Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Encourage people to participate in physical social gatherings that center around non-political issues, like hobbies.

I think there is a lot more to this than many people think.

If more people participated in hobbies, then they would spend less time on the internet. The time they do spend would be more targeted and focused instead of mindlessly scrolling and scrolling and getting baited and agitated.

They would also form communities, as you suggest, with common interests and get to know people better. It's basic socialization.

Part of the problem is that for some reason there is a notion that everything has to be a business today. There's a Fidelity Investments TV commercial running right now where a daughter says to her retired mother, "Did you paint this [painting]? You know you can sell these!" And a business is born. Why? Why can't she just enjoy painting for painting's sake. For her own enjoyment? Why is money what decides if something is valid or not?

I encourage people to start hobbies. And be bad at them. Be terrible at reading, stamp collecting, woodworking, gardening, model railroading, brewing, or whatever. Do it because you like it. If you happen to be good at it, great! If all of your carrots die, that's OK, too. You got to spend quality time with yourself, which is more important than all the carrot sales you could possibly make.

I raised the same point about businesses in a comment a few days ago, among other issues https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22025971

[warning, cynic paragraph ahead] We don't have time to socialize, we obviously live to work. We might be stressed as we don't get to disconnect much, but you know, that would be so wasteful! Streets are not for people to socialize, they are for cars and for going somewhere else to do business. Spaces can only be there for money, otherwise they are an inefficiency which we'll have to fix. If you are good at something, you should be earning money from it. We live in a global world. We have so many hobbies! But only so many people fits in an area, so matches are unlikely. Anyway, if you are willing to go out for socialization any hobby is ok. If you are interested in finding interesting people... sorry, they are busy at the moment. That's what interesting people do. Be stressed and busy trying to fix the world from crashing by hitting harder the accelerator. Ah, the beauty of an efficient market. Perfecting time and spaces.

Damn, this is a great idea... I’m going to try woodworking and make the shoddiest set of chairs one can imagine, but they’ll be my chairs. Could take up to a year maybe of practice but who cares!

I hope this leads you to make friends with the other local woodworking nerds :)

As a matter of fact, i picked up woodworking as a hobby last summer and made some really good friends. You don't have to be good at it, just the whole process of going through it is rewarding. Look up "Mr. Chickadee"s channel on YouTube, watching his videos is like a meditating experience.

"... start hobbies. And be bad at them." Love it. The reasoning sounds like Chestertonian "common sense."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com