What is a hobby you enjoy, but seems too quirky or obscure to bring up in most conversations?

I try to make something that looks good (or at least doesn't look like random static) by running pictures I've taken through audio editing software. There are some extra steps that go into it to "trick" the program into importing the picture as if it were a sound file, making sure the header (information that tells your computer that this is a picture) doesn't get fucked with, and then exporting the data in a way that it will be saved as a picture and not an mp3 or something else.

On the rare occasion I do bring it up, I can literally watch people's eyes glaze over. Until I show them a picture

Edit: internet is really bad right now, will reply with an image when I can

Edit2: picture was too big at 7MB. Hopefully a screenshot of the picture doesn't look too bad

I'm a math teacher. I use my video game making knowledge from Godot to make little video games to review skills. Each takes a few weeks to make with game design, making all the art, programming, and making the worksheet.

Here is my Disco Dj-Demo if you were curious what I mean.

I think it's fun, it's not something I can really chat with others about.

I am learning lockpicking for fun. It helps me relax. I used a practice lock at first, then a cheap real lock. I've just learned that my firearms lock...yup, can be picked open in about 10 seconds. Equal parts cool and terrifying. Locks are waaay less secure than people think.

It has the same "internet hacker" stigma so I avoid talking about it.

I like learning about random ass hobbies without ever indulging in them.

I watch an ungodly amount of aquarium / terrarium videos, lurk a ton of aquascaping communities. I owned a betta fish in an empty bowl when I was 12 and that's it. (poor fish)

I read all you could know about book binding fanfiction, never done it.

I read a hundred pages long horse breeding guide for the game black desert online and I have no idea why. I only played the game for a month, spent most of it reading a google doc about horse. I'm not even sure I owned a horse in the game.

Sometimes I try the hobby, for example mini painting, and don't have the patience for it. But I still watch some random dudes on youtube paint for hours and sometimes they don't even talk!

No idea why I am like this

Model trains. I don't bring it up because it's obscure, but I've definitely found there's a stigma. "Oh he's the guy who plays with trains". Screw the haters, I like to relax after work and do a bit of escapism. Eventually I got over it though and talk about it with friends, but it's not the first thing I bring up either

For me it's coffee. Most people see it as a daily need. When I say my hobby is coffee they always say things like "that's not a hobby".

Working on my (private) servers is a hypnotic activity for me. It can be interesting or I can hate it and still want to do it. It can also be relaxing. Last time when I was sick in bed I played around with wireguard VPN configs all day to get a routed VPN for my VPS. I'm going to fix it today because something doesn't work the way it should.

Also, I learn Japanese. 日本語が大好き！

I've spent a good chunk of the year making ebooks from out-of-print dead tree books. Proofing and formatting takes a ton of time. Nobody reads them but me.

Starting and abandoning hobbies.

In a way, my interest in internet privacy is almost always met with uninterested "ah" IRL. Even when I dont come off as preachy, when I just try to sell it as "watching YT without ads", people often don't care.

Programming... Maybe not the most quirky, but just doesn't make for good conversation

I have a hobby that I can't even truly mention the name of it because the name is shared with the book Lolita.

However the lolita fashion clothing I wear and collect from Japan and China has nothing to do with the book so I often have to refer to my hobby as "Japanese Street Fashion" and that actually covers the other J-Fashion I wear too, which includes lolita dresses.

They're just specific types of dresses with a certain cut, they are often described as cupcake dresses and were more popular in Japan during the Harajuku Girls craze, so like around 2010 to 2013ish. I actually picked up the hobby in 2015 and started building a wardrobe, learning how to use color theory to match pieces of clothing, learning about different fabric types and how to care for them, and even learning about how to import items from other countries like Japan where they have limits on what they want people in the US to be buying from them.

I'm not as into it as I use to be because I have less of a disposable income now and it's a very spendy hobby. Plus COVID made shipping more difficult and a lot of laws in other countries changed around shipping and prices increased for international shipments. I still buy a dress like every 6 months? I use to buy them more often and sadly I don't fit some of them anymore. I only gained a bit of weight since 2015 but the dresses are tiny and its hard to get them altered without the right matching fabric.

