What's a common occurrence in your hobby that you think shouldn't be?

The Stoned Hacker@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 278 points –

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.

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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.

I feel your pain, I'm a trans woman and cars and motorcycles have been my hobby since I was a teenager but I avoid most car meets like the plague. The import scene seems to be a lot better than the classic and muscle car scenes but there's still a fair bit of right-wing bs. I do find it hilarious when I roll up somewhere in my classic jeep and notice some maga chud oogling it, the look on their faces when I step out is priceless.

Oh yeah I feel a weird version of this, ugh. See, I'm a big fan of going places and I like complicated mechanical toys and I guess I actually know a lot of deep down details about cars especially after a year or so stint doing car-related tech things, but I'm also an environmentalist who hates cars.

So, like, goofy engine swap projects, actually racing the damn sports car, actually taking the SUV off road to see something cool, details required to engineer a V12 sports car that doesn't spin out, et al are all interesting to me but then literally everything to do with car culture seems like folks who are driving their super-fancy tuned vehicle in a traffic jam wasting gas spouting right wing BS.

This was explained to me as being a car person vs a "car person" by a friend who mentioned what giant douchebags car people are, in a group chat with her best friends who are extreme car nerds.

I know it's getting into a sort of strawman/"No True Scotsman" realm, but I've definitely noticed it at a lot of car meets unfortunately. There are a lot of people who are very much attracted purely to the idea that "fast loud vroom car will make me attractive as a person", and those tend to be the assholes who buy a $100k sports car that they won't even take to a local autocross, and will use it solely to terrorize people in surrounding neighborhoods.

On the other hand, there are people who get excited seeing basically any interesting car. It doesn't matter if it's slow and cheap and isn't flashy, it's just a unique car and that should always be exciting to see.

My stepfather very much falls into the 1st category, and going to Woodward (absolutely massive car show/cruise in Detroit) was absolutely painful. He would shit on basically every car that went by, and on the rare occasion a flashy supercar drove by, would be like "I bet my car is just as fast". He's had multiple very nice sports cars, and I've invited him numerous times to autocross/track events, but he refuses it every time questioning why he'd want to. He'd much rather be an idiot doing 3x the speed limit on backroads than just take it to any one of the many nearby track events. Absolute numpty

I imagine going to a track for someone like your stepfather is a rather vulnerable experience. Odds are higher that he might run into someone with a better car than his compared to just toodling around back roads.

Oh, for sure. Likely, it's not even going to be a "better" car, it's going to be a much slower car, but with a better driver. That would be even more galling, to have his flashy sports car passed by some dude in a Miata.

Yeah, like, we've got a fairly nice sporty-ish sedan that's approaching 300k and since we've only got one car we kinda have to be ready to buy a new one quickly, I've done some of the thought process based on our needs and where we are in life. And the thing is, I like a nice car but I'm unclear on exactly how nice of a car I would actually appreciate driving, given that I don't like to die or hurt other people, so I'm not going to go 3x the speed limit on some backroad and have never gotten a speeding ticket just that the upgrade from a 1.8L engine ecomony-ish sedan to a 2.5L engine sporty-ish sedan did feel real nice.

Meanwhile, one in-law got a Porsche so another in-law on the same side of the family had to trade in his Audi SUV for roughly the same SUV on the Porsche side and it's all some douchebag power fantasy.

But, yeah, I like seeing actual-car-persons nerd out because I know enough to get at what they are nerding out about. Joy is much funner than douchebaggery.

This is why I got OUT of the scene. It's a car. Chill with all the hot takes bruh. I just want to have fun with people that know about cars.

That's a really fascinating, if depressing insight. I've long wondered what it's like for "normal" (nah, fuck it, just normal) people in subcultures with so much baggage.

Try being someone on the liberal side of the political spectrum who is primarily into the history and engineering of firearms, rather than the power fantasy of "gubmint and libruls better fear muh guns".

It's an absolute hellscape and it's extremely disheartening to start talking with someone and sharing in a common interest, then seeing "FJB" and 1488 bumper stickers. I refuse to let bigots ruin my hobby though, and make an effort to make the hobby as inclusive as possible.

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I love working on my car and taking it to meets and shows, but I have a hard time finding friends in the community for exactly this reason.

I don't know you, but I love you.

Check out the honda insight forum, they're pretty chill over there.

I've got a few other places I can shoot shit with people who know some about my daily driver/project car maintenance and have largely avoided the bigoty shit, largely due to my low bullshit tolerance and gender identity lol

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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.

Well that sucks. My favourite moment in a hidden role game was when a player won by misreading their card and convincing both of us that we were allies at the start. They ended up the only evil player for most of the game and then in the last round after we’d worked together to systematically kill everyone else (all weirdly innocents, we were both feeling guilty by this point), when they finally realised they knew there was no evil player they checked and… killed me. Total madness and a glorious victory for them. How can you be mad at that?!

This is really dumb imo (the other people). My friend and I both like to be agents of chaos sometimes, so when we play Secret Hitler it's a nightmare because even if we're not on the same team we just cause so much mayhem and have everyone doubting everything. Isn't the fun in the chaos and confusion???

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Jesus, what a bunch of freaks those people sound.

I mean, set aside that you outsmarted them with an unexpected move, but, oh no, you mean the evil side didn't do things by the book?? Who'da thunk it?

Even my own team was pissed at me because my move was super risky. But because I could see the way people were expecting optimal play, I figured it would work in our favor.

One person said, "WHY WOULD YOU DO SOMETHING SO FUCKING STUPID? YOU THREW YOUR OWN TEAM UNDER THE BUS"

Yeah, but it worked cuz nobody expected anybody would do such a crazy move.

Exactly - really glad it worked out, especially if that's how the others are going to react! :-)

My nerd herd play this game too, the usual suspects are getting to the point where I worry that will be the problem. Right now the main irritation are meme accusations. 2 players dont trust eachother even if prove they are on the same team.

Lieing about being someones grandmother and randomly guessing a role (and getting it right) has ended multiple games. Its gotten to the point we have to just treat some people as agents of chaos even if they arnt on the evil team. Its still very fun and most people get a laugh out of a good play.

I turned the spent fisherman in between the vigor and assassin into the empath in my game. Not a single person believed the spent fish would suddenly get a 2 empath reading. They got read as a minion panicking in final three when the raven keeper was on the block lol.

I was pretty proud of the psych out play.

My recent claim to fame from this past weeks game, winning our groups first psychopath script. I got to play Patrick Bateman and didnt do anything for 3 turns (Our GM kept calling me crazy) because my demon (the Al-hadihkia) handed me the flower girl as a bluff. Convinced the town fool, who had validated their role worked in front of everyone, that I was above board and proceded to axe the philosopher on the last day to win the game for the evil team. The fool still owes me a beer or sandwich.

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I've got quite the game collection, and that kind of competitive behavior annoys the hell out of me.

If I'm learning a game, I stumble along, take my turns, and figure out how everything works as we go through the process. I don't expect to win, and if I do, it's probably because I got some lucky rolls/draws.

I have a few friends/family that get angry when they aren't winning, and nothing pisses me off during a game more than that.

Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with getting frustrated with a bad draw, or when someone has the perfect counter in their hand, but, if your enjoyment of the game is solely determined by how much you're winning, you're ruining it for everyone else and you aren't getting invited to the next game night.

