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Wow, what a negative attitude - at the risk of getting modded down to hell, I figured I'd address some of your points. Please understand that while this might b

by froo 18y ago

Wow, what a negative attitude - at the risk of getting modded down to hell, I figured I'd address some of your points. Please understand that while this might be a confrontational retort, it is in no way meant to be a flame. A hobby is something you can actually get better at. Watching TV is not a hobby. Actually, a hobby is defined as "an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation", so TV can be a hobby for some people. Also, people can get "better" at watching TV, by putting in more hours, watching multiple channels at once, larger screens etc... A hobby is something to which you give sustained effort. I dont believe that to be true, for example - I have one tabletop wargame on average every week, I'm a member of a club and it would take up maybe 3 hours of my total week? On the grand scale of things, its not an effort at all, yet in all sense of the word, is a hobby. And photography: everybody has a digital camera now. Get real. So? It doesn't mean that just because something is popular doesn't make it a hobby? By that reasoning, I would suggest that sport of all major forms are not hobbies, which we all know not to be the case. For the record, I don't own a camera either. Please understand that I'm not condemning anyone, but I think a lot of us are deluding ourselves. I actually think you're essentially condemning a lot of people in this thread, people are sharing parts of themselves so that others can learn a little about them, what their interests are - its an exercise in social networking of some kind. You've essentially called a lot of people liars, which is never cool.

klein_waffle 18y ago
No, not liars, but sometimes inattentive to this aspect of their lives? Wishful thinking? If it's just me, I'll be happy to be wrong. But the irony here is that my day job involves helping people schedule their leisure activity. I've seen research on what people actually do with their time and it's freaking dismal. After college people fall into a rut of work/sleep/TV. People say things like "dinner parties" because that's the last thing they remember doing, but if you probe a bit further, this event is usually months in the past. By "sustained effort" I wanted to distinguish a hobby from mere pass-times like television watching. I think 3 hrs/week is plenty. And tabletop wargaming is an activity that at least exercises the imagination, so I wasn't really talking about people like yourself. It could be argued that the idea of having a hobby is some outmoded bourgeois affectation, an imitation of the Victorian idle rich. So, neither do I want to impose the necessity of having a hobby on anyone else. But I do feel the lack of one in my own life.

by froo 18y ago

klein_waffle 18y ago

No, not liars, but sometimes inattentive to this aspect of their lives? Wishful thinking? If it's just me, I'll be happy to be wrong. But the irony here is that my day job involves helping people schedule their leisure activity. I've seen research on what people actually do with their time and it's freaking dismal. After college people fall into a rut of work/sleep/TV. People say things like "dinner parties" because that's the last thing they remember doing, but if you probe a bit further, this event is usually months in the past. By "sustained effort" I wanted to distinguish a hobby from mere pass-times like television watching. I think 3 hrs/week is plenty. And tabletop wargaming is an activity that at least exercises the imagination, so I wasn't really talking about people like yourself. It could be argued that the idea of having a hobby is some outmoded bourgeois affectation, an imitation of the Victorian idle rich. So, neither do I want to impose the necessity of having a hobby on anyone else. But I do feel the lack of one in my own life.