I'm currently trying to lose weight so I can get back into wearing more of my wardrobe again like I use to. Currently cycling as I write this.

I also use to go to meet ups for lolita fashion specifically but that community is unfortunately full of toxic people and I finally gave up on going to the meets not long after COVID restrictions were lifted where I live.

I speak Esperanto and I am quite active in the movement and write for the Esperanto Wikipedia. In 2011 I had quite a cool trip to an Esperanto Youth Congress in Kijiv. But it's hard to talk about it because most people see it as a failed project from the early 1900s, not as a modern subculture.

I'm into macro photography: Just taking pictures of tiny stuff.

I train in swordfighting. It's good exercise and trains hand eye coordination as well as good balance.

The funniest part is it's actually helped me a lot in my day to day because I know how to move my body

Retro tech. It's not too obscure, especially nowadays. I could talk long hours about how mind fucking blowing was the Amiga and then still how it went down on the drain... tho I just see on the other people that this isn't really the topic that will kickstart (heheh) the party.

I need to find more friends...

I kill and butcher animals for myself and sometimes friends together with my boyfriend. Mostly pigs, some sheep and goats, poultry. Sometimes injured animals who are too injured or in too much pain.

The idea is to save the stress of transport to animals who are raised in good conditions as part of diversified restorative small-scale agriculture.

The killing and butchering is just one part of a circle of activities around the farm throughout the year, but probably the most unmentionable in any social setting other than among meat fanatics.

I've never let it stop me, but:

• ethical philosophy

• social dance, especially contra and square

• chromosomal / genetic inheritance simulations

I really enjoy getting the most out of a computer/mobile device that I have. I love trying out different OSes, messing with a video game to squeeze as much as performance possible etc.

I find pointless bugs in video games. I can spend hours trying to platform in a single spot the game doesn’t expect, like jumping from a fence to a windowsill to lamp post to a canopy to a roof.

I used to be a speedrunner and still have some of that blood in me, but I refuse to skip content in casual playthroughs. So the crazy part is if I find a way to skip an entire level, cool, time to go back and do it normally.

Video games. Even with how popular they are, it's not something easily brought up in a casual conversation. I hardly ever run into people my age who even play games. :/

Downloading and occasionally playing games from the flip phone era (j2me games). They seem to be mostly forgotten. They're basically the best alternative to the ad ridden, micro-transactions galore of today's android games and there's a surprisingly high amount of very high quality games.

Not too quirky or obscure but I really just like to fix shit. Clocks, washing machines, cars, crooked door, hole in a sweater, electronics... Nothing is outside of my interest.

On the more obscure side I like to fiddle with wrist watches by adding aftermarket parts and modifying their overall look.

Knitting - if you find the right audience, you can chat for hours, but it can also lead to blank looks or lots of assumption.

I don't have such a strange hobby, more that the subject for that hobby is strange. There's nothing weird about fixing up a 35 year old sports car or truck or something.

But I've been working on what I thought was a well-known model of 4x4, but now that it's running it draws a crowd of onlookers when I take it somewhere, and many people, even adults, don't know what a Suzuki Samurai is and have never seen one before.

I install and set up operating systems. It's something I do to my own computer regularly, but I'll cheerfully do for someone else because it's fun.

Linux is my favorite, but I can do Windows, Free/Open/Dragonfly BSD, Haiku, and given time to research others as well. I keep meaning to give NetBSD a shot...

It gives me a focused task with a specific end goal that requires some technical knowledge, but mostly preparation, research, and troubleshooting skills. The activity can sometimes lift me out of a depressive episode for a while.

Weather watching (not the extreme kind) - I basically note down the current weather and interpret my own forecast then later see if I'm right.

Lockpicking - it's basically a tiny little puzzle and I can buy different solutions for a few bucks at any store.

Gardening - this is less obscure/quirky and more that I don't want people to think that I'm bragging about how many tomatoes I have because I will in fact brag about how many tomatoes I have.

Masturbating to hentai bondage.

Nude hiking. I mean I wouldn't care if someone I knew saw me, but I wouldn't be talking about it in most conversations.