Yeah. Even my own team was pissed at me. I took a risky move that worked out in the end because I used their weakness against them. That's part of the reason that BotC is so much better than many social deduction games - it's often not entirely solvable, even with optimal play. And just let people have fun sometimes, who cares about making the "objectively best decision" at all times.

Chaos moves are so much fun.

When a friend and I play Coup (hidden role card game), we’ll typically start out playing normally - especially if there are new players - but as things progress, we get into “advanced” strategies. We might not look at our cards at all, and publicly proclaim it, such that nobody can possibly know if we’re BSing or not - since we don’t know ourselves.

My old group loved to do a few blind rounds of coup after we were ready to move onto another game. Made for chaos and great fun for everyone. That was usually our warm up game - still waiting for people to show up, maybe snacks were still being prepared, Hosts walking the dog, etc.

But of course, first round, EVERYONE is a Duke.

I used to play a lot of TTT (for those who don't know, think Among Us, but its an FPS where anyone can shoot anyone else) and this is what ruined it for me. In the rare occasions where I could get together a group of friends, it was fine, but any attempt to play online was just endless squabbles. Everyone was constantly whining about if X peice of evidence was ligitimate enough to act on, and God-forbid anyone do anything that actually broke a rule, regardless of how fun or funny.

I used to play that with friends, but I knew playing with randoms would be toxic. Glad to know I didn't miss an opportunity lol

This is why I get anxious playing with new groups, especially because if I draw a token that let's me try something out of left field, I can rarely resist going for it. Thankfully, so far everyone has been really excellent, but it takes me a while to slip in and get comfortable

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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.

This is really interesting because I'm a very casual bird observer and occasionally try to whistle to get their attention, but I hadn't thought about this aspect of it!

Whistling is probably fine since it’s not something they’re likely to mistake for a warning call from another bird or as a song from their own species, so don’t feel bad about that! 👍

i try to mimick some bird call but yeah it's usually just to try and get their attention if I'm taking a picture. i don't play bird noises or anything else, just look at them and maybe take pictures

I just want to teach my neighbor crows to bring me shinies for really, really good seeds lmao

You may know this already, but in Scotland, the term "pishing" is synonymous with "pissing" - 'going for a pish', 'he was totally pished' (drunk), 'i pished myself laughing', etc.

Just a heads up in case you ever decide to come here and ask someone where a good place for pishing might be :-)

Also whenever there's a rarity photographers always insist on going off the path to get as close as possible often scaring off the bird which obviously ruins it of everyone else who's just trying to see it from a reasonable distance.

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Unplanned amputations.

I'm a woodworker.

Table saws are serious shit.

Woodworking hobbyist with an emergency medicine background who worked in a replantation centre for a while: I can absolutely confirm this.

And table saws are amongst the most harmless devices in an average workshop.

I saw some gnarly shit over the years and tbh, I had some near miss cases as well on my own. (like when a milling head died on my DIY CNC and flew through the workshop - close enough to my jugular vein to graze my skin. 5mm to the right and I would have been in a very very bad spot)

And table saws are amongst the most harmless devices in an average workshop.

You have my attention with that line. I'm used to thinking of the table saw as the most likely amputator of my shop. What in your experience is the bigger maiming hazard?

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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.)

I used to play on an outdoor field over a decade ago and still have a vivid memory of this one guy in particular. I distinctly remember that he had multicam EVERYTHING: full MC clothing, a MC helmet, even a MC wrapped Systema. But the cherry on top was a green laser that stayed on 100% of the time. You could see the fucker coming from a mile away.

He was also a douchenozzle

Airsoft runs on the honor system, and you're relying on the honor of sometimes maladjusted teenagers with access to their parents' credit cards. (Not all teens, and sometimes the older players are problems, but to be real 8 out of 10 times, it's a "that guy" teen causing problems.)

With my 3-power optic I get to see great views of BBs just bouncing off people who are invincible to them.

This is a really interesting one i think for the reasons you pointed out above. There is very little safety oversight for this and these people genuinely have no clue how to actually use laser aiming systems. Not to mention that if you have a laser, it should be set up such that you don't need to look for it (especially not with a scope that's mounted parallel to the laser) because it's to help your fine aim. Oh well, i was young and thought tacticool stuff was cool once too.

A lot of the tacticool is just dumb and awkward; that's sort of just good fun LARPing nonsense. Some poor choices like not wearing mouth protection are flatly stupid, but at least it only punishes the person making the choice. My problem with lasers is that the person making the dumb choice isn't affected, only people otherwise doing everything right.

I've actually asked a few fields about implementing no laser policies, but unfortunately owners seem apathetic about having to enforce it.

There are these amazing laser based aiming systems out there called "red" "dots". They have the advantage of being better AND not flashing people in the eye.

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.

Thats terrifying, especially given that the ocean is potentially more dangerous than space. the power of water is not to be underestimated

It was really scary. I'd shadowed some recreational groups before to help out with the shop I'd been close with and a reoccurring theme would be that customers who dived for maybe one week a year were so caviler about safety because they were "very experienced", while the people who dived so much they were having to calculate their weekly limits were abundantly respectful of the depths.

As one person working there would say, "You never get a brain aneurysm until you do."

Can you explain what the weekly limit is about? I know very little about scuba.

There's a lot of biology involved that I don't understand the intricacies of, but basically the more time and at more depth you are underwater the more your body is dealing with changes in the density and makeup of your blood. You need time on the surface to normalize. For a similar reason you need to do safety stops to allow your body to adjust to the changes.

For normal recreation dives, it's pretty simple that people are limited to (IIRC) two dives/two hours per day as a general guideline. Once you get into deeper dives, using different breathing mixes, and other stuff people have to start doing a little bit of double checking to make sure they don't overdo it.

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How deep was the dive? Thinking that these guys do these dives regularly without ever doing safety stops is giving me decompression sickness by proxy

I honestly don't remember. It wasn't notably deep, but I had 100% of the time always done a safety stop and a controlled ascent in all my dives. The part that made this especially bad was people would go absolutely flying from the bottom to the top, with no attempt to control their speed.

My ears are very sensitive, that shit would burst my ears. In a normal swimming pool, I would still need to equalize.

Was this ran by a PADI Dive center? I feel like if it was an official dive center they would be more rigorous and Divemasters would be helping you out.

No, I was used to PADI and certified by them (outside the U.S.). The place where I had the bad experience was affiliated with some U.S. organization I wasn’t familiar with.

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I have guns. I'm also super liberal. The amount of range patrons, employees or gun shops that talk unprompted about politics to me is disgusting. They just can't understand there are liberal or left leaning gun owners.

I generally don't get people like that. Starting a conversation with a stranger about polarizing topics like politics or religion is just high risk low benefit gamble.

Especially when you know for a fact said stranger is armed.

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Yup. Super off-putting. More than half of my local shops all have massive trump banners and associated ephemera along with some form of lib-bashing. Can't be in that space for more than 5 minutes without hearing some fake news, racism, or mockery of some group. It's really killing the sport for me. It never mattered when I first got into it, but the identity politics are destroying just enjoying a good day a the range.

It's like they believe gun ownership is some kind of underground club that is impossible to be a part of unless your republican.

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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.

One of my exes did photography, first as a hobby, then did some weddings and stuff. He went to a class to learn more, and a lot of the more experienced people gave him shit because his camera was "basic". It was a Canon or Nikon DSLR. Sure nothing amazing or super expensive, but he knew how to use it and no one ever complained about his photos they paid for.

