5 ms·

It's a hobby for people with a particular personality type. Tight control of variables and precision is part of the enjoyment of the hobby. It's the same as obs

It's a hobby for people with a particular personality type. Tight control of variables and precision is part of the enjoyment of the hobby. It's the same as obsessing over whether your model train engines have the precise same badges and labelling that existed in real life. Women do yoga. Men do this. Or obsessively sharpen knives or practice their golf swing until it's robotically consistent. Think of it as a form of meditation for a particular type of person.

Belphemur 3y ago
As much as I agree with the sentiment of your comment, the part "Women do yoga" is quite reductive and can easily be interpreted as "women can't be that type of person" which I disagree with.
- dmix 3y ago
  Hobbies are often heavily gendered. You don't see many men doing knitting but it's also a very careful technical thing. And it's full of strong opinions just like coffee or golf or whatever. It's just saying it out loud isn't very polite unless you're a comedian or jesting, because people will automatically read into it as a moral or intelligence judgement. But otherwise I think it's pretty obvious men typically go very hard into their new hobbies, almost obsessively. Additionally, they often do it for short periods before finding a new one to jump into next month and then suddenly they forgot about coffee and are learning how speakers work. Generalizations are Generalizations, that's how they work.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - the_af 3y ago
    > Hobbies are often heavily gendered. > But otherwise I think it's pretty obvious men typically go very hard into their new hobbies I'm a man. The other day I wanted to see if there was a way to fix one of my daughter's Barbie dolls and ended up in a huge rabbit hole of Barbie dolls collectors, which you can peruse (at your own risk) in r/Barbie, YouTube and others. These are (mostly) grown women obsessing about their dolls collections, swapping heads and bodies, re-rooting hair, fixing damaged hair, sewing their own custom clothes, asking questions about "color charts" (to match parts from different dolls), re-painting face details from scratch and consulting authoritative databases that list every Barbie head by year and detail which bodies use it. Some tattoo their dolls. One had replicated the main characters from Cyberpunk 2077, meaning she was also a cyberpunk and videogame nerd. There are some men there too, but I grant you it's mostly women. Their attention to detail and obsession with their hobby rivals model train enthusiasts. I think in this day and age there's a hobby for anything, and women are not only not excluded from this trend, but tend to be passionate about it. I've also found women who are nerds about coffee, mind you. Many have YouTube channels about this.
  - xoxxala 3y ago
    A friend of mine just discovered book nook kits. He's jumped in pretty hard, with multiple kits and custom 3d printing various greebles for his new models/dioramas. Example book nook: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/7900081/scotte https://boardgamegeek.com/image/7900081/scotte That community is about 95% women. Book nooks are adjacent, hobbywise, to dollhouses, which may explain it.
    - 15457345234 3y ago
      That's quite lovely, how marvellous
- 15457345234 3y ago
  > interpreted as "women can't be that type of person" which I disagree with. Women can be that type of person, for sure, but statistically they tend not to be, and on a colloquial forum we write colloquially and interpret intent broadly and generously, the best to facilitate productive dialogue and avoid descending into semantic argumentation.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- tomhoward 3y ago
  I'm all good with supporting people of all genders to do whatever they choose, but this comment seems to be needlessly pedantic, and breaks an HN guideline: - Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. We don't need to be so literal and inflexible about everything. Even with modern sensibilities, we're adults here and we're all capable of reading a comment like that and understanding that the author doesn't actually mean that no or even few women can be obsessive about coffee/knives/audio systems, or that no/few men can do yoga. (FTR I'm sure I'm not alone here in being a male who does yoga and can also be obsessive about things like audio quality.)
elromulous 3y ago
> Women do yoga. Men do this. I agree that it's for a certain personality type (I myself am one of the obsessive espresso people). But it needn't be gendered.
- 15457345234 3y ago
  > it needn't be gendered. But it is
  - elromulous 3y ago
    Let me make this more explicit, since you clearly didn't get the hint. It's not gendered, you are making it gendered.
    - 15457345234 3y ago
      I'm just stating a fact that Yoga, by and large, is an activity where female participation massively outnumbers male participation. You're right that it doesn't _have to_ be gendered but it is - observably so - gendered. You could also well make an argument that the female body structure lends itself better to flexibility than the male body, due to that elastin and hormones and stuff, so it could well be said that there's a gender-bias built in from the ground up.
SantalBlush 3y ago
Not really. It's just that the people obsessing over variables are the same ones making YouTube videos.
tednjrdjyrr 3y ago
It seems people are focused on the “women” bit not the more interesting “meditation” bit, which to me rings true — these hobbies bring me mindfulness and contemplation. Also to the extent that “kindergarten teachers are women”, women do yoga. 3 to 1 participation vs men, and the pop culture face of the hobby.
smolder 3y ago
I'm a technically minded person (and a guy) and I take no joy in being hyper-precise with my coffee making, yet enjoy coffee a lot. Good beans that I grind myself in a sub $30 grinder, measured by eye and brewed in the drip-over is better than most coffee I encounter and consistent enough. I don't see much point in getting fancier with it. I have other hobbies to nerd out about with better "returns" on the obsessing. Side note: yoga is pretty enjoyable, you should give it a go, maybe. I'm a bit of a non-conformist generally, so maybe my view is skewed, but I think a big part of the "X people like Y" pattern you see and refer to is that many people just aren't practiced in trusting their own feelings and senses to develop their own preferences: they see people like themselves, and they align, and conform, often unwittingly. They join the [let's say] goth clique in high school, and then come to like mostly the same things as the rest of their clique, not only by nature or coincidence, but by a mostly subconscious desire to belong. It applies to things like gender and profession, too.
- rokkitmensch 3y ago
  I did the obsessive coffee quest about two decades ago, and in the intervening time simplified my process down to just grind consistency and an immersion pour over (the Clever). The output process is ridiculously consistent and high quality. I've taken this simplification bent to its logical conclusion and no longer drink coffee. Best repo is the null repo, simplest cup of coffee is the one you never brew.
bradleyy 3y ago
I know the "yoga" comment seems reductive, but the actual stats: 4x as many women as men do yoga. https://www.statista.com/chart/27653/yoga-men-and-women-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/chart/27653/yoga-men-and-women-by-c...
dctoedt 3y ago
> Women do yoga. Off-topic warning: Man here, in "late middle age." For several years I've been accompanying my wife to yoga classes 2-3x/week at our local YMCA.* I'm not especially fond of it, but it seems to have been good for my balance and flexibility; I don't feel the way I'd always imagined my age would feel. (Diet and lifestyle also help, and I've long done and still do plenty of other workouts, incl. a fair amount of running and swimming in the past.) The yoga classes typically are about 1/3 men, mostly in my age bracket. * For years, my wife tried unsuccessfully to get me to come with her to yoga classes. Then one day I heard a tone in her voice that she really meant it and would be upset if I didn't comply. I've been doing yoga ever since ....