I make music, but it's not really music anyone would want to put on at a party, so I don't tell anyone about it. There's nothing more awkward than standing there trying to explain to someone that what they're listening to is a chord progression played with each note slightly out of phase such that rather than distinct chord changes, you just get an overall impression of it as time progresses while they screw up their face in confusion and disgust. Not that everything I make is a conceptual experiment, but that's inevitably what someone will put on if they discover my music.

I used to make porn gifs.

I really got into steve1989s mre videos. So I collect vintage military rations.

I have a perfectly accurate 1:1 scale lightsaber replica of Luke Skywalker. It turns on, it’s really bright, it reacts accordingly to how I swing it, can deflect blasters and makes tons of cool sounds…

I don’t bring it up in conversation, but when people find out they get really excited (well, boys mostly)

Fountain pens! And inks.

And quality paper.

Stand-up comedy. I love doing it and I'm a HUGE nerd about it.
It's not that I wanna hide myself, I'm just tired of all the "tell me a joke" or "let me tell you a joke" conversation that follows. If you wanna hear my jokes come see me on Friday and I've probably already heard your joke many many times and told 10 times better than you do.

I like collecting old 2000s handhelds. PDAs and the likes! Even daily driving a real beauty, a Sony Clié PEG-UX50 (catchy name as always, Sony!)

playing in a symphonic orchestra. sure, it sounds cool, but most people don't know much about the topic and feel intimidated by it, so the conversation is just me attempting to convince them that it's not just for rich nerds and you can be casual about classical music.

Model Railroading. I went several decades without a layout. Then for whatever reason, I just recently started building an N scale railroad. I'm having fun remembering oops skills and learning new techniques.

I absolutely love working on photocopiers, even though it's my job.

My friends say I'm a hoot in the discord!

Pretty much all of them at this point, I'm in the construction industry. Video games, reading, computer repair, anime, dungeons and dragons, miniature painting, watch making, chess... There are a few brave exceptions, but most people give me that glazed over look when I bring it up.

I'm an amateur game developer. It's very, very rare I actually get to meet someone else who's into it. Everyone else is either overly impressed, thinking I'm some genius making COD or GTA in my spare time (I am definitely not), or some combination of thinking I'm lying/complete disinterest. It makes me quite sad to see that programming is still relatively niche.

I was learning Gregg Shorthand at some point just for the fun of it and every time I brought it up people had no idea what I was on about.

I play Mahjong. If I try talking to most Americans about it, they'll think I'm talking about Shanghai, or Mahjong Solitaire.

I actually play 3 forms of it:

Riichi: Standard Japanese rules. This is what you typically see in anime and mahjong games from Japan.

CSM: Competition rules for Chinese Mahjong. This what you'll typically see played in tournaments outside of Japan

American Mah-jongg: A ruleset with a lot of unique features. An AMJ set contains jokers that can act as any tile in the set. The game is played without being able to call "chow"(taking a sequence of 3 pieces), You "Charleston" for the pieces you need before the round begins (pass pieces to the right, left, and across from you), and the standard hands you can make change on a yearly basis. This is the version you often see played by the American Jewish community.

I love playing all three, but it's hard to play them in person, because you need to find at least 4 people who can play by the same rule set.

Riichi is easy enough in Japan, but it's seen as kinda a sketchy game here, and most places you can play it are at expensive and seedy mahjong parlors. Luckily there are a flood of video games based around it that make it more accessible.

Chinese Mahjong is very regional, and each area can have its own variation on the rules, scoring, accepted hands etc. When playing with Chinese friends, I just kinda roll with whatever variation they're playing.

For American Mah-jongg, because the standard hands change year to year, you have to buy a new card from the National Mah Jongg League yearly in order to keep up with it, so it's the only mahjong game with a subscription cost built in. Also as mentioned, the game is very community specific, but also the majority of players are often senior aged women, usually making me the youngest at the table by far.

I love playing all three, but it's hard enough finding someone else who also likes Mahjong, let alone find someone who doesn't confuse it for the solitaire game. I'm not saying Mahjong solitaire ruined my life, but if I could Thanos snap a game out of existence...

Dildos, especially Bad Dragons. I genuinely love just collecting them

Guns. People assume I'm a Republican

I need to find an offline hobby, something that doesn't involve a screen

I dabbled in a bit of neography (creating your own writing system) and a hint of conlanging (creating your own language). I think I've managed to create a fairly decent writing system for myself, but the conlang went nowhere fast as I underestimated the effort required to even get started with it. I also attempted making fantasy maps, but it was all in paper and quite a while ago.

