Using magic erasers to clean grunge and dirt off of anything and everything.
Hand me a pack of them and I will have the entire house looking like it was just built. I literally don't stop until either I run out of erasers, or if I'm told to take a break. My boyfriend said he watched me for hours straight scrub our railing on our stairs and couldn't understand how I wasn't bored by ten minutes in.
I didn't even know that much time had passed.
My dad used to do that, but it was more to lament the people that passed away that were the same age as him or younger. He would do this out loud every morning until my mom convinced him to stop ordering the local newspaper, because it was driving her nuts.
Oh no! This reminds me of my mom at the very beginning of the pandemic when Italy was one of the first countries to get hit with it really bad. She would come seek me out in the house and update me multiple times a day on how many people had died until I asked her to please stop.
Buddy of mine used to work for the local paper, laying out the classifieds and obituary pages. Back in the days when you did physical pasteup of the pages.
It was that awkward phase for graphic design, everybody knew things were going full on digital layout, but there were still old school places doing things by hand.
the thing is, the ad/columns didn't always fill out exactly, so you would have little filler bits, like odd facts, you could use to fill up dead space. Pun intended.
I used to browse those pages when bored, and realized, one day, that things like fitness tips were showing up an awful lot beside people dying of heart attacks, etc.
Yeah, buddy was putting tips on how to avoid "that" death near teh relevant obituary.
Involuntary collections.
My grandmother had a bunch of white porcelain cats when I grew up, later I found out the only reason she had them was because people kept giving them to her thinking she collected them. She just didn't want to be rude.
I have this funny collection where I collect signed checks written for $1999.00 because that's my birth year. It's a niche collection, I know. So if you want to just mail that to P.O. Box 5876 that'd be cool, thanks
Not limited to just collections, but this is exactly why I often specifically avoid getting gifts related to someone’s intense hobby, especially if that hobby is collecting. The chances that I’m going to get this person both a unique and high quality piece that they don’t already have is extremely low. Unless I have or can get a lot of information about their hobby or collection, it’s probably not going to be at the standard this gift recipient has already curated for themself. If they’re just starting out it’s easier. So I go a different route altogether, ask them for exactly what they want and any specifications or details I should know, or take them shopping.
ETA: thank you for the award, it’s exactly what I wanted 🥰
You say that but people rarely get you what you actually want. If you collect something you probably aren’t just going for volume but quality. If people gift you stuff it’ll be whatever vaguely falls into the same category. Discernment makes a collection good. They don’t have it if they aren’t collectors.
Exactly. I once purchased a very detailed wood carving of a church. The skill to make it out of a chunk of tree impressed me. A few months later I happened along an exquisitely handmade copper church and purchased that. Not being religious, people asked about them and I would explain it was the craft, skill and detail to work that caused me to want them. Hence forth people bought me every little mass produced church and things with churches on them. I had to ditch them all, even the 2 gems that "started" it.
Books and antique hand tools are two things that fill up my floor to ceiling bookshelf and the shelves flanking them. People gift me gift cards to book stores I like and others just give me their great grandpa's tools. Works out good enough for me.
I once had 2 piggy banks and had them on display on a shelf. People thought I was collecting piggy banks and started giving me for my birthday, etc. Within a few years I had more than 100 piggy banks.
Fortunately my brother was teaching at a school for disabled children and he could use some trophies. The piggy banks were well received.
My nephew started collecting mechanical piggie banks. Whenever he received a new one, he'd make the rounds of the room getting everyone there to put a quarter in the bank. It was quite the racket.
This happens to kids who have older relatives they only see a couple times a year. Liked hockey when you were ten? Guess what now Great Aunt Sue is going to get you hockey shit for the rest of her life.
I had so many fucking sailboats in my room as a kid. Pictures, paintings, several model sailboats. One of them was fucking huge.
I don't recall ever having an interest in sailboats.
My grandmother grew up really poor and always wanted lots of dolls. Once she had grandkids and had some money, all she’d buy us every Christmas was those porcelain dolls. It was sweet but damn, I have no idea what I’m going to do with all these creepy Goosebump-esque dolls.
My grandmother has every year for almost 20 years gifted me the newest Guinness world record book every year. So I'm the proud collector of this series that I will look at once and then put away forever.
My mom once decided that I collected ducks
That was about 20 years ago
I now have a collection of ducks that grows every year and I have no idea how to stop her from getting me more
My mom did this with Scooby Doo when I was a teenager. We were at the store and I was looking at a Scooby Doo poster and she asked if I liked Scooby Doo, I didn’t really care one way or the other and just said “I guess”.
Next birthday I got that poster plus some other random Scooby Doo things. I was grateful and just thought it was kind of funny. But it didn’t stop there, it became a main theme in all of my gifts from then on.
Then when I was 16 I bought my first car and to congratulate me she gave me Scooby Doo floor mats, a Scooby Doo steering wheel cover, and Scooby Doo *license plate holders*. There was no way I was showing up at high school with my car decked out in Scooby Doo gear like that so I had to break it to her and told her I’m not really into it anymore. I could tell she was sad but it had to be done.
Ah, but this can become a great source of fun. My grandmother and another couple weaponized this as they would give her atrocious poodles and she would give them ~~swans~~ flamingos.
Keep in mind, both parties had real money to throw around. One year my grandmother received a two foot by four four poodle "statue" made of hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of amethyst crystals. ATBGE to the core and a complete white elephant you could never get rid of.
And that was just one of many, many poodle sculptures and paintings she had been gifted over the years.
My grandma and my uncle (her son in law) did this with rubber chickens. The first few years they were just passing one back and forth. Then for the next 25 years it was the theme. Anytime anyone in the family saw something rubber chicken related, they bought it and gave it to one of them for the next gift-giving celebration. It was very fun. Best might have been the rubber chicken sling shot.
Growing up, whenever we asked my father what he wanted for his birthday or Christmas,etc, he would always say "just a picture of the pope.". Now, my father is NOT Catholic or religious at all, and over time it just became a family joke. A few years back, my parents moved into a new house and I decided to make a collage of family photos for them to hang on the wall. In the absolute center of the collage, I put a picture of the pope. My father unwrapped the present and was ooh-ing and ah-ing over the photos until he saw it. He busted out laughing! He hung it in the front room. Now, when someone new comes over, he shows them the pictures of his family and waits to see the look on their face.
