I’m pretty sick of my content addiction, like watching youtube or netflix all the time. I would rather be spending my time otherwise so figured fun things are the best to start. Do you have tips for fun things to do? Or how I could search for them?
Some I came up with myself:
- Learning some magic tricks
- Learning some origami
- Thrift shopping
Everything is welcome!
Edit: thank you for the huge response!
Here are my hobbies/interests that simultaneously get me off Social Media/Content Streams while giving me something to talk about/post about/watch about when I’m back. I may also have podcasts or youtube on in the background if the activity permits
Group A, the “touch grass” activities:
- go on a walk
- do some cleaning/organizing
- spend time with people irl
That last one requires a lot of effort and rarely has immediate payoffs if you don’t already have a friend group bigger that one or two friends, but it’s so important and requires putting time into it and developing social skills. In fact, 2+3 both benefit from learning skills and shortcuts and habits; therefore they require just as much time and energy as any hobby.
Group B, the “what I do for fun”
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“hacking” — pentesting computers and VMs, whether on HackTheBox, TryHackMe, Vulnhub, or someones one-off github-hosted machine; and of course so many online CTFs
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“tinkering” — I like messing with the physical part of electronics too. Or mechanical devices. Or anything that I can dissect and modify
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active listening to music — taking the time to listen and be carried away by music, maybe even start to analyze it. I know it’s still technically “consuming content,” but I consider it to stimulate a different part of the brain than, say, watching a random youtuber bring himself one mukbang closer to an embolism.
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playing music — the world’s shittest bassist. I’m not trying to be good, just have fun and improve my ear and dexterity and musical intuition
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foreign language learning — good for the brain, good for someone who wants to travel good for jobs and making genuine human connections. Not fluent in anything besides english yet, but I’m always acquiring new vocabulary words when I can
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Creative writing — Most of what I do anymore is just drafting elaborate shitposts to post online later, but I’ve been known to crank out parts of short stories and terrible poetry
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Activism — I won’t say where, when, who, nor why, but that doesn’t matter. The important part is that there are few things in life more fulfilling than coming home after a long day of doing outreach/aid/[redacted]/fundraising for a community and/or cause you care about.
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coding — of freaking course I’m also learning to program. You thought I was done with the electronics, but of course I had to sneak this in. You expect me to learn binary exploitation without having a strong understanding of programming? You expect me to do DIY hardware projects without coding the firmware? You’ve been absolutely HAD.
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Worshipping the dark goddess [redacted] at the temple of [redacted] — a healthy spiritual aspect to your life has far reaching benefits that scientific medicine and psychology are only just beginning to scratch the surface of. Of course you don’t have to start with worshipping [redacted], it can be as simple as cultivating a healthy appreciation for the beauty in every aspect of the natural world around you and the mystique of existence itself. Then later you can move onto the [redacted] sacrifices to make [redacted] [redacted] so [redacted] may once again [redacted] the earth.
Group C, the “dangerously close to consuming content” group, but still technically separate activities/skills
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Armchair philosophy — we all do it, but I’m the only one who was smart/lazy enough to list it as a hobby. Unfortunately this does ocassionally learning about others’ philosophy and the topics you’re bullshitting about, which is why I say it’s “dangerously close”
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Media analysis — see previous… Okay, I got my degree in Literature + Language, I really enjoy deep analyses of media, and sometimes make my own. The act itself doesn’t require consuming anything more than you already have, but if you haven’t consumed any media in awhile…
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reading — okay, I know, this is literally just back to consuming content, but… You don’t learn how to do any of the above without some reading. It helps you learn a language if you read a story in your target language. it’s the format most philosophy was originally recorded in. It’s the medium writers have to learn to be good at their craft. It’s what format most electronic/software documentation is in. It’s how music was recorded for centuries before audio media. It’s also just a fun activity that engages different parts of the brain and trains your imagination even when it’s “just” fiction.
