Hacker News Reader

Comment by OfSanguineFire | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the pastimes in the USA that are most at risk are, on average, ones where you cannot use your phone and get exciting photos or video to post on your social media. After all, people are still meeting in groups to do things like hiking or cosplay, where they can present a glamorous image to other people via social media.

View on HN

The really big decline in popularity of bridge was in the 1950s. My wild guess is the rise of TV had something to do with it.

This secondary decline described in TFA is happening within a smaller, more dedicated player community. Maybe it's the competition from other games.

I think it’s mostly the decline in people coming over to people’s houses. Bridge as a game relied heavily on kitchen bridge and it just isn’t that common for most people to have people over every week for a game anymore. There is also the fact that the rules of the game are fairly complex and many people take weekly lessons for months in order to understand the basics of how to play.

I doubt this is the cause. Certain hobbies just grow and shrink. You could get plenty of social media photos photos of lawn bowls for example, but that’s still an aging audience.

Yes. For sports Padel is ultra-hot now. Came out of nowhere and exploded. In Netherlands there are 6-year long waiting lists to join a club.

Great game. Wish it would catch on more quickly in the US, there are basically no courts in the northeast.

Besides fad status, why is better than tennis, badminton, or pickleball?

Badminton is a bit too far from tennis for my liking (as is ping pong), so I never got into it.

As for the others, padel is far far far more athletic than pickleball (and paddle tennis for that matter), and I would argue even more so than tennis. I grew up playing tennis and I love it, but padel is more finesse and also scratched that itch of learning a whole new sport. I learned it in the UK 3-5 years ago, and I do very much miss it. Literally I think there is one court in all of New England, it is crazy how much of a not-thing it is considering it was invented in Mexico.

What confuses me is there are more old people than there used to be. So in theory "older people stuff" should be thriving. But lots of hobbies / activities / associations are percieved as dying off as elderly members are not replaced. I wonder why.

It's almost like there's another dynamic where each generation is resistant to the pastimes of the previous one, as they make the participants feel old, so they feel the need to invent new ones.

It would be interesting to compare Florida residents with those elsewhere on the east coast to see if they are actually preserving more of these things than we think.

It’s more generational than age specific. It’s not like you turn 70 and now have a burning desire to play croquet. I have no interest in cars but retired boomers can seem to talk about nothing else.

Poker is as un-photogenic as bridge, but seems to be doing fine. Of course the demographic and venues it's played in are very different.

Chess is also not a super photogenic sport but is doing fine. Even the local offline chess club is teeming with people both young and old.

Speed chess is doing fine.

Don't have speed bridge.

And chess has horseys.

Poker is much more appealing in terms of video presentation though. It’s easy to setup a high tension situation the user understands and make it fun to watch. The card play is more complex in bridge and you’re likely to have some people not understand what’s going on at all if you try and create a tense moment.

Chess streamers are popular these days. If you can make chess engaging on social media, you can do so for anything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com