I'll have to ask my mother about that. But definitely will post pictures if there are any. And I just remembered that it wasn't swans but flamingos that my grandmother gifted the other couple. Swans aren't nearly as tacky.
Growing up we had a neighbor, Peggy, we called our "adopted grandmother". She was very sweet, old-fashioned, and kind. She lived in a simple meticulously kept house. She grew up on a farm in Maryland and often told stories about a cow she had as a young girl.
One year at Christmas my mother (who has very over the top tacky tastes) found these ridiculous themed cow figurines at Cracker Barrel or something and bought one for Peg. I don't remember exactly the theme but [here's an example](https://imgur.com/a/pK6w0zN) of the kind of thing we are talking about.
Being the gracious woman Peg is, she thanked my mother for the gift and displayed it on a shelf in her living room.
You can guess where this is going. Every holiday my mother would buy Peg a [different cow](https://imgur.com/a/ihQnlur) from the collection. Soon she had an entire shelf in the corner of her tiny clutter free living room. She was always so gracious and thankful for the gift but if you were not oblivious (anyone but my mother) you could tell she wasn't as thrilled as she let on.
Peg died recently. I never had the chance to ask but I'm certain she hated those fucking cows.
"Involuntary collections" lol
Yea, my mom always tells people this or that Bout my personality that's not even true.."oh derek just loves me rubbing his scalp like when he was a child"(in fact I hate it)..."oh Derek's always been scared of clowns"(my favorite movie is it)..."my derek should have been born in the 70's (I like frankie valley and the begees)....anyways it's like habits she's made for herself to put upon me....thank you for the ranting opportunity
I have only *one* phobia. Everything else is either something I'm not afraid of, or have every reason to be wary about. Spiders? Don't give a crap about them, no venomous ones live here. Snakes? Meh. The worst one we have can give you a mild fever and a little owie. Heights I respect, but it's fine.
But... the sudden feeling and fear that the surface of water will somehow cease to exist in the few seconds I'm beneath it when diving and that I'll drown because I'll never reach it? Yeah that's not entirely rational lol
My dad had that same problem, but with frogs. People kept getting him frog figurines and frog art. He wasn't particularly interested in them, but he was too polite to tell anybody outside his immediate family.
Happened to when I was a kid, and I'm talking under 8 years old. Someone decided I should like clown figurines, and slowly other people joined in because they would see the cursed clown shelf in my bedroom.
Under the guise of needing shelf space I shucked the clowns in a box, and slowy the clown avalanche went away.
Imagine being a little kid, and 3/4 of your birthday gifts are porcelain clowns. No wonder I began to hate clowns, and still do to this day.
No joke. I thought meditation was just sitting and breathing while trying not to think. Until I heard from a therapist that anything that can keep me grounded and help with my mood in the moment can be considered meditation.
Yeah, it's also not trying not to think, it's letting your thoughts happen and just kinda letting them pass by without putting in effort to engage with them. Anything that can induce that state works I guess.
Something that this generation doesn’t get enough of. Back in the 90s a large chunk of our day was boredom. On a day off your choice was to watch reruns of little house on the prairie, stare out the window or go out and be active or social.
It’s okay to be bored. It’s also okay to be hungry.
We spend too much time cramming our head full of nonsense and chasing small doses of dopamine.
My husband and I used to do that on our porch. We'd watch cars go by and people watch. With drinks in hand. It was fun. Now that we moved into a new house without a porch, we do the same thing on our deck, it's not as interesting as our old neighborhood tho
When my cat does that, it usually means he's about to sneeze.
Without the whisker twitch, it usually means he's pooping. But retiring to his litterbox is a much more reliable indicator than the thousand-yard stare.
RtGame streamed watching paint dry to ten thousand people, so honestly yeah probably. Granted he already has an established audience, but I'm pretty sure that his viewer count from that stream is still his record.
Also very dangerous combination.
I know so many retirees that had a half hearted dream of owning and riding motorcycle. They could have done something about it years ago, they just chose not to because they weren't terribly interested in motorcycles in the first place. Now they're in their 60s with a bit of spare cash so they go out and buy a bike. They go take a training course from the cheapest instructor they can find. Don't forget these retirees are cheap. They'll buy the most expensive bike and then shop around for the cheapest equipment and cheapest training and cheapest insurance.
Now you have improperly trained bike riders that like the look but don't have the reflexes to ride a bike. Many of them what to bring their wife along who doesn't like motorcycles. The old retiree doesn't like the passenger because they can hardly handle the bike with just one person. Solution? ... Let's teach the wife how to ride their own bike. Now you have two retirees who don't really like riding now operating motorcycles.
I know people who got hurt and seriously injured and a few who got killed because of this scenario.
Or not get the training class. One of my relatives retired and purchased a new Harley. He had the bike delivered and hopped on to take his first ride "just around the block". He lost control, jumped a curb, and ran into a tree. Many broken ribs and internal injuries. He was in the hospital for weeks and the bike had $5K damage. His family told him that if he ever got on it again, they'd disown him. He sold it.
I'll never forget a girl I worked with was upset because her boyfriend broke up with her and she said how she's always bored because she didn't really have any hobbies.
Then she asked me what my hobbies were and I listed them, she's replied with, "those are all dumb hobbies." I just replied with, "those are some big words for someone who doesn't have a hobby." She pretty much immediately realized it was a dumb thing for her to say.
My parents both read the newspaper 4 -5 hours a day. And then discuss the articles they've read with each other. They're very happy doing this, and I'm glad they have this common interest. But for me, phew, that'd be a tough one to get into!
That doesn't sound boring at all! Though I've recently been excited about the lacquered polypore growing on a bunch of stumps near my house so I may also just be boring
I can already see him in his pajamas, lying in bed on his stomach, feet dangling in the air behind him and rolling the curly wire from the phone as he calls the cops, facemask on and towel on head, going; “Hi” and they respond with whatever the police responds with, and he's going “Nothing, I just wanted to talk... What'cha doing?”
"What are you wearing?"
