I started writing tweets with Ruby tips and engaging with people for sometime and I've noticed most people tend to find a way to monetize their activity. I only do it for the pleasure of learning with the community. I don't care about writing ebooks or making people pay for things they don't need.
But I can definitely conclude that on the internet, most people are looking to make big bucks. But have you tried going climbing or doing outdoor activities? There is always plenty of amateurs that never dream of becoming a professional climber or anything like that.
Also depends on where you live, but I live in Europe and here you see people having hobbies and doing random stuff everywhere you go, people just drinking a coffee and staring at the sky.
It could be that this is what you need. Disconnect.
There are plenty of people just "doing hobbies" on the internet too, but those people tend not to broadcast their activities as much as the ones who so the activities to earn their living. If you (say) play the violin and make videos of it for your friends, those won't be as slick as those of a violin-playing youtuber who needs the videos to get a million views each or they can't pay their mortgage.
Yeah, monetizers are partaking in SEO to boost their ad-ridden blogs to the top, whereas anyone else who's writing a simple blogspot to document their hobby gets left to page 12 or 13 of the search results.
It's a delight when I come across a personal site that goes in depth about something, and has no ads or donation begging.
This. I often share random music snippets and other fragments of creative output with my friends in various group chats. I think it scratches the itch of “being seen” while sidestepping hang-ups about posting creative work publicly.
Edit: and my friends generally do not suggest I monetize my creative hobbies :)
> Also depends on where you live, but I live in Europe and here you see people having hobbies and doing random stuff everywhere you go, people just drinking a coffee and staring at the sky.
Essentially this. I'm a software engineer in the U.S. And here are some of the places & situations I've been in where I've come across other software engineers (as discovered through simply chatting up random strangers)
- At anime conventions
- At a martial arts school
- At an art showing in a Middle Eastern-themed cafe
- At in-the-park social events
- At wine-and-cheese tastings
You find people where they spend their time. If you're visiting websites that cater to try-hard indie hustlers, you'll be surrounded there by try-hard indie hustlers.
On the flip side, if you're going out and _doing_ actual hobbies, you'll be surrounded by people who go out and do actual hobbies. Some of them might even share your same career choices.
I'm a software professional. My hobbies are fountain pens, chess, and Go (the game, not the language). Going to a pen show I meet people from vastly different career paths, including those who make a living in the orbit of the hobby.
Of all the above, only martial art school counts as a hobby. Hobbies are defined as doing something (e.g. drawing, playing an instrument or a sport, fishing etc.), not just as passive consumption (e.g. going to conventions or events).
That's a far narrower view on hobbies than most people would define it as. "Mental" stimulation typically counts as leisure activity. To the extent that no one sniffs at the idea of saying "watching movies" is a hobby of theirs.
Appreciating/critiquing art at an art show--or attending a certain style of social event on a monthly basis--certainly requires more active participation than spending time in a theater.
And if you doubt what sort of time investment an anime fan would require in keeping up with their hobby, take a look at much material someone would have to keep up with in just a three-month period alone: https://myanimelist.net/anime/season
> To the extent that no one sniffs at the idea of saying "watching movies" is a hobby of theirs.
Interesting. I actually sniff at that idea :) For me, watching movies is a pasttime activity, similar to say scrolling your phone. A differentiation between pasttime activity and a hobby for me is that hobby requires some level of effort.
> Hey CM30, I feel you are using too much internet.
> It could be that this is what you need. Disconnect.
I can second all of this.
I feel like I'm seeing more people fall into the internet trap, wherein they slowly slide into a chronically offline lifestyle and lose touch with the real world.
Eventually, they surround themselves with more and more chronically online people who are in a similar bubble, making their situation feel common or normal.
As this all slowly consumes their time outside of work, they begin to unintentionally withdraw from real-world friends and activities. The constant strain of processing the worlds' news and social media drama leaves them too exhausted to go anywhere, but while at home the easiest thing they can do is reach for more social media comfort (I include HN in that social media definition, as we're here socializing in the comments).
It is possible to break the cycle, but it takes a bit of a push to get it started. Simply forcing yourself to reach out to old friends or go somewhere to socialize and pick up a new hobby is an easy first step. Or just set a goal to step outside for 30 minutes each day to do anything that isn't related to work or being online.
And likewise I would say that the best way to ruin a passion is to call it a hobby.
People want to get out of the rate race because they understand that they are trading their valuable and unique time on earth to perpetuate a rather unsatisfying and miserable existence.
I think you may be projecting a bit. Nobody was categorizing all passions as hobbies and please go get a real job, etc. etc. Apologies if I misread that, but that’s how I understand your reply.
Regardless a lot of hobbies bring us joy as they’re free from the often brutal realities of our financial system and incentives. Once you cross that line it changes the perception of that interest for a lot of folks.
Definitely agree that pressure can come online or IRL but I don’t think it’s purely just people. There are many cultures, societies, communities, or heck just small friend groups where there is zero pressure to monetize. Eg I’ve been part of book clubs and movie clubs where we just talk about entertainment and art and never think of turning it into a podcast or YouTube series.
Such hobbies are probably the hardest to monetize, short of doing paid reviews. So I'm not too surprised that clubs built around that are low pressure when compared to hobbies that produce physical artifacts.
