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.
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.
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.
The good thing is, you’re most people - looking for all parties to have fun within the boundaries of safety and participant comfort. Topping is a huge responsibility, and you had the correct reaction.
But just like in the everyday world, there are abusive people out there. Folks, particularly bottoms who are still fleshing out their boundaries, can be vulnerable to these people. My opinion is that situation can be made more complicated due to the taboo nature of the interaction and unique social norms that have a learning curve (ex: what happens if you’re newer, someone starts spewing ‘true dom/true sub’ crap early on, and that sets your expectations for BDSM?).
Captain Lez is bang on when saying this is the value of a community for vetting and feedback re: what you’re doing. But again, like in everyday life, people can ingratiate themselves into that community as a means of cover.
It really isn’t all that different from abusive relationships in every other context, just with an additional layer of sensation and social norms that can cloud judgement/mask the abuse.
Will say OP made great points on misogyny in this world expressed in less aggressive ways, and heck, even this conversation underscores it. People like you and me jump right to guys in a dom role disregarding the boundaries of women in a sub role, for reasons of hating women. We’re not those people, most of the people we meet in this context aren’t those people, and the few we become aware of are usually blacklisted pretty quick, so we think misogyny is not a major problem in the community. The stated dynamics between some Doms and Dommes, and male bottoms to their Dommes, challenges that. I may not have come across it simply because I am a guy who doesn’t feel that way, my community is very much female-led, and everyone I met was pretty respectful/darned greatful a community existed at all, but I can definitely see it being a thing.
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
Thanks for clarifying. I can’t say I’ve personally seen that to any great degree, but to be fair my experience was more of a toe dip. I can certainly see that being the case.
Yeah there’s definitely a thing where a local community in a good state doesn’t have as much of it, (though it will often exist) but when things get disrupted more can seep through. It’s been on my mind lately as I’ve been befriending a Domme that’s very new to all of this and her experiences are really elucidating the patterns I’ve seen glimpses of, but thought were more of online problems.
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
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.
Smoking weed is a hobby?
So says the addicts.
It can be
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.
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.
I’ve never gotten psycho yet, which makes me sad. It looks like so much fun to play.
I think playing as a minion is the most fun, demons are too stressful and outsiders usually mean your paranoid or intentionally throw yourself under the bus for the good team.
Some of the most fun I’ve had has been playing the Baron. Just getting to sew as much discord as possible early game, and if I die? Oh well. I once managed to get into 3 double claims on day one and somehow didn’t get executed till day 3 lol.
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! :-)
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
Looks like evil won and then some. ‘evil laugh’.
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’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.
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
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???
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.
exactly!
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 used in Norn Iron.
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.
Translation: I can do it but no one else should
Try reading again because I said nothing like that ❤️
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
PADI is international, I feel like most reputable dive shops need to be PADI certified.
I know. Like I said the shop had a US only organization I wasn’t familiar with and it was my first experience with recreational U.S. diving, which is why I specified.
I showed up in the U.S. expecting PADI, but being unfamiliar with how U.S. shops operated, and presumed that whatever non-PADI organization they were with would be similarly standardized. Clearly they weren’t. Which is why I didn’t go back.
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.
I’m not sure about the weekly limit, but I guess it has also to do with the absorbtion of nitrogen into your blood, which is why you make safety stops after going deep and why there are daily limits.
Depending on how deep and how long you dive, more nitrogen will get dissolved in your blood due to the increased pressure. It stays there until you get into lower pressure ( ascending to the surface). If you do that too fast, the nitrogen will build up bubbles. And bubbles in the bloodstream is really really bad, hindering the flow of blood. Doing safety stops in lower depths gives some nitrogen the time to leave your body through the lungs while breathing. Not diving for a certain time after your dive sessions will give time to release all additional nitrogen from the blood, preventing a builtup over each dive.
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.
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.
same with motorcycles!
oh man, some “biker dudes” are the worst dude bros in all mankind. And it’s like they take pride in committing felony moving traffic violations…
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.
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.
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.
Sounds rotten :-(
It definitely sucks, but there are an increasing number of people like Ian of Forgotten Weapons getting people interested for the same reasons I am, really only getting into the politics from the historical or design perspectives, and always in a very objective manner. I’m also now in a far more liberal area and the local ranges are very inclusive, so that helps immensely.
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
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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?
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. :)
I hear the bolt on limb attachments aren’t as good as ILF since ILF has more options available, should I spend more to get a bow that uses ILF instead?
ILF will have better options, but those better options also cost a lot more money. If you can afford it, and you think you’ll stick with it, then yes, go with an ILF system. There are some good bows with the bolt on takedown limbs though. My first adult recurve bow is a bolt on system. I used it for years without issue, achieving very tight groups. Now my son uses it. I ended up moving to compound bows, but my original bolt on recurve still sees several uses per season, and is probably 20 years old now.
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 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
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.
Regarding backpacking: I experienced the ultralight community to be a very friendly and welcoming (although a bit nerdy) group of people. Yes, you CAN spend a lot of money on hightech equipment like many people do in cycling, archery etc. but it is also very common to MYOG (make your own gear). You can spend 200 bucks on the latest leightweight highend titanium cook pot. Or you can simply reuse an old fish can to cook in. And while this selfmade gear sometimes looks a bit clumsy, it often beats the hightech stuff. And the lightest gear sets I’ve seen were mostly self-made.
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.
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.
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.
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.
oh perfect! thank you!
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. :)
I’m the same way with networking gear haha
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.