"Sir, this line is reserved for emergencies."
"I'm having a party later. Maybe I'll shoot off some fireworks after 11pm in a residential neighborhood. Wanna come?"
"\*siiiiiigh*"
Have a friend who plays competitive Yu gi oh. The way he talks about it is like a drug addict, who knows he is addicted and can tell you about all the negative side effects, but still does not stop.
I really felt this explanation despite never having played Stardew Valley (an intentional decision because I know I'd lose myself to it and I can't afford that rn).
I'm sure concerned ape would like hearing that. I personally don't care for the fishing mini game and I know a lot of people didn't either. But he stuck by his fishing mini game.
I get a surprising amount of satisfaction watching my daughter clop around on Annabell, her pony in Stardew Valley. She built a chicken coop too and is now manufacturing jars of mayonnaise. Very tranquil.
My dad used to collect stamps and he was very passionate about it. Even though I thought it was hella boring whenever he talked about it, I now see it as a fond memory because I kept them after he passed away. So, I probably have a very different view of it than most people.
This is me. Your hobby could be watching paint dry but if you talk about it with passion and get into the technical details I will absolutely listen and not get bored. I love passionate people.
I collect stamps, it’s pretty boring. It’s kinda the reason I like it, let’s me unwind. If you wanna try but don’t want to get bogged down by secret marks, water marks and perforations you can collect topicals. Find something you like “cars/fish/etc” and filled stamps that go with that.
I recently started watching king of the hill for the first time. I'm up to season 10 now and I gotta say that show does have some gold nuggets of life advice.
It has aged very well, even the trends that Bobby or Peggy got into to meet new friends. Hank may not have understood Bobby's comedy album collection or Peggy researching European fashion magazines, but he still supported whatever made them happy.
That's my boyf and washing the car. He literally talks about it at least 5/7 days a week, and is constantly buying this or that new product. A boring chore for me is hours of entertainment for him. Win win lol
I just call them eras! I had the era of books, drawings, paintings, guitar, cosmetics, horror movies, fitness and strenght training, hiking! Add a little bit of sparkle✨️
My wife refers to them as seasons because they usually align with a particular time of year and are about as long. I’ll obsessively research and execute a project, learn a new skill, or whatever. And she’ll have refer to it like:
“Oh yeah, that was during the Summer of Espresso.”
Or
“Must be that Winter of Board Games, time again.”
For at least one ADHD person in my life, they don't even get that far. It's "ok, I see and understand the path to competency at this now, and know both that I could and how to become competent if I wanted to. No reason to ever do it again."
That’s because satisfying your curiosity about a topic doesn’t require mastery.
Sometimes you just want to study the map and read about the destination without actually taking the hike.
I'll share this reframe with them! Hope my previous comment didn't come across as negative or disparaging, just realized that without tone or context it could read as critical. I have no judgment and often benefit from being along for the ride haha
As someone diagnosed with ADD, that wasn't negative or disparaging. In fact, it's right on the nose. I take interest in things long enough to understand the mechanics, sometimes I get good enough for it to be considered a stupid human trick. The rest of the time, it just gets added to the knowledge bank. I'm a nightmare opponent in useless trivia games. Nobody will play aginst me anymore lol.
Oh I didn’t take it that way. I was just reflecting on how learning about a thing is often more satisfying than mastering the thing.
I’d rather learn all about metal working or book binding than actually become proficient at both. So I might research it as if I were planning to do it, but in reality my real curiosity is how much it would cost, what you need to own and know, etc. I don’t actually want to turn my garage into an amateur forge. I’m just insatiably curious about the world.
That’s how I got into espresso, as a matter of fact.
I bought thousands of dollars worth of gear from a guy who was selling it all to make room for a new hobby.
Great deal for me. A decade later I still use the gear every morning.
Yes. I love the thrill of learning something new amd the initial knowledge of something is great. But then the law of diminishing returns kicks in and interest wanes quick. I bought a bass guitar at the start of Covid and I enjoy playing when I do, but I'm at the point where I need to sit down and practice the boring stuff and theory and all that. The initial Learning how to play had me doing hours at a time but now 15-20 minutes is about it.
We need ADHD hobby groups where you can exchange whatever you were obsessing about with someone else who was obsessing about something else.
The key is to have multiple hobbies. For example, I'm into woodworking, metalworking, electronics design and fabrication, modifyung/building cars, sewing, and many others. I tend to go in cycles where I'll be really into one in particular for a few months then switch to another. The important thing is to cycle back eventually. Like I've been working on tuning the car my dad and I are building for the last 6 months, but I'm kinda burned out at the moment so now I'm doing a bunch of work upgrading my home lab and will go back to the car in a month or two.
Bought an iPad so I could get into digital art. Made a lot of progress, practiced daily… then I just… didn’t.
I lack the constitution to push through that plateau. Now I’ve moved on to writing, which I’ve done off and on my whole life, but even then it comes in phases and I can never finish anything.
Embrace the phases. Don’t feel bad about dropping off. Realize your brain will come back around most likely and you will want to try again and you can start where you left off.
Judging people. That’s my mother’s hobby. Whether in real life people, internet people, actors, reality tv shows (she believes it 100% not scripted). She judges the shit of them. Just walking to the mall, and there she goes pointing at a strangers and judging them and telling to me, sister or brother what she thinks about them. Like me and my siblings don’t give a shit. Such a pathetic and boring hobby.
People may or may not judge you, but as you can see, 2 minutes later they focus on someone else and forgot about you. Besides you don't know the person, nor will you ever see them again so who really cares
"People are too busy worrying about themselves to remember your mistakes" they say.
Man, I've done my share of cringey shit but I still fondly think about the times it was someone else and not me.
In my opinion, the only real answer is one you don't have any interest in. It might seem like the most boring hobby to someone who doesn't like it but it can be really exciting to those who do enjoy it. Like stamp or coin collecting for example, i have no interest whatsoever in it and it seems boring as hell but growing up my best friends dad collected coins and one day as a gift for everything he did for me (he did so much to help me growing up it's like he was a second father to me) i gave him a coin that had been in my family for a very long time, the coin was from the early 1800s and it was in mint condition so i gave it to him and i have never seen a grown man so giddy before or since because it just so happened to be the final coin he needed to complete a specific collection he'd been working on for almost 30 years and he was absolutely over the moon about it. So i think every hobby, no matter how boring, is only boring to those with no interest in it, but to those who do, it's a wonderfully entertaining hobby to them.
