5 ms·

I'll probably get modded down for saying this, but I think the stereotype is true, and there's a good reason no one under 40 bothers with the hobby: why waste s

I'll probably get modded down for saying this, but I think the stereotype is true, and there's a good reason no one under 40 bothers with the hobby: why waste so much time and energy and money on a hobby where all you can do is talk to people? (Note, I'm not under 40, I'm just over it.) I can get a smartphone and use apps to text people, and see their photos, save the conversations, etc. I can get on the internet with a phone or laptop and participate in discussion forums like this one, and see people's thoughts in text form: it's much faster to read than to listen to someone drawl, plus I don't have to actually be here at the same time; I can read someone's response hours or days later and then compose my reply. What exactly does ham radio offer than isn't done in a FAR superior manner with the internet? I tried getting into ham radio when I was younger, but I quickly realized I had no interest in it beyond the technology itself (since I like electronics). For my to get interested in a hobby, there has to be some real utility to it (such as car repair), or it has to bring me real enjoyment somehow (such as playing guitar). Ham does not offer this at all. There's no utility to it for me (I'm not really interested in being involved in emergency communications), and there's absolutely zero enjoyment in it (I have zero desire to "shoot the shit" with a bunch of random men and no women, and all of them in far-away places where I can't even see them). It seems that the only real value the hobby has, once you have a working radio, is for socializing. But if I want to socialize, there's far better ways for me to do this using technology: dating apps, meetup.com events, or planning something with one of my existing friends in "meatspace". Jabbering with some random old guy 2000 miles away does not sound like fun to me.

grandalf 10y ago
Here are a few examples of things that are fun and are not conversation oriented: - Radiosport: competitions involve completing short contacts with other stations, but the information exchanged is usually a serial number, location indicator, etc. This is fun because it's a flow activity that requires great strategy and knowledge of radio wave propagation, band conditions, etc. It requires no pleasantries or exchange of personal info whatsoever. - Satellite stuff: Brief contacts are made during flyovers, but most of the energy goes into understanding the orbits, timing, doppler shift, antenna characteristics, etc. - Low Power / experimental VLF bands: Some amateurs love to squeeze out the most from milliwatts. - Designing / Building radios, circuits, filters, antennas, etc. There is always room to improve the state of the art, share designs, ideas, construction methods, etc. This is similar to hobby electronics however the communications use of the gear is a nice way to prove that your approach was solid (or superior to other engineering approaches used in the past). I think for most who end up enjoying amateur radio, radio waves feel a bit like magic, and there is something very cool about understanding them and (relatively directly) manipulating them. If you don't feel a difference between communications on HF using gear you built or designed and using Skype, then I'm pretty sure you would not enjoy Amateur radio. The same argument could be made about the other hobbies you mention. Why play your own instrument if you aren't better than whatever professional musician you like best? Why play casual sports if you aren't ready for the professional team? If you look at the difference in band activity between popular radiosport events and casual conversation, there is about 1000x more activity during the radiosport competitions. The nice thing is that many radio amateurs are fairly interesting to talk to and have interesting backgrounds and stories. Not all, but I'd say that compared to the people I typically meet at a meetup or random community event, amateur radio is a better predictor of someone being interesting, creative, successful, having good critical thinking skills, etc. There are always exceptions, but it is a pretty unique subculture. If you don't find it a fit, that's completely fine, but it's likely to be your loss. I think your comment got downvotes because it comes off like a bro lamenting too many dudes at a bar.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  Your examples still fail my "usefulness test" I mentioned before. It's basically just doing something technical for the fun of it. It's not different than writing some fancy program that does absolutely nothing useful, just so you can have fun programming. If you like to do that kind of thing, then more power to you; I personally don't like anything like that: I have to have a real purpose behind any project I spend time on, not just doing for the sake of doing. As for the purpose behind playing an instrument, that's basically an enjoyment thing. If you're musically talented or inclined, you'll enjoy playing an instrument in a way you don't get just listening to someone else play. I don't think you even have to be musically inclined to understand the concept though: lots of people like driving cars, for instance; that doesn't mean they want to sit on their asses and watch someone else drive in circles. Having the experience yourself has a significant value, which you don't get by watching someone else have the experience. The same partly goes for playing sports, except that playing sports also gives you exercise, develops your muscles and reflexes, etc. Sitting in front of the TV drinking beer and watching other people play sports just makes you fat. I think my comment got downvotes because the people on this site are generally jerks who downvote anything that disagrees with their hivemind opinion. This place is far, far worse than Reddit that way, and this is usually a big complaint about Reddit. Reddit has nothing on the readership here. Because of this, I generally will upvote any comment I see here which shows up in gray, unless it's obviously a really bad comment that truly is worthy of downvoting. I see far too many comments downvoted here simply for expressing an opinion.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    Out of curiosity, what (if any) online forum do you approve of?
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      They all have their plusses and minuses, like anything. There's no perfect forum, or else I wouldn't be here. Some sites have more interesting stories/articles, some sites have better comments from readers, some sites have better moderation systems, some sites are better depending on the subject matter you're looking for, etc. If I want to read discussion forums about a particular genre of music or a car, Reddit is easily the place to go (there's a subreddit for nearly anything). Slashdot still has good general-tech articles, but the commentary isn't that great any more (too many good people have bailed out, maybe things will turn around with the new ownership), and the moderation system sucks. SoylentNews basically copies Slashdot's articles with some extras, and has a smaller audience (mostly Slashdot refugees) but some of them are really extremist, but the moderation system is pretty decent there (like Slashdot's, but fixes the flaws mostly). This place has really good articles I don't find anywhere else, many about obscure programming stuff but others about other tech things, but the commentary is ridiculously dry and hivemind-ish and the moderation absolutely terrible, but there are comments from extremely knowledgeable people mixed in that are worth the read.
rhinoceraptor 10y ago
Why would you learn to program an arduino? Sure it has some practical uses, but in most cases what you can build yourself is not better or cheaper than commercially available products.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  That's easy to answer: there's all kinds of things that you might want to do which can't be done exactly right with a commercial product. With an Arduino, you can program it to do exactly what you want. If it's an extremely small niche application and there is a commercially-available product, it's likely far more expensive than the Arduino because of supply and demand. And it probably still doesn't do exactly what you want.