That's it, I suppose: neography, conlanging, and fantasy mapping.

I also spent an embarrassing amount of time looking at maps and making virtual road trips via Google street view, but that's way more mainstream.

This is totally fascinating reading all the replies.

I love making bleeps and bloops using VCV rack and Mirack on iOS. The flexibility of modular synths in the digital realm is so much fun! And no one can do 5 minutes of conversation about it. Admittedly it’s pretty dense.

3d printing

In general most people have a total misunderstanding about the whole process and it's boring explaining the basics

I don't usually mention embedded programming, electronics, vintage stereo hi-fi, home automation, and fountain pens, among a few others. Of course finding someone who is into any of that could lead to some fun conversation.

I collect lewd anime figures. They sadly have tonspend their existense in a closet.

Jacking off. I'm really good at it and have a lot to share, but every time I've tried the police get called.

I like making things. I'm mainly into making costume props and decorations. Basically I'm into making interesting things exactly once, learning a bunch of lessons on what to not do, but never do it again. I'm not a skilled wood worker or metal worker. But! I bound a book myself, coffee stained it, and made the cover out of sewn together leather scraps. It's a Necronomicon. I made a lightsaber almost entirely out of junk from ReStore (mostly plumbing parts). I made an EL wire tree with a dried tree branch about 6ft tall, a spool of decent gauge metal wire, and 50 10ft EL strands. Sanded and painted toy guns. Made a James Webb looking wall decoration out of black foam board, gold hexagons, and an NFC tag. Semi related, I modified an IKEA table to be a vaulted board game table where the tops mount on the wall via French cleat and it has cup holders to keep drinks out and away from spilling on the inside of the table. I have 3D printed some minor costume bits. Made a bunch of wizards wands out of paint, hot glue, and chopsticks. Made a float lamp (tie a bunch of annoying knots around a sphere). Currently trying to modify toy Poke Balls to have a functioning LED button but I really hate soldering.

I'm a programmer by trade so I also tinker with Home Assistant far too much. I have a jellyfish lamp with an RGB bulb that tells me the weather when I wake up. Just made an LCARS (Star Trek UI) dashboard for decoration.

Making gaming terrain out of household junk. Hey, wanna hear about the combat tiles I'm making out of cardboard and hot glue? No? No, I completely understand...

Playing pinball? Sort of nerdy without any cool factor at all (although we pinball people think it's cool and fun)

Buying keyboards... I just had a moment where I made an impulse decision where I spent 200$ usd on one. It's my 7th keyboard and I know it's not gonna be the last. I'm not even a touch typer... Something weird is going on

I collect wrist watches and intend on learning watch repair soon ish

i used to be really really into fingerboarding / fingerskating. made my own wooden decks and stuff

Sim racing isn't necessarily too quirky or obscure but I do it to maintain some sort of maybe possibly ADHD. Doing laps around a track really helps with getting myself used to focusing.

It's especially helpful because each lap around a race track tends to be only 1 - 2 minutes, which is a relatively easy amount of time to keep focus at any one point in time, but keeping it up for consecutive laps and remaining consistent as time builds up in small increments is a different kind of joy to me.

I've got a shit ton of hobbies thanks to my ADHD, but I think my most obscure one is Reef-keeping. Also the most expensive.......

I am something of a skills collector: Bicycles (roadie/former amateur racer), cars (mods/engines/paint), composite prototyping, metal machining, home foundry metal casting, embedded programming, analog and digital electronics design, reverse engineering, KiCAD, PCB etching, motor controls, python, CPP, Forth, woodworking, Linux desktop, Linux kernel deep dives, computing hardware, open source software, Dune, Asimov, SciFi, astronomy, telescopes, designing and building optics, 3D printing, CAD design, FreeCAD, Blender, cooking better than the best restaurant foods, Asian cuisine, psychology

I am a generalist, but a swiss army knife, I know about and do a lot, but I am like the worst scissors you've ever attempted to carry and use. I can get the job done, but am well aware I am not a master of any of these.