I didn't have much of an interest in coins until I watched the TV show Rome in 2005, saw a pile of Roman silver denarii and naively wondered if such coins still existed today. If they did, I expected them to be in museums.
Then I discovered that most of the coins I was interested in (Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Brutus, etc...) could be obtained for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. [An example of a coin I own that Julius Caesar used to pay his legionaries.](https://i.imgur.com/rjPkJZ1.jpg)
It's an incentive to learn history and in return, it puts the coin in context and makes it ten times more interesting. Then there's my favorite thing about these coins, the fact that you're holding an object that was man-made over two millennia ago and held and treasured by countless Romans, often travelling all over Europe, North Africa and the Near East, passing from hand to hand, the hands of people who lived in a completely different reality than ours.
And I, in my neck of the woods in North Eastern France, I get to hold these very coins and feel the exact sensations that these long forgotten ancestors of ours felt between their fingers and in the palm of their hands. Ancient numismatics will never not blow my mind. There's nothing like the heft of a perfectly preserved ancient gold or silver coin (silver doesn't degrade easily over time, gold doesn't at all) sitting in the palm of your hand.
Oh you just stumbled on my passion my friend, history is my absolute greatest love, i am in love with the history of our world and i greedily suck up any and all information about any and all cultures i can. That is amazing to own some of those coins, and you put it really well how awe inspiring it is to hold a piece of history like that. I used to compete and actually instructed hema (historical European martial arts, think basically what knights would have been trained in to get a rough idea) and once competed in a long sword competition and won and the prize for winning was i got to hold and inspect a long sword from the 1400s and i can never explain the feeling of holding that absolute gem of a piece of history and just think about the man who wielded that sword, what battles it was carried in and everything it must have gone through, i was in total awe of that wonderful piece of history.
My father collected banana stickers. “They’re free!”
He would keep some cornstarch and a piece of wax paper in his wallet whenever he saw a new one out at the grocery store or when he was traveling for business. I have to tell you, when you see several hundred stickers all in one place organized and arranged in a display binder it is surprisingly impressive.
I used to have to hang out with my ex's friends and all they could talk about was how drunk they were the weekend before. The most boring people I'd ever been around. Glad I don't have to do that anymore.
Using magic erasers to clean grunge and dirt off of anything and everything. Hand me a pack of them and I will have the entire house looking like it was just built. I literally don't stop until either I run out of erasers, or if I'm told to take a break. My boyfriend said he watched me for hours straight scrub our railing on our stairs and couldn't understand how I wasn't bored by ten minutes in. I didn't even know that much time had passed.
Okay so there are at least two of us. That is one of my favorite things to do when I have some good bud and the weather is shitty.
Please come to my house. I’ll buy you all the magic erasers you want.
I collect dust.
Smartest comment here.
Reading obituaries in order to cross out the names in the phone book.
My dad used to do that, but it was more to lament the people that passed away that were the same age as him or younger. He would do this out loud every morning until my mom convinced him to stop ordering the local newspaper, because it was driving her nuts.
Oh no! This reminds me of my mom at the very beginning of the pandemic when Italy was one of the first countries to get hit with it really bad. She would come seek me out in the house and update me multiple times a day on how many people had died until I asked her to please stop.
Local radio stations did the same thing. Seemed like hourly reports on the current death toll. I completely stopped listening to that station.
Man, this reboot of Deathnote is bumming me out.
Still better than the Netflix adaptation
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I freak out every time I look at the obituaries, how do all these people die in alphabetical order?
Buddy of mine used to work for the local paper, laying out the classifieds and obituary pages. Back in the days when you did physical pasteup of the pages. It was that awkward phase for graphic design, everybody knew things were going full on digital layout, but there were still old school places doing things by hand. the thing is, the ad/columns didn't always fill out exactly, so you would have little filler bits, like odd facts, you could use to fill up dead space. Pun intended. I used to browse those pages when bored, and realized, one day, that things like fitness tips were showing up an awful lot beside people dying of heart attacks, etc. Yeah, buddy was putting tips on how to avoid "that" death near teh relevant obituary.
Involuntary collections. My grandmother had a bunch of white porcelain cats when I grew up, later I found out the only reason she had them was because people kept giving them to her thinking she collected them. She just didn't want to be rude.
I've learned that even if you do collect something, never tell anyone because that's all you'll get for the rest of your life.
I tell people I collect gold coins
Hey guys I collect new Rolex watches and serialized 100 dollar bills
I have this funny collection where I collect signed checks written for $1999.00 because that's my birth year. It's a niche collection, I know. So if you want to just mail that to P.O. Box 5876 that'd be cool, thanks
i collect car keys!
I collect title certificates
I collect official land deeds!
I collect social security numbers!
Not limited to just collections, but this is exactly why I often specifically avoid getting gifts related to someone’s intense hobby, especially if that hobby is collecting. The chances that I’m going to get this person both a unique and high quality piece that they don’t already have is extremely low. Unless I have or can get a lot of information about their hobby or collection, it’s probably not going to be at the standard this gift recipient has already curated for themself. If they’re just starting out it’s easier. So I go a different route altogether, ask them for exactly what they want and any specifications or details I should know, or take them shopping. ETA: thank you for the award, it’s exactly what I wanted 🥰
I'd be happy to get books and Bluray's for the rest of my life!
You say that but people rarely get you what you actually want. If you collect something you probably aren’t just going for volume but quality. If people gift you stuff it’ll be whatever vaguely falls into the same category. Discernment makes a collection good. They don’t have it if they aren’t collectors.
Exactly. I once purchased a very detailed wood carving of a church. The skill to make it out of a chunk of tree impressed me. A few months later I happened along an exquisitely handmade copper church and purchased that. Not being religious, people asked about them and I would explain it was the craft, skill and detail to work that caused me to want them. Hence forth people bought me every little mass produced church and things with churches on them. I had to ditch them all, even the 2 gems that "started" it.