People in any hobby that requires equipment draws these people. There were a couple cool people I met that he made friends with though. They had nicer gear, but weren't assholes about it. Let him try them out and taught him about the benefits and use cases and stuff too.

People who gatekeep like that just scream insecurity to me.

Imagine being an asshole to someone who either chooses not or can't afford to, buy very expensive equipment. Utterly pathetic.

this is the vibe im getting too. i just started with photography and am taking a digital still photography class and got a D300 for cheap. My lens is meh and i can't do everything i want with it, but I've been able to take better photos than i ever have been before with a camera a decade plus old.

The really nice thing about old cameras is that the glass is cheap. With an F-mount Nikon, you've got decades worth of lens production flooding the used market and really affordable upgrades for the body if/when your decide to move up.

Let folks with more money than brains (or someone else footing the bill) chase after the latest and greatest while you scoop up the leftovers. :)

Good for you! The class will help more than a better lens. Learn to stay within the limits of your lens for now, rather than trying to fight it into situations it can’t capture. Think about the light before looking for a composition. Digital photography has the advantage of being able to take unlimited pictures at no cost, so think, shoot, review, and learn. Most importantly, enjoy it!

Oh, and always keep your camera with you. lol

Thank you, i appreciate the advice! i do think about light a lot, and the first settings i change when getting a good photo are the white balance and exposure. i definitely need more practice overall but im enjoying it enough that i brought my camera case with me today instead of my backpack

Nice! While you’re walking with your bag, make note of good shots with undesirable sun position and try to return when the sun is where you want it. There are some really useful apps that will let you track the sun’s path using AR. They’ll also tell you when to find both golden hours every day.

I'm in a Facebook group for my camera, and it's full of these people. Every other post seems to be telling newbies that they need to upgrade the camera and lens, or every photo will be awful. They treat buying a more expensive camera as an upgrade, no matter how good the photographer is, or what they're shooting.

I’ve grown a lot over the years through criticism of my photos, not my equipment. Try to find photographers you trust to be honest with you, and ask them what they think of your shots. Criticism of gear is just simply noise.

You’ll know when you need a new lens once you find yourself limited by the capability of your first. Cant get the low-light shots you want without ISO noise? Look into wider aperture lenses. Want to capture the birds you see every morning across the lake? Maybe a telephoto zoom. Need something discrete for city-life shots? Pancake prime time.

The lens bug can bite hard. Try to let your desired shots dictate your next lens, not the sale at B&H or Andromeda, and definitely not Facebook trolls.

I think this is what's going to drive me the most for a new lens. I'm a night owl and I wanna do more night photography, but my aperture only goes down to 3.5 (i think) at 18 mm and if i use any focal length above that I'm pretty much limited to 5.6. Not terrible by any means but i have to spend a lot of time manually playing with the exposure, ISO, shutter speed, and meter before I get the shot I want. But I'm not experienced enough to know what I'm doing wrong yet so a new lens will have to wait until I know I'm actually being limited by my lens and not my skill.

Sure. Kit telephotos typically have a variable aperture (f/3.5-5.6). You may need use of a tripod for crisp low-light shots with one. Over time, make note of your most commonly used focal length. When it comes time for a lens, check out prime lenses in that focal length. They’re fixed lenses (no zoom), but they have the advantage of much larger apertures, and are typically sharper. You can usually get a “nifty fifty” (50mm f/1.8) from most manufacturers relatively inexpensively. It’ll really expand your low-light options.

I'll keep that in mind, thank you! i appreciate the advice!

No problem. Feel free to hit me up if you have a question. Even if I don’t have the answer, I might be able to point you in the right direction. Always down to help a fellow photographer.

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".

For woodworking: Add the "old machines were soooo much safer,you need to use this 1968 Asshole-Wankerville saw if you realllllyyy want to have safety"(not true, especially when using planers) and the "if you don't do it this way you should not be let close to a pencil!"(does it in an antiquated, overly complicated way that is safe but if you do one little thing wrong it isn't anymore)-Gatekeepers.

Especially the whole story around saw-stop and how it was perceived by amateurs (even when they were unaffected by the manufacturers propaganda) is a shame.

Old machines can be good. Old machines can be a deathtrap. And things decay over time and something rotating with 30.000 RPM for 50 years close to someones groin/stomach maybe isn't a risk someones should take lightly.

And most people who talk like this are old idiots who learned/teached themselves how to do things somewhere in the 70ies/80ies and then never developed after that. But they are so fucking sure about themselves.

I have an emergency medicine background, including some accident research. And even then people try to argue with me. "No,that kind of injury can never happen with this brand". Idiot, I have seen it myself,talked to the person who nearly killed themselves, etc.

I was watching a woodworking video the other day. It was a dude in some third world country, using a tablesaw that looked like it was from the 60’s. No blade guards, no kickback fin, etc… Not even PPE like safety glasses or a push stick. And the dude was making cuts with only an inch or so between the fence and the blade, using his thumb to push the material through. I ran to the comments to see how many others had mentioned the fact that this dude needed to make himself a push stick.

The top comment was a dude complaining about “all these comments mentioning the lack of a push stick need to grow up. This dude obviously doesn’t need a push stick cuz he’s been doing this for years and knows how to stay safe without it.”

The dude in the video was missing two fingertips, clearly from previous accidents. He very obviously did need a push stick

I feel this way about angle grinders and seeing people using them without a guard or any safety equipment with their face inches away from a cutoff wheel they bought from harbor freight as they plunge it into a piece of steel.

Oh god,angle grinders,yeah... I have one, but I don't use it in my workshop for obvious reasons.

The wife recently thought I had a stroke as I was screaming at the TV, because a show had invited an "expert" who was cutting some metal in front of the audience.

.... Without ANY safety equipment on himself or the machine. .... Heavily BENDING the disk.

.... Someone is going to do this like on TV...and die...I was impressed that none of the audience died because that's where the blade would have landed.

And I saw first hand was an angle grinder disk does to someones skull. It has the habit of stopping in a place that will not kill you. But leave you blind,deaf and dumb, suffering for a long time. They scare me. When I use mine, I am wearing full PPE, have a guard on the machine and still keep a tourniquet around.

It especially makes my blood boil when bosses do this. They frequently do because they don't suffer the consequences but reap the gains.

If workers take a dangerous shortcut: increased productivity.

If workers get injured, they blame the worker for disregarding safety precautions. OSHA usually only steps in if safety equipment/practice is outright missing, not if workers are told to not use them.

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It especially sucks how that attitude will trickle down and erode the safety practices for everyone. Depending on what and where you’re learning, you can potentially end up knee deep in hazards before you even know what you’re supposed to be avoiding.

I’m an apprentice bench jeweler and the common practices in this industry are fucked. There’s a container of actual asbestos that we pack around stones to insulate them for a weld. I was looking for a good method for affixing tiny parts for welds and everyone says just superglue it, since the glue burns off and doesn’t contaminate the weld. It just depolymerizes into highly irritating gases, and benches are fucking NEVER properly ventilated. There’s oxydizers we use weekly that say “only open outdoors” on the container.

A good respirator is a great investment, pretty much no matter your industry.

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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.

oh shit yeah i feel you with realizing things you do as habit really are learned because of shitty things that have happened to people.

I knew a few women that played airsoft at a local field I used to play at, who made a habit of wolf-packing around the field in 2s and 3s. I asked them at one point how they learned to coordinate so well, and it turned out that they had to institute an actual buddy system because some players (long since banned from the local community) decided to get handsy with one of them at one point...and got a broken arm for his trouble.