Knot Tying. Sure, there's an International Guild of Knot Tyers, but it's a rather small group.

Seems like every hobby is too obscure for most to care at the level I do. Sim racing, rtlsdr, self hosting, ANY kind of motorsports, home automation, blogging, DND, video games... At the surface these are not too obscure but I find very few people in my day to day life that care about them in detailed way

Hah, I like your hobby actually.

I've actually managed to upgrade Cistercian Numerals from decimal to hexadecimal, while still being backwards compatible.

https://youtu.be/9p55Qgt7Ciw

Fixing small things. My friends or family need something fixed that doesn't require a professional. I like figuring out how to fix things or at least providing a temporary solution. I do it because I'm helping someone, also I'm building my skill set. A basic search of answers and videos teaching me how to do it properly most times is easy to find. If not I find a way to create a safe temporary solution until they can have one come in. Very fulfilling, especially if you like a challenge.

I build and optimize molecules using computational chemistry software for fun.

Open-source virtual reality, usually just any VR works too lmao but especially FOSS VR

Be vewwy vewwy quiet. We're hunting cell towers.

"You know Pokémon Go? It's like that."

I'll say me writting my homebrew DnD world. It goes in pair with me using ObsidianMD, I love the tool i'm using and i'm having fun specifically in the making of polical cities more than in the making of combat senarios. My mom knows about it and sometimes asks, Dad finds it stupid, and I don't talk about it with anyone I used to atlk about what I write to two friends, but they are coming to my session in september so now I have no one esle to bring it up

Running. Ok, I know it's not obscure, however, if you say you're a runner, or that it's a hobby, you're frequently met with hostility, or people trying to talk you out of it. The amount of times people have said "running is bad for you, you need to stop" is insane.

Writing fanfiction

I have quite a few obscure hobbies due to ADHD...

I'm super into collecting vintage analog music equipment. Old analog synthesizers and reel-to-reel tape machines to be exact. I also make music on them, but to be honest that's kind of a secondary thing haha.

I play a little bit of everything. Drums, guitar, keyboard, bass, etc. I'm probably best at drums though and have been playing for the better part of 25 years. Currently in a punk band and a desert rock band.

I'm into programming (web dev is my career) and embedded systems. I make a ton of various things with arduinos/raspberry pis. Often I'll try to combine the two and make midi/cv controllers for my synths.

I got into 3d printing a couple years back and have since been going down the rabbit hole of CAD with fusion 360/blender/etc.

I also got really into making video games for a bit in Unity. Started work on a VR game and have been meaning to get back to it.

Speaking of VR, I'm not a huge gamer but definitely love playing Beat Saber and Pistol Whip (both VR). I'm in the top 1000 or so in beat saber, but I was #1 globally in pistol whip for quite a while. I imagine I'm probably still top 10 at least.

And probably my most obscure hobby: Poi

Most people have no idea what it even is, and once they find out, just assume I'm a rave kiddie. I mean, I kind of am, but I legit love the art of poi.

Lockpicking tends to be my most misunderstood hobby/interest.

Sim racing.

It’s difficult to talk about it without people dismissing it as just a video game with a steering wheel.

In addition to general learning which might be my favourite, I have multiple.

Maybe the most niche is a historical reenactment and historical costuming. Latter usually based on extant garments or garment finds. I try to get as close to the original in techniques, tools and materials using the best evidence I can find.

I also plan things that will never happen. I decorate houses and apartments on paper. I make extensive plans for travel that I can never afford unless I win in Lottory. Which I even never play.

I spend absolutely too much time playing with spreadsheets.

I love plushies. I have an ever growing collection and love just browsing plushies of all sorts when I'm online. I just really like cute things. But as a 28 year old man with a beard, it's safe to say I'm not exactly the spiting image of a plushie collector, and most people are definitely not interested in talking at length about it with me.

[email protected] is my latest obsession: Friends, family, and colleagues are tired of hearing me talk about ebikes.

I like to play with dos. Every once in a while I start looking for games and programs trying to recreate the computer my parents used to have. I've also gotten into randomizers recently. Currently in the middle of a 3-person multiworld playthrough of Stardew Valley.

Handspinning. I do a lot of fiber crafts.