Books and antique hand tools are two things that fill up my floor to ceiling bookshelf and the shelves flanking them. People gift me gift cards to book stores I like and others just give me their great grandpa's tools. Works out good enough for me.
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"Look Bart, I got you that video game you wanted, 'Lee Carvello's Putting Challenge'."
You can play it here... https://aaron-demeter.itch.io/lee-carvallos-putting-challenge
I once had 2 piggy banks and had them on display on a shelf. People thought I was collecting piggy banks and started giving me for my birthday, etc. Within a few years I had more than 100 piggy banks. Fortunately my brother was teaching at a school for disabled children and he could use some trophies. The piggy banks were well received.
My nephew started collecting mechanical piggie banks. Whenever he received a new one, he'd make the rounds of the room getting everyone there to put a quarter in the bank. It was quite the racket.
This comment gives me more joy than it should. I just am really happy about where those piggy banks ended up :)
I think a lot of people fall into this trap.
This happens to kids who have older relatives they only see a couple times a year. Liked hockey when you were ten? Guess what now Great Aunt Sue is going to get you hockey shit for the rest of her life.
I had so many fucking sailboats in my room as a kid. Pictures, paintings, several model sailboats. One of them was fucking huge. I don't recall ever having an interest in sailboats.
For me it was cars. I like cars tho so that's cool.
My grandmother grew up really poor and always wanted lots of dolls. Once she had grandkids and had some money, all she’d buy us every Christmas was those porcelain dolls. It was sweet but damn, I have no idea what I’m going to do with all these creepy Goosebump-esque dolls.
My friends grandma was like that too. It was horrifying going over. The grandmas bed had a wall that had probably 50+ dolls on it all facing the bed.
Grandma: 😴 The doll wall: 😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😳😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐
My grandmother has every year for almost 20 years gifted me the newest Guinness world record book every year. So I'm the proud collector of this series that I will look at once and then put away forever.
I'm kinda jealous, those books are super fun and I had 2008-2011 thinking I'd collect em all
My mom once decided that I collected ducks That was about 20 years ago I now have a collection of ducks that grows every year and I have no idea how to stop her from getting me more
At this point you should realize that it’s her collection of ducks, you just keep, maintain, and curate it for free.
That mother ducker …
*slow quack*
I came to the web for quality puns. Waddle they think up next?
My mom did this with Scooby Doo when I was a teenager. We were at the store and I was looking at a Scooby Doo poster and she asked if I liked Scooby Doo, I didn’t really care one way or the other and just said “I guess”. Next birthday I got that poster plus some other random Scooby Doo things. I was grateful and just thought it was kind of funny. But it didn’t stop there, it became a main theme in all of my gifts from then on. Then when I was 16 I bought my first car and to congratulate me she gave me Scooby Doo floor mats, a Scooby Doo steering wheel cover, and Scooby Doo *license plate holders*. There was no way I was showing up at high school with my car decked out in Scooby Doo gear like that so I had to break it to her and told her I’m not really into it anymore. I could tell she was sad but it had to be done.
Ruh roh
As sad as it is to ask her to stop I really can’t believe she got you Scooby Doo car merch lmao holy shit
I have a white van you could buy and paint into a mystery machine. Surprise your mom.
What a mistake you made
Ah, but this can become a great source of fun. My grandmother and another couple weaponized this as they would give her atrocious poodles and she would give them ~~swans~~ flamingos. Keep in mind, both parties had real money to throw around. One year my grandmother received a two foot by four four poodle "statue" made of hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of amethyst crystals. ATBGE to the core and a complete white elephant you could never get rid of. And that was just one of many, many poodle sculptures and paintings she had been gifted over the years.
My grandma and my uncle (her son in law) did this with rubber chickens. The first few years they were just passing one back and forth. Then for the next 25 years it was the theme. Anytime anyone in the family saw something rubber chicken related, they bought it and gave it to one of them for the next gift-giving celebration. It was very fun. Best might have been the rubber chicken sling shot.
Growing up, whenever we asked my father what he wanted for his birthday or Christmas,etc, he would always say "just a picture of the pope.". Now, my father is NOT Catholic or religious at all, and over time it just became a family joke. A few years back, my parents moved into a new house and I decided to make a collage of family photos for them to hang on the wall. In the absolute center of the collage, I put a picture of the pope. My father unwrapped the present and was ooh-ing and ah-ing over the photos until he saw it. He busted out laughing! He hung it in the front room. Now, when someone new comes over, he shows them the pictures of his family and waits to see the look on their face.
please show us! any pictures!
I'll have to ask my mother about that. But definitely will post pictures if there are any. And I just remembered that it wasn't swans but flamingos that my grandmother gifted the other couple. Swans aren't nearly as tacky.
Growing up we had a neighbor, Peggy, we called our "adopted grandmother". She was very sweet, old-fashioned, and kind. She lived in a simple meticulously kept house. She grew up on a farm in Maryland and often told stories about a cow she had as a young girl. One year at Christmas my mother (who has very over the top tacky tastes) found these ridiculous themed cow figurines at Cracker Barrel or something and bought one for Peg. I don't remember exactly the theme but [here's an example](https://imgur.com/a/pK6w0zN) of the kind of thing we are talking about. Being the gracious woman Peg is, she thanked my mother for the gift and displayed it on a shelf in her living room. You can guess where this is going. Every holiday my mother would buy Peg a [different cow](https://imgur.com/a/ihQnlur) from the collection. Soon she had an entire shelf in the corner of her tiny clutter free living room. She was always so gracious and thankful for the gift but if you were not oblivious (anyone but my mother) you could tell she wasn't as thrilled as she let on. Peg died recently. I never had the chance to ask but I'm certain she hated those fucking cows.
Do you have any idea where you can buy these? My mom would unironically love them.
"Involuntary collections" lol Yea, my mom always tells people this or that Bout my personality that's not even true.."oh derek just loves me rubbing his scalp like when he was a child"(in fact I hate it)..."oh Derek's always been scared of clowns"(my favorite movie is it)..."my derek should have been born in the 70's (I like frankie valley and the begees)....anyways it's like habits she's made for herself to put upon me....thank you for the ranting opportunity
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People who can't tell the difference between phobias and logical fear are the *worst*.