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Warhammer, we're here to play with over priced miniatures, don't be a Natzi.

i keep up with the lore in a very small capacity, and im confused how they can eat the pasta so hard.

Ah, everyone's favorite game: is this person playing Krieg IG because they like the aesthetic, or because they "like the aesthetic"?

D&D and RPGs in general. There's a lot of loud opinions on what other people are doing.

Yeah, go ahead Simon - teach me the right way to pretend I'm an elf.

DnD is definitely one of those hobbies where each table is different and (as long as no one is being hurt) none of them are wrong. The toxicity some people bring to the table can scare away newer people entirely and that sucks for everyone. Less DnD people means we all get to play less DnD.

Queer TTRPG circles on the west coast got this fixed. I can never go back to playing in Completely straight TTRPG culture. Queer TTRPG tables will be like "Can I be a Merperson Paladin of like... Everything spiritual simultaneously and just have to fluidly sync with the nearest divinity while my hyper intelligent mouse sidekick who dresses in a Sherlock Holmes outfit causes random trouble? Oh and can the mermish language be a sign language? " and 9/10 times the answer is " FUCK YEAH! That's rad! Do you want your mouse to have a tiny magnifying glass?"

Compare that with the grognards telling me sign languages are prohibited because they are " too much of an advantage" and I am just ruined.

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The bikepacking community sometimes feels more like a gear flaunting contest than a fun outdoor sport. Particularly amusing are 90kg men obsessing over a 10kg bike to save weight.

Mountainbiking in general. I bought a used rocky mountain slayer. I asked the guy why he sold it, because it was like new. He explained me that he liked the bike, but it's not good for climbing because it's too heavy, and showed off his new bike. I looked it up when i was back home and he bought a 8k dollar bike that was 900 grams lighter.
I know a guy who bought an 10k dollar ebike because of how light it was. He's like a 90kg man as well. He doesn't even really ride it. He also bought some carvon rims for it to shave of a few grams. Bro, lose some weight and save some cash

I mean if the seller is still big into it and his mass is mostly compromised of non-fat body mass I can see how shaving of 1kg of weight for a hike of 5km can be worth it.

Probably the cheapest and easiest way for most people to get into bike camping is by getting a trailer instead of obsessing over squeezing everything you need on the bicycle itself. I imagine some folks would consider that "cheating" but fuck 'em.

i really want to get into backpacking but I don't have a car to travel and the gear is so expensive. it seems interesting. thank you for your perspective

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A surprising amount of fire performers think it's perfectly ok to use fire and other dangerous props while shitfaced on whatever substance of choice. They give all the same excuses that drivers with DUIs give. Majority of them I've met like this are from Florida, surprising no one.

Yeah. I did fire eating and related things semi pro for a little while. I was at an event and some hula hoop fire person asked if I could spot her. No blanket, no extinguisher, no plan, no nothing. Just "stand and watch me, if something goes wrong, you know, do something." I said nope. Not gonna be held responsible for your lack of saftey. She was using fucking gasoline.

Eugh yep I know exactly the type of person you describe. I know the title says hobby but it's really a profession for me. The amount of crazy unsafe shit I've seen people try to get away with is insane.

I've had to yell at people for showing up with bags of fuel, for traveling with Coleman in a glass Snapple bottle, and for trying to spin in a polyester onesie. It's even worse where I live since we have strict regulations (NYC, I'm producer licensed)

What the fuck? I’m an amateur in something similar and while I can take stupid risks like going extinguisher only with isopropyl as my fuel, that’s just ludicrous

If someone's using the reasoning of drunk drivers to rationalize their behavior, that's not a great sign.

Not a fire performer, but an aerialist - I love circus arts but some people just should not do it. Not because they suck, or they've got the "wrong body" or whatever other bs, but just because they completely eschew anything safety related.

The number of people who assume they can just pop a hookup in their drywall ceiling, maybe checking for a joist first, and then hang a lyra from it and try to do drops or high speed spins on it is staggering. Or, like, hanging silks from a random tree branch. Or doing anything more than 3-4 feet in the air without a crash mat under them. Or trying to teach themselves from fucking tiktok videos. Please, please just stop. You're going to hurt yourself, and in the process you're also going to make everyone else's insurance rates skyrocket. Hate it so much.

thats also pretty scary. I'll do some stupid shit while fucked up but usually it involves me potentially hurting myself doing something that seems fun. whenever theres a risk of hurting others or being responsible for others i stop that shit quick.

i also don't put my safety in other people's hands without prior agreement (like a trip sitter), especially not without having put safety precautions in place.

"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.

Some people are just like that. I knew the words Taschentuch and Gesundheit when I set my major to German, and I’m now getting my master’s in German instruction, married to a German, and I’ve lived here for several years.

I’ve thought about what on earth caused me to choose German so thoroughly and unpredictably, but it’s not actually abnormal for me. A friend took me to a community folk dance and within two months I was dancing 14 hours a week. I, uh, really commit.

That said, I’m not in a financial position to spend that kind of money, so it’s pretty low stakes for me

Edit: I am also autistic and have ADHD, so I’m not suggesting this is standard behavior, but there’s a bunch of us

There's absolutely nothing wrong with throwing yourself fully in to something, especially if you enjoy it.

A different example would be cooking. Most people starting out will benefit from using Teflon-coated pans to stop food sticking and burning. But highly skilled cooks do not use Teflon, and will have pans with very different attributes (thicker or thinner bottoms, stainless steel, copper, ceramic, etc) and choose the best pan for the task. The newbie doesn't know how to get the benefits, and ultimately performs worse.

I guess what I'm describing are hobbies where your interaction with that activity is through the equipment. In these you have to learn two things simultaneously, how to do the thing, and how to do the thing using this particular thing.

High-level equipment requires you to already be able to do the thing. Entry-level equipment helps you learn how to do the thing.

To be clear, I'm not taking price here.

Lastly, I also have adhd, and really wanted to buy a kayak after my first session too, but knowing that impulse is due to my ND I'm able to stop myself (having learnt the hard way a good few times). I appreciate not everyone can do this. Fwiw, I don't think this is the only cause of this behaviour.

Definitely not the only cause of the behavior, no. Excitement, just hitting a nerve in a good way, and lots of other things can make people commit.

But I did miss that the pro gear made things harder for them. I have experience with that too, and I can finally do nail stamping, but shot my self in a foot a little by getting the “nice” set. I’m much happier making that mistake with a $30 stamper than several thousand dollars of kayaking equipment.

Buying a ton of gear to replace skill, or just because all the YouTubers are pushing it is so common.

I’ve made a conscious effort in all my hobbies to push as far as I can with entry level gear. Only upgrade when I’ve worn it out or I can articulate why I personally need better. Helps from ending up with a bloated collection of useless expensive things.

damn that's wild. for hobbies i have experience in and am returning to, like climbing, i tend to rent gear one or two times and see if i wanna get back into it and then buy gear. i prefer to rent but for some things you just want your own gear. im not the most consistent with a lot of things, but when i buy gear i tend to keep returning stuff because i get reminded about a hobby when i see that i have it and then im more likely to do it.

something like your kayaking club though sounds absolutely perfect and i couldn't fathom dropping thousands on a kayak when you haven't even tried a bunch of stuff that's available for you to try for damn near free.

