, and even learning about how to import items from other countries like Japan where they have limits on what they want people in the US to be buying from them.
I'm not as into it as I use to be because I have less of a disposable income now and it's a very spendy hobby. Plus COVID made shipping more difficult and a lot of laws in other countries changed around shipping and prices increased for international shipments. I still buy a dress like every 6 months? I use to buy them more often and sadly I don't fit some of them anymore. I only gained a bit of weight since 2015 but the dresses are tiny and its hard to get them altered without the right matching fabric.
I'm currently trying to lose weight so I can get back into wearing more of my wardrobe again like I use to. Currently cycling as I write this.
I also use to go to meet ups for lolita fashion specifically but that community is unfortunately full of toxic people and I finally gave up on going to the meets not long after COVID restrictions were lifted where I live.
Knitting - if you find the right audience, you can chat for hours, but it can also lead to blank looks or lots of assumption.
Downloading and occasionally playing games from the flip phone era (j2me games). They seem to be mostly forgotten. They're basically the best alternative to the ad ridden, micro-transactions galore of today's android games and there's a surprisingly high amount of very high quality games.
I've never let it stop me, but:
ethical philosophy
social dance, especially contra and square
chromosomal / genetic inheritance simulations
Very cool, just be careful not to become that "I am very smart" type guy who just wants to impress their friends. It's a fine line to walk, nobody likes that guy, but everyone likes the guy who actually genuinely likes their hobbies
I love fixing up classic iPods, and as much as I enjoy it, any mention of it comes with "but why?", then the person asking refuses to understand why I still like using iPods even in this time of streaming music.
I hate depending on an Internet connection and listening to ads (even as a paid customer), so local media is the only solution for me. And it's getting so hard to find phones with SD cards that I might have to start carrying around an MP3 player too.
I have a couple iPod classics, one has a dead battery but the other runs just fine. What all are the options for keeping these alive?
I find pointless bugs in video games. I can spend hours trying to platform in a single spot the game doesnβt expect, like jumping from a fence to a windowsill to lamp post to a canopy to a roof.
I used to be a speedrunner and still have some of that blood in me, but I refuse to skip content in casual playthroughs. So the crazy part is if I find a way to skip an entire level, cool, time to go back and do it normally.
I really enjoy getting the most out of a computer/mobile device that I have. I love trying out different OSes, messing with a video game to squeeze as much as performance possible etc.
Video games. Even with how popular they are, it's not something easily brought up in a casual conversation. I hardly ever run into people my age who even play games. :/
Technology, open source software, operating systems, retro technology, furries
Could have just said you were a furry :P
Not too quirky or obscure but I really just like to fix shit. Clocks, washing machines, cars, crooked door, hole in a sweater, electronics... Nothing is outside of my interest.
On the more obscure side I like to fiddle with wrist watches by adding aftermarket parts and modifying their overall look.
I have a perfectly accurate 1:1 scale lightsaber replica of Luke Skywalker. It turns on, itβs really bright, it reacts accordingly to how I swing it, can deflect blasters and makes tons of cool soundsβ¦
I donβt bring it up in conversation, but when people find out they get really excited (well, boys mostly)
Dildos, especially Bad Dragons. I genuinely love just collecting them
Nude hiking. I mean I wouldn't care if someone I knew saw me, but I wouldn't be talking about it in most conversations.
I make music, but it's not really music anyone would want to put on at a party, so I don't tell anyone about it. There's nothing more awkward than standing there trying to explain to someone that what they're listening to is a chord progression played with each note slightly out of phase such that rather than distinct chord changes, you just get an overall impression of it as time progresses while they screw up their face in confusion and disgust. Not that everything I make is a conceptual experiment, but that's inevitably what someone will put on if they discover my music.
I was learning Gregg Shorthand at some point just for the fun of it and every time I brought it up people had no idea what I was on about.
I really got into steve1989s mre videos. So I collect vintage military rations.
Masturbating to hentai bondage.
This is totally fascinating reading all the replies.
I love making bleeps and bloops using VCV rack and Mirack on iOS. The flexibility of modular synths in the digital realm is so much fun! And no one can do 5 minutes of conversation about it. Admittedly itβs pretty dense.
Stand-up comedy. I love doing it and I'm a HUGE nerd about it.
It's not that I wanna hide myself, I'm just tired of all the "tell me a joke" or "let me tell you a joke" conversation that follows. If you wanna hear my jokes come see me on Friday and I've probably already heard your joke many many times and told 10 times better than you do.
I install and set up operating systems. It's something I do to my own computer regularly, but I'll cheerfully do for someone else because it's fun.
Linux is my favorite, but I can do Windows, Free/Open/Dragonfly BSD, Haiku, and given time to research others as well. I keep meaning to give NetBSD a shot...
It gives me a focused task with a specific end goal that requires some technical knowledge, but mostly preparation, research, and troubleshooting skills. The activity can sometimes lift me out of a depressive episode for a while.
I'm an amateur game developer. It's very, very rare I actually get to meet someone else who's into it. Everyone else is either overly impressed, thinking I'm some genius making COD or GTA in my spare time (I am definitely not), or some combination of thinking I'm lying/complete disinterest. It makes me quite sad to see that programming is still relatively niche.
I don't usually mention embedded programming, electronics, vintage stereo hi-fi, home automation, and fountain pens, among a few others. Of course finding someone who is into any of that could lead to some fun conversation.
Be vewwy vewwy quiet. We're hunting cell towers.
"You know PokΓ©mon Go? It's like that."
I dabbled in a bit of neography (creating your own writing system) and a hint of conlanging (creating your own language). I think I've managed to create a fairly decent writing system for myself, but the conlang went nowhere fast as I underestimated the effort required to even get started with it. I also attempted making fantasy maps, but it was all in paper and quite a while ago.
That's it, I suppose: neography, conlanging, and fantasy mapping.
I also spent an embarrassing amount of time looking at maps and making virtual road trips via Google street view, but that's way more mainstream.
3d printing
In general most people have a total misunderstanding about the whole process and it's boring explaining the basics