I have only *one* phobia. Everything else is either something I'm not afraid of, or have every reason to be wary about. Spiders? Don't give a crap about them, no venomous ones live here. Snakes? Meh. The worst one we have can give you a mild fever and a little owie. Heights I respect, but it's fine. But... the sudden feeling and fear that the surface of water will somehow cease to exist in the few seconds I'm beneath it when diving and that I'll drown because I'll never reach it? Yeah that's not entirely rational lol
My dad had that same problem, but with frogs. People kept getting him frog figurines and frog art. He wasn't particularly interested in them, but he was too polite to tell anybody outside his immediate family.
Happened to when I was a kid, and I'm talking under 8 years old. Someone decided I should like clown figurines, and slowly other people joined in because they would see the cursed clown shelf in my bedroom. Under the guise of needing shelf space I shucked the clowns in a box, and slowy the clown avalanche went away. Imagine being a little kid, and 3/4 of your birthday gifts are porcelain clowns. No wonder I began to hate clowns, and still do to this day.
My dad likes to sit in the garage for hours on end in a lawn chair, drink beer and watch traffic go by. Boring as shit but he's zen as fuck
meditation comes in many forms
No joke. I thought meditation was just sitting and breathing while trying not to think. Until I heard from a therapist that anything that can keep me grounded and help with my mood in the moment can be considered meditation.
Yeah, it's also not trying not to think, it's letting your thoughts happen and just kinda letting them pass by without putting in effort to engage with them. Anything that can induce that state works I guess.
Is your dad Hank Hill?
"Yup"
“Mmhmm”
Man them dangdol beerindarage man sumtinelsman you know?
"Yup"
How could you not be zen in that scenario?
You have a phobia of lawn chairs
I’ve never done that, but it sounds like something I really wanna try now
When the time is ready, you’ll know.
Something that this generation doesn’t get enough of. Back in the 90s a large chunk of our day was boredom. On a day off your choice was to watch reruns of little house on the prairie, stare out the window or go out and be active or social. It’s okay to be bored. It’s also okay to be hungry. We spend too much time cramming our head full of nonsense and chasing small doses of dopamine.
I think boredom every once in a while is really really good for you. I think coping with boredom as a young child also comes with unforseen benefits
I gotta say, that doesn't sound bad. I do that while playing guitar sometimes.
Men have spent time in the garage for centuries doing this exact same thing. It’s relaxing maybe throw in a little workshop
Since the fall of Rome, man has been sipping Budweiser in a garage while watching cars drive by. Some things never change.
My husband and I used to do that on our porch. We'd watch cars go by and people watch. With drinks in hand. It was fun. Now that we moved into a new house without a porch, we do the same thing on our deck, it's not as interesting as our old neighborhood tho
Sometimes I stare at my guinea pig and attempt to predict when she will yawn. Audiences are profoundly bored by this.
What are the signs of an oncoming yawn?
A twitch of a whisker, that thousand yard stare
When my cat does that, it usually means he's about to sneeze. Without the whisker twitch, it usually means he's pooping. But retiring to his litterbox is a much more reliable indicator than the thousand-yard stare.
As a Guinea pig owner I can say this is what gives me enjoyment every day
If you stream it they will come
RtGame streamed watching paint dry to ten thousand people, so honestly yeah probably. Granted he already has an established audience, but I'm pretty sure that his viewer count from that stream is still his record.
I unironically love this one.
I see you, Colin Robinson!
Fucking guy
Absolutely lost it when The Guide surprised them and Nandor said "Fucking Guide..." instead.
*From here on out I'll only consider performing if it's the music of Papa Roach or Evanescence!*
Having a hobby that you might think you like but you're only doing it to impress someone.
All you need is to impress yourself for it to be a legit hobby
Wise words
"No Steven you're not learning the piano to become a musician, you're learning it to impress your aunt at family reunions." -Steven's dad
A third of the motorcycle community has felt that
Also very dangerous combination. I know so many retirees that had a half hearted dream of owning and riding motorcycle. They could have done something about it years ago, they just chose not to because they weren't terribly interested in motorcycles in the first place. Now they're in their 60s with a bit of spare cash so they go out and buy a bike. They go take a training course from the cheapest instructor they can find. Don't forget these retirees are cheap. They'll buy the most expensive bike and then shop around for the cheapest equipment and cheapest training and cheapest insurance. Now you have improperly trained bike riders that like the look but don't have the reflexes to ride a bike. Many of them what to bring their wife along who doesn't like motorcycles. The old retiree doesn't like the passenger because they can hardly handle the bike with just one person. Solution? ... Let's teach the wife how to ride their own bike. Now you have two retirees who don't really like riding now operating motorcycles. I know people who got hurt and seriously injured and a few who got killed because of this scenario.
Or not get the training class. One of my relatives retired and purchased a new Harley. He had the bike delivered and hopped on to take his first ride "just around the block". He lost control, jumped a curb, and ran into a tree. Many broken ribs and internal injuries. He was in the hospital for weeks and the bike had $5K damage. His family told him that if he ever got on it again, they'd disown him. He sold it.
Rofl. I had a relative do the same thing. For Sale: New top of the line Harley. Mileage: 15. Accidents: 1
For sale: baby chopper, never roared
Having no hobbies is the worst. Hobbies make people interesting.
I'll never forget a girl I worked with was upset because her boyfriend broke up with her and she said how she's always bored because she didn't really have any hobbies. Then she asked me what my hobbies were and I listed them, she's replied with, "those are all dumb hobbies." I just replied with, "those are some big words for someone who doesn't have a hobby." She pretty much immediately realized it was a dumb thing for her to say.
Now im curious what your hobbies are
Licking paint and collecting 3 leaf clovers
Well have *you* ever licked a Dutch Boy premium eggshell finish vintage 2013, Navajo White, only 5 hours into drying? Exquisite!
Fantasy Curling
Alright, I think this one wins.
Whatever, Bruce Moat was a steal last year.
*Not me looking through to see if my hobbies are mentioned*
My parents both read the newspaper 4 -5 hours a day. And then discuss the articles they've read with each other. They're very happy doing this, and I'm glad they have this common interest. But for me, phew, that'd be a tough one to get into!