My take on this is that it's a predominately "rich person problem".

Like pretty much all hobbies kayaking can absolutely be done cheaply, with some sensible ways of saving money and some rather dangerous ways.

Because the best kit is expensive, and status kit is even more expensive, rich people presume that because Awesome Person X uses Y, and they can afford to buy Y, they should also use Y.

What they forget is they are not APX, they are a newbie who cannot even get in the kayak without capsizing, and is now resorting to dragging their 3k carbonfibreglass composite beauty over gravel and rocks. We all start here, but most of us are in scratched up plastic boats where 1 more scratch doesn't matter.

This tickled me.

A decade ago, I lived by a little lake. Bought essentially the cheapest single -piece kayak I could find. Fucking loved it. I don't have that one any more but lately since I live so close to a national park it's tempting to get one I can hike with. It never even crossed my mind that there's enthusiast gear, aside from a super cozy pfd, sun protection, and maybe an anchor lol. Maybe it's because I fish, too. I mean, why wouldn't you? You can reach the best spots from the water!

Thinking new people are stupid for asking the same questions they asked 3 years ago. My hobby is every hobby.

well put. "New people don't know enough" shouldn't be a surprise, and yet here we are. Online forums should have a FAQ, at least (many do but not all).

Gatekeeping and acting like you're smarter than everyone else... General neckbeard behavior. Linux/Computers in general can be a great hobby if you can get past the "RTFM, yoUr stUPiD fOR asKing" people.

I work with Linux and computers professionally. Documentation is written but almost nobody reads it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve bailed out colleagues stuck on a problem by spending a few hours reading the docs and then like magic some parameter in the API solves everything. I’ve been bailed out countless times in the same way. Software and computers are complex and even those who do RTFM miss things, because documentation is information dense, often written as an afterthought to the code, and APIs are not always even internally consistent with the documentation.

But the toxicity culture around that needs to go. I love it when people geek out over distro-hopping and whatnot, but superiority complexes over what distro you use (“Arch, btw I’m so much better than you”) is fucking stupid.

Imo, a lot of linux documentation and documentation in general is written in a way that assumes you know what it's talking about... When it's the documentation's job to teach you about said things...

This has been my struggle. I read the documentation before posting to linux groups. And even saying that you just get "wHaT r U sToOpId!? rTfM aGaIn!" Like just rereading it will magically reveal terms that I didn't understand the first 3 times. I gave up on trying to switch to linux.

I think my last straw was I was talking about establishing an SFTP server in OpenBSD (I know, unix not linux, don't bother; same kinds of people in both) and I had a typo in my question and it was a very benign unimportant typo and some pedantic fuckwad had a mental fucking breakdown because he was now confused if I really wanted SFTP or FTP and how FTP was insecure blah blah...the whole thread was about setting up SFTP wtf would you think that changed in the middle because I forgot the S on SFTP in the middle of a discussion on setting up SFTP. Too many pedantics in the community and even when I like software I don't want to be associated/involved with that level of unempathetic autistic assholery.

Yeah, those are the exact kind of people I'm referring to. They are annoying, however not "I hate this hobby now, fck it all" annoying, to me anyways. And Idk if it's just me, but I've encountered less of them here on lemmy than on smth like reddit, even when I've asked stupid questions.

I work in gamedev and its really baffling how rare is for someone to read the docs. I've already solved so many issues by just reading through the related docs and discovering a feature that does exactly the thing we've been trying to solve with a workaround, or had a overcomplicated process for doing, while it could have been a single function/API call.

Read the docs people! You probably have a lot of downtime while waiting for stuff to build/compile, and just rabdomly (or systematically) scrolling through the reference or docs of the library/tool your working with, even when not looking for something specific, may save you a lot of time in the long run. Knowing what are your tools capable off is well worth the effort.

So I’m super involved in my local bdsm community and it’s probably my main hobby. There’s a lot less misogyny than people not in the community think and a lot more than many of the men of the community think.

A lot of guys take that dom/sub dynamic too far, as an extension of misogynist beliefs. Agreed re: your evaluation.

It's also pretty sad - you're in the most permissive time in history for this stuff, someone is giving you a gift that (carefully approached) can let you live out your deepest sexual desires to everyone's satisfaction,, and you're going to treat the person giving you that gift as actually lesser!? For fuck sakes man, not too long ago you'd be thrown in a psych ward for this shit.

That shit’s a problem for sure, but often the community weeds out dominant men who mistreat submissive women. That’s not to say we don’t have broken stairs and whatnot, I run a women’s group, it’s a problem for sure. But in my experience that aggressive of misogyny in such contexts is far more present in online spaces than reputable irl ones.

The area I see it most manifested is in the way dominant women are treated by men, both dominant and submissive. There are dominant men who love and respect submissive women but just struggle to treat dominant women as their equals. And on the flip side a lot of men who submit to women have a lot of hang ups about it and many treat them as sex objects.

There’s also still a problem with people assuming men are dominant (especially if they’re charismatic and/or handsome) and that women are submissive (especially if they’re small, shy, or feminine).

At least that’s what I’ve noticed as a woman who submits to women

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I practice BDSM occasionally and i recently did a scene with someone. There were times where boundaries were accidentally crossed, but my reaction to that was an immediate "are you ok and do you need to stop". Luckily the person was very understanding and actually discovered some stuff they liked, but I simply cannot fathom trying to take advantage of someone who is giving you so much already. I didn't like nor enjoy that I had accidentally transgressed on boundaries, and am working to ensure that it doesn't happen again, but the priority is and should always be safety and comfort.

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I find this one especially egregious because as a fellow practitioner, my first priority is safety, safety, safety. i hate to see the bigotry and lack or respect

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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.

Huh, I guess I’ve somehow avoided those jerks

My experience is a very inclusive atmosphere. Everyone I’ve met is interested in talking about the source material, or construction techniques, or just wanting to express their love for the character. Yeah sure, Iron Man looks more “real” if the guy looks like RDJ, but Sexy Iron Man gets just as much of my admiration if the metallic finish is great and the LEDs are poppin

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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???

For the first point, does it help if the person repeating it acknowledges that they were just repeating what you said? I find that in conversations in general sometimes people don't get heard so I try to repeat what they said so it can be heard but I always try to start along the lines of "Going back to what you said...".

For the other two I completely understand and I think it's just a weird form of gatekeeping.

It's not as bad when it's started with like, "I agree with x" or "What if we did what x said but with " or something, sure. They usually don't though, almost never. And then everyone at the table acts as if the person who said it came up with it and it's infuriating.

Edit - I might not be clear. The person suggesting the idea I had is generally not boosting it so it's heard, they are generally acting as if they came up with it, and then everyone suddenly realizes it's a good idea coming from a guy instead. When it's someone realizing the idea wasn't heard, they usually don't do that.

I can only imagine how frustrating that must be. I'm sorry that a lot of men are probably subconsciously really shitty and just don't have the care and self awareness to do anything about that.

I am just, constantly in awe of how toxic the fiber arts community can be

Like friends

We are making lovely comfort items, random decor, stuffies and just like, silly shit WHY ARE YOU SCREECHING AT ONE ANOTHER

Hence me going to exactly 1 stitch n bitch ever and then quietly doing crochet in my house forever more

Yeah and the elitism. Like I am knitting for a friend's baby no freaking way am I going to make it with a silk merino blend when I know my friend can only machine wash and tumble dry clothes... And that was before they had a tiny human. Some of the local groups were up in arms that I used ACRYLICS quell horror but dude I make kids toys and they literally drag my toys through a mud bath and three years later it's still in one piece and loved. I do have the budget now for the nicer stuff but when I started out, not so much. And you know what a silk is nice but sometimes... I want a shitty fluffy machine washable plush yarn. Fiber people gotta chill and remember at the end of the day we are playing with sticks and string. Be nice.