grandalf 10y ago

Here are a few examples of things that are fun and are not conversation oriented: - Radiosport: competitions involve completing short contacts with other stations, but the information exchanged is usually a serial number, location indicator, etc. This is fun because it's a flow activity that requires great strategy and knowledge of radio wave propagation, band conditions, etc. It requires no pleasantries or exchange of personal info whatsoever. - Satellite stuff: Brief contacts are made during flyovers, but most of the energy goes into understanding the orbits, timing, doppler shift, antenna characteristics, etc. - Low Power / experimental VLF bands: Some amateurs love to squeeze out the most from milliwatts. - Designing / Building radios, circuits, filters, antennas, etc. There is always room to improve the state of the art, share designs, ideas, construction methods, etc. This is similar to hobby electronics however the communications use of the gear is a nice way to prove that your approach was solid (or superior to other engineering approaches used in the past). I think for most who end up enjoying amateur radio, radio waves feel a bit like magic, and there is something very cool about understanding them and (relatively directly) manipulating them. If you don't feel a difference between communications on HF using gear you built or designed and using Skype, then I'm pretty sure you would not enjoy Amateur radio. The same argument could be made about the other hobbies you mention. Why play your own instrument if you aren't better than whatever professional musician you like best? Why play casual sports if you aren't ready for the professional team? If you look at the difference in band activity between popular radiosport events and casual conversation, there is about 1000x more activity during the radiosport competitions. The nice thing is that many radio amateurs are fairly interesting to talk to and have interesting backgrounds and stories. Not all, but I'd say that compared to the people I typically meet at a meetup or random community event, amateur radio is a better predictor of someone being interesting, creative, successful, having good critical thinking skills, etc. There are always exceptions, but it is a pretty unique subculture. If you don't find it a fit, that's completely fine, but it's likely to be your loss. I think your comment got downvotes because it comes off like a bro lamenting too many dudes at a bar.

Grishnakh 10y ago
Your examples still fail my "usefulness test" I mentioned before. It's basically just doing something technical for the fun of it. It's not different than writing some fancy program that does absolutely nothing useful, just so you can have fun programming. If you like to do that kind of thing, then more power to you; I personally don't like anything like that: I have to have a real purpose behind any project I spend time on, not just doing for the sake of doing. As for the purpose behind playing an instrument, that's basically an enjoyment thing. If you're musically talented or inclined, you'll enjoy playing an instrument in a way you don't get just listening to someone else play. I don't think you even have to be musically inclined to understand the concept though: lots of people like driving cars, for instance; that doesn't mean they want to sit on their asses and watch someone else drive in circles. Having the experience yourself has a significant value, which you don't get by watching someone else have the experience. The same partly goes for playing sports, except that playing sports also gives you exercise, develops your muscles and reflexes, etc. Sitting in front of the TV drinking beer and watching other people play sports just makes you fat. I think my comment got downvotes because the people on this site are generally jerks who downvote anything that disagrees with their hivemind opinion. This place is far, far worse than Reddit that way, and this is usually a big complaint about Reddit. Reddit has nothing on the readership here. Because of this, I generally will upvote any comment I see here which shows up in gray, unless it's obviously a really bad comment that truly is worthy of downvoting. I see far too many comments downvoted here simply for expressing an opinion.
- grandalf 10y ago
  Out of curiosity, what (if any) online forum do you approve of?
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    They all have their plusses and minuses, like anything. There's no perfect forum, or else I wouldn't be here. Some sites have more interesting stories/articles, some sites have better comments from readers, some sites have better moderation systems, some sites are better depending on the subject matter you're looking for, etc. If I want to read discussion forums about a particular genre of music or a car, Reddit is easily the place to go (there's a subreddit for nearly anything). Slashdot still has good general-tech articles, but the commentary isn't that great any more (too many good people have bailed out, maybe things will turn around with the new ownership), and the moderation system sucks. SoylentNews basically copies Slashdot's articles with some extras, and has a smaller audience (mostly Slashdot refugees) but some of them are really extremist, but the moderation system is pretty decent there (like Slashdot's, but fixes the flaws mostly). This place has really good articles I don't find anywhere else, many about obscure programming stuff but others about other tech things, but the commentary is ridiculously dry and hivemind-ish and the moderation absolutely terrible, but there are comments from extremely knowledgeable people mixed in that are worth the read.

rhinoceraptor 10y ago

Why would you learn to program an arduino? Sure it has some practical uses, but in most cases what you can build yourself is not better or cheaper than commercially available products.

Grishnakh 10y ago
That's easy to answer: there's all kinds of things that you might want to do which can't be done exactly right with a commercial product. With an Arduino, you can program it to do exactly what you want. If it's an extremely small niche application and there is a commercially-available product, it's likely far more expensive than the Arduino because of supply and demand. And it probably still doesn't do exactly what you want.