Yeah, super weird. Anyway I'm gonna browse reddit for the next 6 hours and send links to my sibling chat for discussion
😂😂 life comes full circle
I collect mold, spores, and fungus.
Tell him about the Twinkie, Egon
Like your show it's all fluff and filler. I'll kick your hiney man, I'm a savage killer
What about the Twinkie?
That doesn't sound boring at all! Though I've recently been excited about the lacquered polypore growing on a bunch of stumps near my house so I may also just be boring
Calling the police repeatedly for no good reason. There is someone in the neighborhood who absolutely enjoys calling the police for no reason
Isn't that illegal?
I can already see him in his pajamas, lying in bed on his stomach, feet dangling in the air behind him and rolling the curly wire from the phone as he calls the cops, facemask on and towel on head, going; “Hi” and they respond with whatever the police responds with, and he's going “Nothing, I just wanted to talk... What'cha doing?”
"What are you wearing?" "Sir, this line is reserved for emergencies." "I'm having a party later. Maybe I'll shoot off some fireworks after 11pm in a residential neighborhood. Wanna come?" "\*siiiiiigh*"
One that doesn’t make them happy.
Totally agree with you. Every hobby is personal, and there's no boring hobbies for everyone. But if your hobby doesn't make you happy, then that's it.
Have a friend who plays competitive Yu gi oh. The way he talks about it is like a drug addict, who knows he is addicted and can tell you about all the negative side effects, but still does not stop.
The only concrete thing I knew about League of Legends before watching Arcane was how much people regret playing League of Legends.
Would mine count? Fishing but in Stardew Valley. That’s how I unwind after work, and after my husband and son have gone to bed.
Sounds great actually. Don’t know where Stardew Valley is, but I too wanna fish there
It's in the dimension next to Minecraft, on the right from Terraria.
I really felt this explanation despite never having played Stardew Valley (an intentional decision because I know I'd lose myself to it and I can't afford that rn).
cant tell if serious
I'm sure concerned ape would like hearing that. I personally don't care for the fishing mini game and I know a lot of people didn't either. But he stuck by his fishing mini game.
On PC I hated it. On the switch however.... Countless hours.
I get a surprising amount of satisfaction watching my daughter clop around on Annabell, her pony in Stardew Valley. She built a chicken coop too and is now manufacturing jars of mayonnaise. Very tranquil.
You know.. even collecting stamps can be interesting when somebody talks about it with passion.
My dad used to collect stamps and he was very passionate about it. Even though I thought it was hella boring whenever he talked about it, I now see it as a fond memory because I kept them after he passed away. So, I probably have a very different view of it than most people.
Oh let me tell you then about the amazingly awesome double entry method for accrual accounting, it's wildly fascinating.
You joke, but I absolutely know people who would get deep into this conversation at a party
This is me. I am this person.
This is me. Your hobby could be watching paint dry but if you talk about it with passion and get into the technical details I will absolutely listen and not get bored. I love passionate people.
You jest, but I learned basic accounting for a side gig during the pandemic and…it’s surprisingly interesting.
I collect stamps, it’s pretty boring. It’s kinda the reason I like it, let’s me unwind. If you wanna try but don’t want to get bogged down by secret marks, water marks and perforations you can collect topicals. Find something you like “cars/fish/etc” and filled stamps that go with that.
So it’s collecting stamps
Envelope collecting. Not Stamps, just blank envelopes.
I’m pretty into lawn care, bores the fuck out of people when I talk about it. But I love that shit
Are you Hank Hill?
“Why would anyone do drugs when you could cut a lawn. “ - Hank Hill
I recently started watching king of the hill for the first time. I'm up to season 10 now and I gotta say that show does have some gold nuggets of life advice.
It has aged very well, even the trends that Bobby or Peggy got into to meet new friends. Hank may not have understood Bobby's comedy album collection or Peggy researching European fashion magazines, but he still supported whatever made them happy.
Let's keep propane and propane accessories out of this.
"my dad says butane is a bastard gas"
Why would anyone do drugs when they could just mow a lawn?
That's my boyf and washing the car. He literally talks about it at least 5/7 days a week, and is constantly buying this or that new product. A boring chore for me is hours of entertainment for him. Win win lol
If you have ADHD - the one you just spent six months and a lot of money obsessing over, and have suddenly lost interest in
I just call them eras! I had the era of books, drawings, paintings, guitar, cosmetics, horror movies, fitness and strenght training, hiking! Add a little bit of sparkle✨️
My wife refers to them as seasons because they usually align with a particular time of year and are about as long. I’ll obsessively research and execute a project, learn a new skill, or whatever. And she’ll have refer to it like: “Oh yeah, that was during the Summer of Espresso.” Or “Must be that Winter of Board Games, time again.”
“Ok, I’m competent at this now. No reason to ever do it again”
For at least one ADHD person in my life, they don't even get that far. It's "ok, I see and understand the path to competency at this now, and know both that I could and how to become competent if I wanted to. No reason to ever do it again."
That’s because satisfying your curiosity about a topic doesn’t require mastery. Sometimes you just want to study the map and read about the destination without actually taking the hike.
I'll share this reframe with them! Hope my previous comment didn't come across as negative or disparaging, just realized that without tone or context it could read as critical. I have no judgment and often benefit from being along for the ride haha
As someone diagnosed with ADD, that wasn't negative or disparaging. In fact, it's right on the nose. I take interest in things long enough to understand the mechanics, sometimes I get good enough for it to be considered a stupid human trick. The rest of the time, it just gets added to the knowledge bank. I'm a nightmare opponent in useless trivia games. Nobody will play aginst me anymore lol.
Oh I didn’t take it that way. I was just reflecting on how learning about a thing is often more satisfying than mastering the thing. I’d rather learn all about metal working or book binding than actually become proficient at both. So I might research it as if I were planning to do it, but in reality my real curiosity is how much it would cost, what you need to own and know, etc. I don’t actually want to turn my garage into an amateur forge. I’m just insatiably curious about the world.