The problem with cups and tbsp/tsp is that it varies between sets of spoons.

100g is 100g no matter what. And I don't need to look for the damn spoons all the time, I can just mix the ingredients by weight directly into the bowl.

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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.

Yeah I used to play Magic and D&D. Lots of overlap there but the D&D groups are hit or miss if you get some weird people but generally everyone is chill and just wants to not die and have fun.

Magic gets crazy competitive and I can't stand walking by some people. While a lot of D&D players I've met are heavily overweight in a lot of the same ways Magic players are, it seems they're much more socially and self aware. The people at my table also were well groomed so while after 4 hours of sitting and playing while eating chips and soda there may be a bit of funk, it never really reeked.

Yeah DnD isn’t really competitive, everyone there is there to cultivate the most fun situation they can.

Although I feel like if you get into groups where they’re trying to lean to hard into the role playing aspect of the game you can meet some real fucking weirdos.

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There are two reasons why I refuse to play MTG now: Wizards of the Coast is shitty and the experience of playing at my local game store.

This. I won’t play at my lgs because of this, and because I want to play, not be locked out of the game by your broke ass tier 0 $2000 deck.

Also, I don’t buy magic cards anymore because fuck WotC. I will keep and play with my existing cards with my friends. I won’t willingly give WotC another penny.

There’s ways to make some pretty convincing proxies. They say you can’t pirate magic cards, to which I respond yarr

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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".

The thing I got tired of seeing was people acting like someone going to an advice sub meant they had to take what advice was given like it was some choose your own adventure story for the people replying. Some would even get enraged that OP would push back against things said or would treat it as a chance to play Sherlock and figure out that OP is the sinister bad guy in the story and half of it is lies. And sure, maybe that's sometimes the case, but if you stop going from OP's account, you're just making up a fan fiction.

My advice for anyone reading this: don't blindly follow advice. Just treat it as a chance to gain new perspectives you might otherwise have missed and then use your own brain and first-hand knowledge of your situation plus the other perspectives to decide what you want to do. Even wrong decisions aren't always wrong if you needed to live through the experience of making that wrong decision to learn why it's wrong and know to avoid it in the future.

I feel that. I had posted about my relationship a few months ago and while the correct thing to do was break it off, we weren't completely at that point yet which is why I had posted to ask.

Luckily i did get a lot of great advice, some of it being breakup but with a lot more nuance

Price gouging and “grading” of retro games. I just wanna play some old NES games without taking out a second mortgage.

Same here. I hate how it has become some sort of investment to people that want to sell for profit.

some sort of investment

allow me to introduce you to Boardgame Kickstarters

If you don't care about owning physical copies of the games, you should look into an Everdrive. It's a special cartridge that lets you play downloaded ROMs on your original NES.

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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 _____."

Really? I bought an Ender 3 V2 three years ago which is quite famous in the 'scene' but also famous for a number of issues. As a newbie I asked a lot of beginner questions and I constantly received very supportive and helpful answers.

'Yeah that's a known issue but you can tweak X, change setting Y or replace part Z to work around it'

Same experience with the FreeCAD community. Amazing people and a software that works pretty well with some initial exercise.

I see an increasing amount of Prusa folk vs Bamboo folk (and vice-versa), everyone vs fusion360 folk (and to a lessor extent vice-versa). And very recently I've started to notice a new vocal "I only ever use thangs.com" group starting to sprout.

i don't like bamboo printers very much, just because of the closed ecosystem. the printers themselves are really good, besides being loud.

i would like to switch to a different CAD program, but i couldn't figure out freecad for the life of me. fusion is still my go-to.

thangs is my primary hosting site, just because zack freedman started gridfinity on there. and at the time, thingiverse was almost unusable from my perspective. never really tried printables tho.

There's a lot about the hatred of Bambu that's just sinophobic. Which is too bad because there's plenty of completely rational reasons to avoid Bambu printers.

That's weird because all except prusa are Chinese made. My issue with Bambu is that it is a closed ecosystem, but they are undeniably very capable machines.

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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’s also a lot of snake oil in the hobbyist/personal hi-fi audio world. I’m a professional audio tech for live events. A lot of people don’t understand how audio works, and why audio gear is built a specific way. So they’re susceptible to bad faith sales tactics, which are oftentimes inventing problems that never existed before the product was being marketed. Or claiming to use manufacturing materials/processes that won’t make a difference on a physics level, but will make a difference in cost to the end user.

Hi-fi audio is a world of diminishing returns. A $1000 system will sound great compared to a $500 system. A $5000 system will sound a little better than a $1000 system. But a $10,000 system will only sound marginally better than the $5000 system, and many people won’t even be able to tell the difference between the two. Or to rephrase, they’ll be able to tell a difference between the two, but won’t be able to tell which one is the “better” system. They’ll simply hear the difference in speaker frequency responses.

Also, that classic rock song you’re critiquing on your $30,000 living room sound system was performed and mixed by people who couldn’t hear fucking anything. Their hearing was shot years before the song was recorded, by decades of crowd noise and stage monitors.

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This one upsets me a lil because I occasionally record the music I write, and recording off a Scarlett Solo is not the easiest experience, especially when I'm only using the that came with it (aside from like my own amps and instrument specific gear).

I wouldn't know what to do with a lot of the expensive gear, but I could do something with it and get some genuine use out of it for my music. But at the same time I don't wanna fall into the same trap, so I only buy gear that I need when I need it, and that's usually stuff for my instruments themselves.

I hear you. A buddy gave me a $1000 headphone amp he'd replaced with a newer version. It's the most expensive piece of gear I own and hilariously out of place in my set up. I still use it, though.

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I've recently started putting together a home studio and made the mistake of asking online what I should consider before painting my monitors. Nearly half of the people who responded said, "Don't do it, it'll ruin the resale value." Like dude, I'm not here to be on a god damned gear treadmill. I'm here to make music. Gear is just a necessary evil to me and if I never have to buy monitors again I would be so happy. So, If I can get some extra joy out of them and make them mine, I'm gonna.

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With some people it feels like their more gear collectors than producers. Though I gotta admit there where times where I bought a piece of equipment that was kinda outside the scope of what I needed because I thought it was nice to have.

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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

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.

ha, the hobby is basically just break-fixing your quad with a bit of flying time in between. And spending hours trying to recover it because aren't sure exactly where you crashed.

I started in the LiftOff simulator and then moved to a TinyHawk Freestyle before moving to a 5", and I've had pretty good luck. But, I put in a ton of practice time to get to where I am, and I still crash occasionally.

The ham radio thing makes me so sad, it really does seem like a dying hobby. But when I took my test the club sponsoring it had guys there who immediately berated me for using a practice test guide and getting a cheap piece of crap radio. Like yeah, I know it's a terrible radio, but it was $70 with the practice guide and I'm a poor af college student. That little radio lasted me years and I only bought a new one cause it's battery died and I couldn't find a replacement

I'm sorry that was your experience. Out where I am all the hams have been lovely people and been very welcoming and open to all people and radios.