Aside from the Shub-Niggurath worship (I’m more of an Azathoth person, myself), I agree with most things here. I’d just add to the list, group B I guess:
- aquatic animal husbandry and aquascaping (freshwater preferably, saltwater if you are really masochistic and have money to burn on corals and expensive equipment)
- model railroading
I feel these are more ‘apex’ hobbies, wherein you need a bit of everything (chemistry, electronics, an artistic sense, lots of patience) and they will occupy most of your time. You’d think electronics and aquaria are not the closest things, but just you wait until you feel the need to build an LED lamp with simulated day/night cycles and moonlight, controlled by an arduino.
The barrier to entry is fairly low - there are starter sets available and I’ve found that hobby shops of this sort are usually staffed by very knowledgeable people, eager to help newcomers. And, you can go as deep as you want and still have fun. You will also learn an absolute fuckton of things about what you choose to model with your hobby.
An honorable mention for homebrewing, which I don’t even regard as a hobby at this point, but more of a necessity, like cooking.
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You’re cool af. I love the idea of cultivating microbiomes.
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I’m so fucking transparent I may as well be invisible. I do indeed have Lovecraft on the brain, that was a fantastic read on your part.
Right back at you, fellow hobby and eldricht horror appreciator!
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I like cooking, I get a lot from it, like the feeling of fulfillment etc
Turning cooking from a chore that needs to happen to something you enjoy is the best. Also makes you spend less eating out and to eat healthier. I live to Eat. Not Eat to live
Here in Poland dining out is more expensive than cooking, many people here have a hard time wrapping their head around the idea that cooking for yourself or your family isn’t considered the default in some countries, but the myth it’s “healthier” transplanted itself here perfectly through the pop culture, to the point according to my wife i can’t make burgers for dinner or wrap a salad in a tortilla because it’s unhealthy fast-food, no such problem with pizza though
Pretend to be a racoon. Trespass, go through the trash for things to eat or play with, crawl on rooftops and under the streets through storm drains.
The Coon!
I amuse myself with coding, and for the last couple of years, slowly teaching myself spanish. I know it’s a little thing that will probably never matter to anyone, but it feels kind of cool that I can open mexican newspapers and not go “Wtf is this gibberish?”
“It’s Spanish!”
I built a homelab.
Basically you buy some old enterprise server hardware (or, if you are smart unlike me, you build low-power machines from scratch!) and then you can run your own services.
Some fun stuff includes:
- Plex or Jellyfin or Emby - stream your own video library
- HomeAssistant - Control and automate all the smart things with little to no cloud connection!
- TrueNAS - file server storage for large share drives and local backups
- Grocy - Inventory management for groceries/supplies. Includes special features for batteries, chemicals/food with expiration dates, shopping list generation + barcode scanning, chore tracking (with automatic inventory of supplies like dish soap and laundry detergent), and recipes based on what you have on hand. Integrates with HomeAssistant
- PiHole or AdGuard Home - DNS-based adblocker. Any device connected to your network has a ton of advertising blocked at the network level, no plugins or installation required; devices simply can’t find the ad servers to connect with. (Can break stuff like Paramount+ or Hulu, etc but you can add exceptions)
- the “arr” suite - Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr/prowlarr - fill up your Plex library with ahem legal backups of legitimately purchased media automatically over the internet.
- OPNSense - free, professional grade firewall with support for network-wide VPN clients. Put your entire house behind a VPN, allow VPN access inside your network from anywhere (get the benefits of PiHole on the go!), block shady IoT devices from seeing anything else on the network (Chromecasts, shady smart switches, etc), the sky’s the limit with this one
- Fediverse instances - Run your own personal Lemmy or Mastadon instance!
And tons and tons of other stuff. It’s not cheap, it’s time consuming, and the wife hates the power bill. But if you’re into doing shit with computers, it’s a damn interesting rabbit hole
Hiking.
I like sewing my clothes, I usually put on some content in the background while I’m doing my mending. It helps avoid fast-fashion and is helpful with thrift shopping, since it allows you to purchase garments that don’t fit quite right or are slightly frayed.
In college I took aikido classes. I had thin gi pants designed for taikwando, not grappling. With all the ground movement the knees ripped open constantly.