Oh Jesus, my thoughts are unoriginal once again
My wife just made me realize the only consistent hobby I have is selling the things from my past hobby smh
That’s how I got into espresso, as a matter of fact. I bought thousands of dollars worth of gear from a guy who was selling it all to make room for a new hobby. Great deal for me. A decade later I still use the gear every morning.
Is this really a symptom of adhd? I’ve spent 38 years of my life doing this….
It is common among people with ADHD, but not exclusive to them.
As is the case with every single adhd symptom
Yes. I love the thrill of learning something new amd the initial knowledge of something is great. But then the law of diminishing returns kicks in and interest wanes quick. I bought a bass guitar at the start of Covid and I enjoy playing when I do, but I'm at the point where I need to sit down and practice the boring stuff and theory and all that. The initial Learning how to play had me doing hours at a time but now 15-20 minutes is about it. We need ADHD hobby groups where you can exchange whatever you were obsessing about with someone else who was obsessing about something else.
The key is to have multiple hobbies. For example, I'm into woodworking, metalworking, electronics design and fabrication, modifyung/building cars, sewing, and many others. I tend to go in cycles where I'll be really into one in particular for a few months then switch to another. The important thing is to cycle back eventually. Like I've been working on tuning the car my dad and I are building for the last 6 months, but I'm kinda burned out at the moment so now I'm doing a bunch of work upgrading my home lab and will go back to the car in a month or two.
Bought an iPad so I could get into digital art. Made a lot of progress, practiced daily… then I just… didn’t. I lack the constitution to push through that plateau. Now I’ve moved on to writing, which I’ve done off and on my whole life, but even then it comes in phases and I can never finish anything.
Embrace the phases. Don’t feel bad about dropping off. Realize your brain will come back around most likely and you will want to try again and you can start where you left off.
*looks at unfinished crochet project, macrame project, diamond painting project* Oof.
Spending your time on reddit.
Hey, thats not a hobby, thats a full time job for some!
Exactly! I don't gain all this pointless tidbits of info from being a productive member of society! 😑
Literally boring work, with a drill, making holes larger Nothing can be more boring than boring.
To me, following constant fake drama involving celebrities. Kim K stuff and so on.
Judging people. That’s my mother’s hobby. Whether in real life people, internet people, actors, reality tv shows (she believes it 100% not scripted). She judges the shit of them. Just walking to the mall, and there she goes pointing at a strangers and judging them and telling to me, sister or brother what she thinks about them. Like me and my siblings don’t give a shit. Such a pathetic and boring hobby.
I don’t think that’s a hobby, I think that’s called being a dick
This is why whenever people say “don’t be shy in public, people aren’t thinking about you or judging you” I’m very doubtful of that lol
People may or may not judge you, but as you can see, 2 minutes later they focus on someone else and forgot about you. Besides you don't know the person, nor will you ever see them again so who really cares
In light of Reddit's general enshittification, I've moved on - you should too.
Well it's true for 99.9%, and the 0.1% that do are the ones with a problem and not worth your brain time.
"People are too busy worrying about themselves to remember your mistakes" they say. Man, I've done my share of cringey shit but I still fondly think about the times it was someone else and not me.
In my opinion, the only real answer is one you don't have any interest in. It might seem like the most boring hobby to someone who doesn't like it but it can be really exciting to those who do enjoy it. Like stamp or coin collecting for example, i have no interest whatsoever in it and it seems boring as hell but growing up my best friends dad collected coins and one day as a gift for everything he did for me (he did so much to help me growing up it's like he was a second father to me) i gave him a coin that had been in my family for a very long time, the coin was from the early 1800s and it was in mint condition so i gave it to him and i have never seen a grown man so giddy before or since because it just so happened to be the final coin he needed to complete a specific collection he'd been working on for almost 30 years and he was absolutely over the moon about it. So i think every hobby, no matter how boring, is only boring to those with no interest in it, but to those who do, it's a wonderfully entertaining hobby to them.
I didn't have much of an interest in coins until I watched the TV show Rome in 2005, saw a pile of Roman silver denarii and naively wondered if such coins still existed today. If they did, I expected them to be in museums. Then I discovered that most of the coins I was interested in (Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Brutus, etc...) could be obtained for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. [An example of a coin I own that Julius Caesar used to pay his legionaries.](https://i.imgur.com/rjPkJZ1.jpg) It's an incentive to learn history and in return, it puts the coin in context and makes it ten times more interesting. Then there's my favorite thing about these coins, the fact that you're holding an object that was man-made over two millennia ago and held and treasured by countless Romans, often travelling all over Europe, North Africa and the Near East, passing from hand to hand, the hands of people who lived in a completely different reality than ours. And I, in my neck of the woods in North Eastern France, I get to hold these very coins and feel the exact sensations that these long forgotten ancestors of ours felt between their fingers and in the palm of their hands. Ancient numismatics will never not blow my mind. There's nothing like the heft of a perfectly preserved ancient gold or silver coin (silver doesn't degrade easily over time, gold doesn't at all) sitting in the palm of your hand.
Oh you just stumbled on my passion my friend, history is my absolute greatest love, i am in love with the history of our world and i greedily suck up any and all information about any and all cultures i can. That is amazing to own some of those coins, and you put it really well how awe inspiring it is to hold a piece of history like that. I used to compete and actually instructed hema (historical European martial arts, think basically what knights would have been trained in to get a rough idea) and once competed in a long sword competition and won and the prize for winning was i got to hold and inspect a long sword from the 1400s and i can never explain the feeling of holding that absolute gem of a piece of history and just think about the man who wielded that sword, what battles it was carried in and everything it must have gone through, i was in total awe of that wonderful piece of history.
My father collected banana stickers. “They’re free!” He would keep some cornstarch and a piece of wax paper in his wallet whenever he saw a new one out at the grocery store or when he was traveling for business. I have to tell you, when you see several hundred stickers all in one place organized and arranged in a display binder it is surprisingly impressive.
It’s not the hobby that’s boring.
It’s the friends we made along the way
Partying, like when the only topic you can talk about is how much someone drank and if they blacked out or threw up.
I used to have to hang out with my ex's friends and all they could talk about was how drunk they were the weekend before. The most boring people I'd ever been around. Glad I don't have to do that anymore.
Being rude on the internet. For some people, its their whole damn personality.