<story><title>Ask HN: Do people not have hobbies anymore?</title><text>It feels like every time someone gets into a new field now, there&amp;#x27;s always the expectation they&amp;#x27;ll &amp;#x27;go pro&amp;#x27; or turn it into a day job. Every open source project or website gets treated as the potential basis for a company, every creative seems to think they&amp;#x27;ll become a full time artist or creator, every writer wants a book deal or mailing list or whatever...&lt;p&gt;And while there&amp;#x27;s nothing wrong with that, it feels like people have lost sight of what hobbies can be, and forgotten that something can just be a way to relax or destress instead. Hell, if you create anything, everyone will seemingly tell  you how much money you should be making from it, and encourage you to monetise it in some way or another.&lt;p&gt;So is there a reason for that? Has the financial situation forced everyone into always looking for a side hustle or way to &amp;#x27;escape the rat race&amp;#x27;? Or is there some other explanation for why everything seems to need a financial reason to exist now?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>ravenstine</author><text>It has a lot to do with not understanding the other person&amp;#x27;s motivations.  If a person&amp;#x27;s hobby doesn&amp;#x27;t interest you, but you can see the lucrative value of said hobby, one might be compelled to suggest making said hobby a career.&lt;p&gt;I think this is a prevalent phenomenon because &lt;i&gt;most&lt;/i&gt; people don&amp;#x27;t actually have hobbies if you disqualify food and entertainment.  Some of them will have a passing interesting in something, but unless they spend some money on it, that can hardly be called a hobby.  People who have actual hobbies probably understand why another person doesn&amp;#x27;t want to make a career out of their hobby, but those who have no hobbies likely don&amp;#x27;t get it and see the hobby as the seed for some kind of dream job.&lt;p&gt;The way society views hobbies has gotten worse due to things like hustle culture, the artificial celebritydom of social media, and the devaluement of being hands-on with things that comes with living in a highly industrialized society.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>coldpie</author><text>&amp;gt; It has a lot to do with not understanding the other person&amp;#x27;s motivations. If a person&amp;#x27;s hobby doesn&amp;#x27;t interest you, but you can see the lucrative value of said hobby, one might be compelled to suggest making said hobby a career.&lt;p&gt;Yeah, this is a big annoyance to my wife. She does knitting, sewing, other fiber arts. When speaking to other non-crafty types, almost always the first thing they say is &amp;quot;you should sell your pieces!&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;can you make me X for $Y?&amp;quot; Her response is always a hard no. This is something she does for fun and to share with friends and family. It&amp;#x27;s not a job.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I did programming as a hobby growing up. I turned it into a career, and now it&amp;#x27;s the last thing I want to do in my spare time. This was actually kind of a difficulty, I had to go find new things to do for fun. Now I do woodworking and guitar and spend very little time on computers at home!</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Do people not have hobbies anymore?</title><text>It feels like every time someone gets into a new field now, there&amp;#x27;s always the expectation they&amp;#x27;ll &amp;#x27;go pro&amp;#x27; or turn it into a day job. Every open source project or website gets treated as the potential basis for a company, every creative seems to think they&amp;#x27;ll become a full time artist or creator, every writer wants a book deal or mailing list or whatever...&lt;p&gt;And while there&amp;#x27;s nothing wrong with that, it feels like people have lost sight of what hobbies can be, and forgotten that something can just be a way to relax or destress instead. Hell, if you create anything, everyone will seemingly tell  you how much money you should be making from it, and encourage you to monetise it in some way or another.&lt;p&gt;So is there a reason for that? Has the financial situation forced everyone into always looking for a side hustle or way to &amp;#x27;escape the rat race&amp;#x27;? Or is there some other explanation for why everything seems to need a financial reason to exist now?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>ravenstine</author><text>It has a lot to do with not understanding the other person&amp;#x27;s motivations.  If a person&amp;#x27;s hobby doesn&amp;#x27;t interest you, but you can see the lucrative value of said hobby, one might be compelled to suggest making said hobby a career.&lt;p&gt;I think this is a prevalent phenomenon because &lt;i&gt;most&lt;/i&gt; people don&amp;#x27;t actually have hobbies if you disqualify food and entertainment.  Some of them will have a passing interesting in something, but unless they spend some money on it, that can hardly be called a hobby.  People who have actual hobbies probably understand why another person doesn&amp;#x27;t want to make a career out of their hobby, but those who have no hobbies likely don&amp;#x27;t get it and see the hobby as the seed for some kind of dream job.&lt;p&gt;The way society views hobbies has gotten worse due to things like hustle culture, the artificial celebritydom of social media, and the devaluement of being hands-on with things that comes with living in a highly industrialized society.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yunwal</author><text>It also might just be used as a compliment. “Wow, I love this cake so much I would pay money for it”. Not my favorite complement but I see it used that way.</text></comment>