So each night after class I’d cut new squares out of an old white t-shirt, and then sew those squares onto the ripped-open knees of those gi pants.
My sewing technique was crude: just two pieces of cloth pressed together, then a doubled thread wrapping around that seam again and again and again. The seams were tough and thick, like scars on the pants.
Each class, they’d rip open again, and I’d add more path material and more thread. Eventually the knees were many layers of torn and patched cloth, with thick scarlike seams criss-crossing all across them. The inside of those knees were very rough and it was kneeling and crawling on that roughness that was tearing up my knees.
I didn’t have money for laundry either so every class I washed that gi in my tub and wrung it out as best I could to dry for two days until the next class.
I spent nearly as much time tending that gi as practicing on the mat. It felt cool. The skin of my knees grew thicker and more leathery as I tore it up and it healed repeatedly, matching the uniform’s knees getting thicker and gnarlier.
Every night after class first it was hydrogen peroxide for the blood (always blood in the knees after a class) then scrubbing that with a toothbrush, then churning the gi in the tub. The water would get murky and surprisingly dirty and then I’d pull the thing out of the tub a few inches at a time, wringing it as tight as I could to get the water out, then dropping the dry end on the bathroom floor and grabbing another couple inches to wring out. My forearms would be just dead, my hands wanting to cramp from all the gripping and twisting.
I miss being young.
The word you are looking for is “hobby.”
Haha yeah okey, but I was looking more towards smaller things to do in the evening. Hobby sounds way more committed, but from these responses it seems like it doesnt need to be. Thanks anyway!
Lol all good. Hobby is just the general term for something you like doing. It can be as hardcore as climbing Mount Everest or be as casual as “I bought a guitar 5 years ago and I try to play it once in a while.”
- Try out recipes to cook from the internet. Thats an easy way to learn and in the end you can improvise.
- learn an instrument. Easier said than done really, best is to find a group and make fix appointments
- find a cool sport to do. Really, going out is sooo important. Dancing, martial arts, athletics, swimming, climbing, cycling. There is so much.
- learn another language that people actually speak in your area lol. For example signing! Signing is so useful, next to english, spanish, mandarin and russian maybe. Integrating deaf people is sooo important and it needs hearing people that can sign to translate.
Knitting is super fun. I used to do it every day until I started my masters. I keep thinking I should restart this hobby. As long as you don’t buy ridiculously premium yarns, it’s super cheap too. I used to find boxes of yarn at yard sales or thrift stores.
Rock Climbing/Bouldering. It’s great exercise, I throw in my earbuds, do my own thing, it’s a lot of fun. Don’t worry about being out of shape there are routes for all skill levels
a few ideas:
Learn:
An instrument
A living language
A dead language
A fictional language
A programming language
A new sport
A craft
New recipes
Bodyweight exercisesGo:
To Hell (Hell, Michigan)
Hike
Powerwalk your local mall
Cross country skiing
To your local arcade
To the coffee shop
On a road trip
Walk all the streets in your city
Test drive something interesting
To a movie
To your local library
To a concert
To an art gallery
To a museumWhatever you do, make it a challenge to do it every day (or as often as possible) for a month. If at the end you still look forward to it, you found a new hobby.
It might help to set some fixed times in your week for hobbys so you don’t get into the situation where you need to decide between that or Netflix. The drug always wins.
If you need to buy some things first, get it used or even just lend it but try to find something that’s not rubbish. You can later invest more money but you don’t want to waste it on something you end up not liking.
Hobbys that stuck with me:
- cooking
- running
- hiking
- gardening
- golfing
- reading
- jigsaw puzzles
One option that is kind of a middle ground is to learn a craft. Knitting, crochet, making fly fishing lures, sculpting. There are lots of things you can do with your hands while listening to a podcast or audiobook, so while it still involves content consumption it also engages your motor skills and creativity and you end up with something to show for it by the time you are finished.
Learn to skateboard.
Or longboarding if the terrain is relatively flat and not steep.
+1 for longboarding, it’s such a nice feeling to just go and see the world passing by.
I’m waiting for summer to try stand up paddling this year.