It sounds like you are plugged into some great clubs! I will say that I just moved a few months ago, and one of my neighbors is a ham who has been really helpful. She keeps sending me information about local clubs, reminding me that nets are happening, and offering to help me move my antenna from the terrible location it is in right now. I guess maybe most of the negativity happens online, since that's where I usually experience it.

that would make sense. the clubs in my area have been super welcoming and inviting to new people

I'm planning to get into archery but I don't want to spend a fortune, though, cheapest set I've found is $300, what do you think of this?

https://www.htarchery.com/products/recurve-bow-kit

It's hard to say because they don't specify what they'll actually send you. Most of the accessories in that kit are like $10 each, so depending on the bow, it's probably overpriced. I'd go with something like a Samick Sage Archery Takedown Recurve Bow, or a SAS Spirit 6. You want a takedown so that you can replace the limbs with something better if you love the sport and stick with it. Then if you really love it you can replace the riser later and you'll already have the limbs. The finger tabs are like $6, the arm guard is like $8-10. You can get a good softshell case for $20, or a Pelican hardshell case for $35 (I just bought one yesterday). A decent SAS waist quiver is $12 and a good one $25. That just leaves the arrows. I'm using Victory V-force Sport .245 carbon arrows right now and they're pretty good for the money. Only $50 on Amazon. You can get wooden arrows for like $2 each. Field tips are like $6-$10 per pack.

Put that all together and you're still like $50-$100 less than that kit. That'll leave you with some money to get a Yellow jacket or Black Hole backyard target (always shoot with a backstop as a newb). Yeah man, I'd do that. Oh, the bow may not come with a string, so check if it does when you buy it. $20 for a string of it doesn't come with one, and spend $6-$10 on wax within a few weeks of getting the bow. Wax your string every 3-4 shooting sessions. Just make sure you get the right length arrows.

Do it! Welcome to archery! Watch some videos on form so you don't hurt yourself while you build your muscles up, and always quit before you're fatigued. You're going to love this hobby! Once you get everything it's basically free! That is of course if you can stop yourself from upgrading to the next swoopy tier of gear, which admittedly, I'm not very good at. :)

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I do have to say, my experience as a ham has been the exact opposite. I have a BF-F8HP and everyone i met has been awesome so far

That's great! I suppose it's not universal, but I see a lot of bashing on new people for not knowing stuff. There's a lot of material to cover for the technician test, and that's just the beginning. It's easy to forget something, or just have never learned it before.

Like saying 73 at the end. I may just be lucky that the ham organizations in my area are just super nice

How did you get started in ham radio? I've been considering it but I keep seeing comments like yours online about the community being standoffish.

I just started using the hamstudy.org website and app, and started participating in the ham subreddit on Reddit. Then I bought a Baofeng UV-5R and got my GMRS license. I used that to learn all about finding repeaters, programming the radio, etc.. Then I kept studying and got a Yeasu FTM-7250DR, a power supply, and a Comet antenna. Once you have a radio you can start learning hands on. It doesn't need to be an expensive radio, and you don't need a license as long as you don't broadcast.

Thanks !

NP. One more thing I did was read a book called Pass Your Ham Radio Technician Class - The Easy Way. Hamstudy is really good for practice, and memorization, but it doesn't really explain the principles behind the answers. That book does a great job of explaining things like bands, frequencies, tones, etc.. You'll have a much stronger understanding of how things actually work, instead of just having answers to questions.

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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.

@solitaire @erev Jesus, I had completely forgotten "tits or gtfo." Every now and then I get hit with a reminder of how much more pervasive that kind of thing was as little as 10-20 years ago and it throws me for a loop.

I'm really sorry to hear that. its atrocious to see how many people are comfortable just being terrible to people when they think no one is watching

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 used to play a lot of DnD and other TTRPGs. Another thing that annoyed me was people who took the game too seriously all the time. I think it's fun to occasionally do things for the sake of comedic relief. Not something you wanna do all the time, but when I was playing a dumb as shit orc or something, it can be fun to do something stupid to make everyone laugh. I didn't do things that would harm the party or the overall story. But one guy would get so upset and ended up quitting the campaign when people didn't agree with him and said that it's ok to be goofy sometimes.

I had a friend running a campaign where a big part of the local kingdom was that it had a constant, annoying bureaucracy. At one point we were set to meet the king, and the party all had to wear ceremonial scarves. As part of the bureaucratic obstacles the DM had it that we'd been given the wrong color of scarves, and therefore the guards weren't letting us pass.

I instinctively just did the Lionel Hutz "I'm not wearing a tie at all" bit with the scarf. The DM was so speechless that he said the guard was speechless and let us pass out of confusion.

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I know somebody who is running a game currently with the opposite problem. None of his players want to step up and have their spotlight moments. He says it's maddening to get them to do anything or say anything.

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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.

thank you for taking the health of the health of the animals and food safety into consideration.

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.)

Fuck yeah. I sailed in my youth (90ies, Optimist,Laser) and it was batshit insane on the Laser. A female friend of mine decided to sail in the Laser team as she enjoyed solo boats and my club did not offer a club owned Europe (the go-to "female solo" class around here). So it was an economical decision as well.

It was a shitshow for her. She literally was asked not to apply for some races as they weren't interested in having to provide a woman the required infrastructure,etc. And once she ignored that our own club leadership put pressure on her not to ruin the good relationship they had with "this and this club".

I quit sailing for the monetary gatekeeping, she quit for the misogyny.

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.

I'm a flight instructor, fixed wing. Spent a lot of my 20s around small airports.

I've seen exactly one paramotor flight in person and it ended 40 feet up a pine tree.

This guy took off from the grass along the T-hangars heading away from the runway, and made a right turn that took him directly under the Downwind leg for the active runway at a fairly busy uncontrolled airport. He was not carrying a radio. I'm not sure exactly why, I don't know if his engine gave out or if he made some glaringly bad decisions, but he wound up in a pine tree. My understanding is this was his first flight of any kind in any aircraft, and it was made solo in a paramotor at a busy airfield.

Completely separate story that is related to this one in my mind: I had a couple men walk into our flight school one day. Just walked in; no appointment or anything. Father and son, one in his mid-20s about my age, the other in his mid-50s or so. Turns out they were both mechanical engineers, and they got it in their head they were going to design and build their own ultralight airplane, and wanted to ask someone about the legalities of such. I pulled a copy of the FAR/AIM off the shelf, pointed them to FAR 103, which is the page and a half of federal laws governing ultralights. I also strongly suggested reading FAR 91 and the AIM, and asked if they would be interested in flight instruction. Got kind of a "lol no we have bachelor's degrees." response from them. That was in 2011. Never heard from them since. I wonder if they gave up, or if they killed themselves.

My understanding is this was his first flight of any kind in any aircraft

Probably self-trained, too. That's not uncommon in paramotor. Paramotor can be an incredibly safe, and cheap way to fly. But without good instruction, there's a lot of ways to get yourself killed. Ending up in a tree is probably one of the better outcomes for that guy.

and it was made solo in a paramotor at a busy airfield.

I don’t know if his engine gave out or if he made some glaringly bad decisions

I'm going with poor decision making all around.

I wonder if they gave up, or if they killed themselves.

I wouldn't be surprised if they got something built, and scared themselves shitless the first time they got in the air with it and never touched it again.