Video Games... And i mean all of it. If you try to talk with me about videogames in a casual way, I need to do my best to not hit you with a history lesson. Did you know that Miyamoto used to Smoke in the Star Fox office and startet talking about trees? Well now you know...

Not me, but my wife. She collects kpop cards. Apparently the bands have a random card of one of the members in the albums. Theres a whole trading and selling market for them.

I race RC cars.

Seems simple enough but there’s always follow up questions that inevitably take the conversation from interesting to ‘in the weeds’.

I repair and upgrade classic video game consoles. RGB modding NES, Adding HDMI output to a PS1 etc. Sometimes in the case of some NEC consoles like the Turbo Duo R, I'll buy ones that are totally hopeless (capacitors in these thing leak like crazy) and pick away at it for months, I've had some janky looking consoles but I've brought them back from the dead. Always satisfying when then work again.

I don't think it's super obscure, but I home brew beer and it's a hobby where you can really go deep into the technicalities of tweaking recipes, building equipment, and just the overall process in a way that would probably bore the average non-brewer to death.

For me, probably insects. I've been fascinated by insects when I was little, and honestly I feel like I've been getting back into it recently. I started keeping a mealworm colony recently so that I wouldn't need to buy mealworms for my frog (it was really more of a practical decision than an interest in having a colony, but mealworms are pretty cool nonetheless)

I've been considering getting a mantis and/or some rhinoceros beetles, but I'm not really sure where I would be able to get the materials required to set up terrarium for them

I like fleshlights. I have quite a collection of them.

I always thought "high altitude ballooning" would be a cool ass hobby.. but living in PA.. would make it difficult to track down payloads once back to earth 😀

Playing terminal.

Diecast collecting and diecast photography. That and building excel sheet forms to auto-math things I need for infrequent tasks.

I collect and know a lot about weed vaporizers. Weed is still not legal where I live and other users, who even also use vaporizers, are happy with their device and don't wanna know about the benefits of my other dozens

Yeah I'm going to need to know more about your hobby.

Each quirky hobby mentioned here, deserves its own Lemmy community!

Designing public transit maps in far too much detail

Electronics. Its not hard to understand if you get into it, but there is no discussing it without someone already being in to it.

I like cars, but specifically boring old cars. Supercars don't do anything for me, I think normal "enthusiast" cars are pretty boring, and the communities around them can kinda suck. But I will totally nerd out about your grandma's bingo-mobile she bought new in the 80s.

i collect dice. i really enjoy finding unusual dice via kickstarter. im always on the look out for something that hasnt been done before or unusual shapes. when a new type, i.e. liquid core, comes out i usually wait a month or so to see what the market does. if everyone starts making them then i dont usually add them to my collection. i am also trying to collect all the chessex gemini series dice

Home brewing beer and making fishing lures. Not many people I know in my daily life enjoy beer or fishing. It feels pompousy to just bring up in casual conversation unless someone talks about how expensive a keg of Texa$ from Turing Point Brewing is or a swimbait they seen at thier local taxidermy shop was selling for $200+ and looked ultra realistic.

Studying open source cloud infrastructure solutions and open source services. Not for work, just a hobby.

Physical media collecting. Particularly if i have a functioning player for it. If i don't then the interest goes down the drain. That's why there's a huge focus on books with me. Pulps. That's why I've got my eyes on a copy Swords And Deviltry as we speak.

Building old computers.

playing physical / video games by myself and like playing pretend sometimes with mock items

I’m a contortionist.

For me it's being a witch and all witchcraft related things.

i collect post apocalyptic books, espicially zombie related books. most are the audio version, my wife swears she will divorce me if i buy any more books, lol

Contributing to localization in my language. (I use Localizor or weblate) I've helped translation for the Godot Engine and many released games. It's a free hobby granted you have a PC and some knowledge. I've always liked translating stuff for those who can't speak English. And it keeps my language skills sharp in both.

I collect photos of sidewalk stamps and try to find as many years (and weird, different, unique stamps) that I can.
http://photos.rasterweb.net/index.php?/category/30

Sea shanties 😅

My last girlfriend, I waited until she got herself good and stoned to bust out the playlist

Being part of the "Drachengame"

Cat juggling.