Belphemur 3y ago

As much as I agree with the sentiment of your comment, the part "Women do yoga" is quite reductive and can easily be interpreted as "women can't be that type of person" which I disagree with.

dmix 3y ago
Hobbies are often heavily gendered. You don't see many men doing knitting but it's also a very careful technical thing. And it's full of strong opinions just like coffee or golf or whatever. It's just saying it out loud isn't very polite unless you're a comedian or jesting, because people will automatically read into it as a moral or intelligence judgement. But otherwise I think it's pretty obvious men typically go very hard into their new hobbies, almost obsessively. Additionally, they often do it for short periods before finding a new one to jump into next month and then suddenly they forgot about coffee and are learning how speakers work. Generalizations are Generalizations, that's how they work.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- the_af 3y ago
  > Hobbies are often heavily gendered. > But otherwise I think it's pretty obvious men typically go very hard into their new hobbies I'm a man. The other day I wanted to see if there was a way to fix one of my daughter's Barbie dolls and ended up in a huge rabbit hole of Barbie dolls collectors, which you can peruse (at your own risk) in r/Barbie, YouTube and others. These are (mostly) grown women obsessing about their dolls collections, swapping heads and bodies, re-rooting hair, fixing damaged hair, sewing their own custom clothes, asking questions about "color charts" (to match parts from different dolls), re-painting face details from scratch and consulting authoritative databases that list every Barbie head by year and detail which bodies use it. Some tattoo their dolls. One had replicated the main characters from Cyberpunk 2077, meaning she was also a cyberpunk and videogame nerd. There are some men there too, but I grant you it's mostly women. Their attention to detail and obsession with their hobby rivals model train enthusiasts. I think in this day and age there's a hobby for anything, and women are not only not excluded from this trend, but tend to be passionate about it. I've also found women who are nerds about coffee, mind you. Many have YouTube channels about this.
- xoxxala 3y ago
  A friend of mine just discovered book nook kits. He's jumped in pretty hard, with multiple kits and custom 3d printing various greebles for his new models/dioramas. Example book nook: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/7900081/scotte https://boardgamegeek.com/image/7900081/scotte That community is about 95% women. Book nooks are adjacent, hobbywise, to dollhouses, which may explain it.
  - 15457345234 3y ago
    That's quite lovely, how marvellous
15457345234 3y ago
> interpreted as "women can't be that type of person" which I disagree with. Women can be that type of person, for sure, but statistically they tend not to be, and on a colloquial forum we write colloquially and interpret intent broadly and generously, the best to facilitate productive dialogue and avoid descending into semantic argumentation.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
tomhoward 3y ago
I'm all good with supporting people of all genders to do whatever they choose, but this comment seems to be needlessly pedantic, and breaks an HN guideline: - Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. We don't need to be so literal and inflexible about everything. Even with modern sensibilities, we're adults here and we're all capable of reading a comment like that and understanding that the author doesn't actually mean that no or even few women can be obsessive about coffee/knives/audio systems, or that no/few men can do yoga. (FTR I'm sure I'm not alone here in being a male who does yoga and can also be obsessive about things like audio quality.)