Every now and then we'll see a complete newbie ask about building their own paramotor to save some money which is insane because a full, brand new beginner kit costs in the neighborhood of $10k-$15k brand new. Used gear can easily be half that.

Building your own gear is insanely dangerous, because if it's configured incorrectly, you can easily end up in a dangerous situation like a torque twist where the motor twists the risers of the paraglider and spins you around underneath it. That situation is often fatal. And newbies just don't know these things.

And the icing on the shit cake is that these types often have a chip on their shoulder. They get indignant that we recommend paying for training and tell newcomers that they don't need to waste the money on training.

He was not carrying a radio.

I have a radio, I know how to use it. I almost never carry it just because my motor spark causes so much interference that it makes it unusable. I'd like to figure out a way to shield that interference, but I haven't done it, yet. I fly out of a small, not-busy uncontrolled airport, but I'd really rather not be near an airport if I could help it. I'd much rather fly from just a regular grass field if I had access to one.

I'm also a ham radio operator, and I once noticed a lot of noise that corresponded with the engine RPM on the VHF radio I had in my pickup truck. Turns out the distributor was overdue for replacement, it was still running okay but the points were so worn it was acting like a spark gap transmitter. The cylinder head should be enough mass of metal to stop you hearing the actual spark plug.

I have little experience with paramotor engines, I imagine it's got a magneto ignition? You might want to examine it.

It is a magneto, and it's a super common issue. I've seen some have success with shielding the wire from the magneto to the spark plug. I just need to try that.

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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.

That's why every band has a leader and a handful of other people that don't understand why their ideas aren't being acted on. Same thing happens in other group scenarios

and a handful of other people that don't understand why their ideas are being acted on

The image this evokes is hilarious

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LOL, I rely on this behavior.

"Yeah, let's do it. Just text me when you're ready!" Knowing fully that they will never follow through on their idea and I won't have to do the thing.

I've found this to be true in general once I started working. I don't feel kinda this was a thing when I was and was integrating with other students. I had to readjust my "responsible" self who actually would follow up (to people's horror) and tell myself it's a polite saying that people don't mean. Like when people greet each other with "How are you?", they generally actually do not want to know how the other person is doing. You're expected to say "fine" or "good" and deviating from that is violating an unspoken social contract.

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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've got friends in a couple different indie wrestling groups. Honestly their shows are way more fun. People don't take things too seriously. It's great for a lot of laughs and watching the fun athletics of it all.

My buddy tried to turn heel at one point but he's such a nice likeable guy, even in character, that it never went over no matter how hard he tried. It was so funny to watch him like talk shit to fans during his entrance, but then just snap out of it to take pics with them lol.

If a wrestler's really well liked it can be really hard to turn them heel, or even stay heel if they were heels in the first place. MJF and Swerve were basically forced into stopping being heels. Even the tradition of assaulting Tony Schiavone only gets boos for a couple weeks.

This is why when I go to independent wrestling events, they are dressed as Kaiju.

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.

I hate when that happens. The groups i used to play in were super open to everyone, kids women queer people anything. If you passed the vibe check (basically are you having fun and helping others have fun) then they were chill. It's awkward for me when I'm playing with someone and suddenly they're being super bigoted

How does someone start being bigoted while playing d&d?

Unfortunately fantasy and medieval settings present a lot of opportunities for people to be racist and sexist

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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.

Started to get into this, and the tutorials are always saying to be mindful of the limits and optimise your stuff. I always had a feeling that there's no way that everything I've seen fits in those limits, but hearing that most people don't even try is saddening.

Depends on the type of model it is, a lot of the time. Anime egirl/eboy-styled avatars tend to be some of the worst offenders (often kitbashers who don't know any better), while furry avatars tend to be really well optimized most of the time.

If you aim for medium, that's generally sufficient.

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Not wearing helmets has always been the norm for skateboarders… a shame too because even the well experienced are susceptible to the occasional concussion. All it takes is one bad landing and your skateboarding days are over. Wear a helmet people, set a good example for the younger generations.

this always bothered me. i remember when i had an ex who was learning to skateboard and i had to beg her to wear a helmet

I was filming an amateur skateboard competition, and the only people wearing helmets were the professional skaters (I don't know who they were, but it was apparently a big deal they were there) who were doing an exhibition before the finals.

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Dangerous and illegal stuff, like:

  1. Not wearing a helmet
  2. Using the bike lane to pass cars
  3. Trying to show off on public roads
  4. Going way over the speed limit and speed of traffic
  5. Rev bombing when someone cuts you off

Let's see if you can guess the hobby

Unicycling?

I'm assuming when you say "rev bombing" you mean "[eating a bunch of beans and cutting the loudest farts you can] when someone cuts you off"

Close, motorcycling.

The rev bombing is when you pull in the clutch and twist the throttle to make the engine rev and make a lot of noise without the motorcycle accelerating. It's completely pointless and it takes away your focus from actually controlling the motorcycle, but you can find countless clips online where someone gets cut off and then proceeds to rev bomb, flip the car off, and sometimes even smash the car's mirror.

I was joking, as a motorcycle rider it was super obvious what you were talking about.

The rev bomb wasn't intentional, I just missed the shift from 1st to 2nd and wound up in neutral by accident.

You can find tons of clips online of motorcycle riders intentionally rev bombing when something (usually a car) irritates them.

Throwing a disc into the first available tree, and/or the only tree in the fairway.

It's part of the game man. We often concentrate on not hitting the tree, but that means we focus on the tree.

Just like when we drive a car, we naturally go where we look.

When you drive a disc, look where you want it to go.

This is totally not a problem for me, I was mostly thinking of others. All my drives are in circle 1 /s

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.

thank you for having the hindsight to realize that that was probably a mistake to do. plenty of people here have been defending driving under the influence

Oh yeah, it was completely nuts. More than a few poor choices back then. Now I won't drive after more than one beer.

GAS is absolutely something I've done. Is it a problem? Depends on perspective. Sometimes the nicer equipment makes the hobby so much more enjoyable at the early stages that I'm more likely to stick with it. Sometimes I spent a lot more money than was required because there's a lot of gatekeeping in hobbyist circles. How many times have you heard arguments like "the Manoblaster XYZ 22.9 is trash and if you're serious, you really should look at the Ploydester 7, it's got 9 more omicron settings and it really hits the low tags like nothing else can."

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I paint and draw, purely as a hobby. You wouldn't believe the amount of crap some people have. Brushes they use only once in a lifetime, for one specific element. Special colours they also get to use only once. Pencils they don't even open. Get a basic set, familiarise yourself with it, stretch it to the full extent of its capabilities (that's mastery), and then upgrade to a higher quality version of what you have. No single-use novelty tools and materials.

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Gatekeeping. :( Pretty much applies to all hobbies.

Funilly enough the historical castle gate-keeper fandom is actually extremely welcoming.

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

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I think the amount of people who just shit on you for an opinion or theory they disagree with that you have for a game is too damn high.

Duh! That's because your opinion is wrong! Yes the creator of the game said xyz isn't cannon, but what do they know? They're just as dumb as you!

/s

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.

I used to be into weed, so ended up having a bunch of stoner 'friends.' They're really shockingly obnoxious people in general (with exceptions of course) for a group who mostly claimed to be into peace etc. As long as they could be stoned 24/7 they were tolerable, but ask them to do anything and be sober... What a bunch of dicks

Its not just artists

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.

I don't even ride a bicycle while I'm on weed, it would be absolute madness to drive a car while high.

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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.