elromulous 3y ago

> Women do yoga. Men do this. I agree that it's for a certain personality type (I myself am one of the obsessive espresso people). But it needn't be gendered.

15457345234 3y ago
> it needn't be gendered. But it is
- elromulous 3y ago
  Let me make this more explicit, since you clearly didn't get the hint. It's not gendered, you are making it gendered.
  - 15457345234 3y ago
    I'm just stating a fact that Yoga, by and large, is an activity where female participation massively outnumbers male participation. You're right that it doesn't _have to_ be gendered but it is - observably so - gendered. You could also well make an argument that the female body structure lends itself better to flexibility than the male body, due to that elastin and hormones and stuff, so it could well be said that there's a gender-bias built in from the ground up.

SantalBlush 3y ago

Not really. It's just that the people obsessing over variables are the same ones making YouTube videos.

tednjrdjyrr 3y ago

It seems people are focused on the “women” bit not the more interesting “meditation” bit, which to me rings true — these hobbies bring me mindfulness and contemplation. Also to the extent that “kindergarten teachers are women”, women do yoga. 3 to 1 participation vs men, and the pop culture face of the hobby.

smolder 3y ago

I'm a technically minded person (and a guy) and I take no joy in being hyper-precise with my coffee making, yet enjoy coffee a lot. Good beans that I grind myself in a sub $30 grinder, measured by eye and brewed in the drip-over is better than most coffee I encounter and consistent enough. I don't see much point in getting fancier with it. I have other hobbies to nerd out about with better "returns" on the obsessing. Side note: yoga is pretty enjoyable, you should give it a go, maybe. I'm a bit of a non-conformist generally, so maybe my view is skewed, but I think a big part of the "X people like Y" pattern you see and refer to is that many people just aren't practiced in trusting their own feelings and senses to develop their own preferences: they see people like themselves, and they align, and conform, often unwittingly. They join the [let's say] goth clique in high school, and then come to like mostly the same things as the rest of their clique, not only by nature or coincidence, but by a mostly subconscious desire to belong. It applies to things like gender and profession, too.

rokkitmensch 3y ago
I did the obsessive coffee quest about two decades ago, and in the intervening time simplified my process down to just grind consistency and an immersion pour over (the Clever). The output process is ridiculously consistent and high quality. I've taken this simplification bent to its logical conclusion and no longer drink coffee. Best repo is the null repo, simplest cup of coffee is the one you never brew.

bradleyy 3y ago

I know the "yoga" comment seems reductive, but the actual stats: 4x as many women as men do yoga. https://www.statista.com/chart/27653/yoga-men-and-women-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/chart/27653/yoga-men-and-women-by-c...

dctoedt 3y ago

> Women do yoga. Off-topic warning: Man here, in "late middle age." For several years I've been accompanying my wife to yoga classes 2-3x/week at our local YMCA.* I'm not especially fond of it, but it seems to have been good for my balance and flexibility; I don't feel the way I'd always imagined my age would feel. (Diet and lifestyle also help, and I've long done and still do plenty of other workouts, incl. a fair amount of running and swimming in the past.) The yoga classes typically are about 1/3 men, mostly in my age bracket. * For years, my wife tried unsuccessfully to get me to come with her to yoga classes. Then one day I heard a tone in her voice that she really meant it and would be upset if I didn't comply. I've been doing yoga ever since ....