Yah on the one hand people are probably more willing to hand over money if they get something tangible/physical in return. That said, if you find the right niche, pure bits are easier to scale. Almost 0 marginal cost to adding more podcast viewers but building (and shipping!) wooden furniture doesn’t scale the same way. ;)
“Going pro” is my hobby. I find it very enjoyable to do the math on what it takes to break even and then profit, how likely that is, and how it compares to other activities.
In the end nothing really compares to just doing my regular job in tech but it’s fun to dream of making a huge profit selling home made sauces or whatever.
The sports and hobby industries are huge for a reason. People do ALL KINDS of stuff all over the world for fun. Seriously, the diversity is enormous. If you feel like people aren't having hobbies then something is very very skewed in your perspective.
This is a good point. It does seem logical that people with offline hobbies might be less likely to treat them as a job, perhaps because there's less of an 'obvious' road to doing so. The folks I knew who went climbing definitely seemed like they were doing it for fun.
I would like to add that it seems the internet used to be a lot more hobby-centered before around 2009. I do miss that old internet, where people did fun and creative things just for the sake of fun and creativity.
I remember the fun, irreverent blog "Stuff White People Like", satirizing the recreational tastes of upper-middle class college-educated Americans. Then one day the author got a book deal and the blog ended abruptly.
That would have been around 2010 or so. Since then it has felt like the entire Internet, from Youtube and Twitch all the way down to Patreon and Gofundme, has turned into a big tip jar.
Hey, please leave money out of climbing (joking, there ain't any worth talking about yet, unless you do Honnold stuff and that's mostly due to NatGeo and North Face's money and Jimmy Chin's propagation of him and himself).
But seriously, I truly wish serious money would be left out of sports. Yes I know pros need that to train (and buy their yachts/ferraris in certain fields), but I would be extremely happy to see sports being performed on lower level just like first olympics were, but done by people out of pure passion for it, not chasing sponsors / desperately trying to get views. It just degrades whole idea.
Thus I completely ignore all major sports since once you look at it via that sort of lens, you can't go back and its a sad sight anytime. I know I am a minority with this, but hey its way more interesting to stay out of sheepish crowds anyway.
Even on the Internet it's not hard to find people doing hobbies for nothing. I might go to reddit to talk about comic books or some specialized forums to talk about gardening or even find (or run) a small website for an area of niche interest. Seems like OP also has a fairly narrow definition of "hobby".
> most people tend to find a way to monetize their activity
I don't think that's true, not even just for bias towards the US, and not even if we correct for bias towards just the subset of people who are on Twitter/ social media.
As to "monetize their activity", really we have to define what that is and isn't.
Say someone does ice-skating and spends ~$1000/yr on it and posts things with affiliate links where they get a tiny amount of revenue, well is that "monetizing their activity" or not? Most would say it isn't. Not compared to old-school "monetizing" like teaching ice-skating classes for $20 cash to kids. And definitely not compared to sponsored Olympic hopefuls who need to get $30++K/yr from their teens, just to stay in the game.
In the last decade I started meeting lots of wannabe influencers and affiliates, most with small followings and near-zero revenues. Is that "monetizing"? I'd say no.
> on the internet, most people are looking to make big bucks
No they're not. Mystified at this claim. Lotta people talk about it, very few achieve it (again depends on how you define it, e.g. "enough to quit the day job and live comfortably purely off internet-based revenues"). Noone audits their claims, right? And they have huge incentives to make false or exaggerated claims.
I don't even think you can clearly define which subset of people is "on the internet" and which isn't; for example, realtors, car dealers, even yoga instructors, tree-surgeons and vets often have websites (and social media), are they doing business "on the internet"? Most would say not really.
I think hard data would help prove/disprove this claim. For example, how many full-time arbitrageurs (resellers) are there on eBay, Amazon zShops and couponing sites? as opposed to just doing it as a side-hustle?
I strongly suspect there's a severe bias towards influencers talking about stuff that doesn't happen (think: Douglas Adams novels), just like the majority of people who claim to be realtors (at the end of every boom cycle, hundreds of thousands of hopefuls get an RE license) have never sold a property, or come close to selling a property. I guess realty is the ultimate 0/1 outcome, and it's easy to ask a wannabe realtor for a list of properties they've sold, hence it's easy to verify 80+% of them have no sales.
I agree with thiago_fm that the OP needs to spend time off "the internet" (more specifically: the influencer side of social media), all the hype and bragging and people relentlessly talking about themselves and unverified claims will pollute your thought process and sense of calm and adequacy.
>Say someone does ice-skating and spends ~$1000/yr on it and posts things with affiliate links where they get a tiny amount of revenue, well is that "monetizing their activity" or not? Most would say it isn't.
IIUC you would say that if someone spends ~$1000/yr on their ice-skating hobby and say makes $10 back on ice-skating-related affiliate links on SM posts, that that's not spending a net $990/yr on their hobby, it's "monetizing their activity"?
Curious to see other people's responses.
I think the term "monetize" has been debased to almost meaninglessness.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. Monetization doesn't imply profitability. Though if they really are downsizing essentially no time or effort on it and bringing in essentially no revenue, they aren't heavily monetized.
But even just conceptually framing your hobbies as something that could bring in revenue can change how you approach things, and probably not for the better in terms of enjoyment or stress relief.
Well, 'monetizing', but not in any signficant way, certainly not paying for the whole thing.
By that token, Girl Scouts selling cookies is 'monetizing' their hobby. It would feel weird to retrospectively apply 'monetize' back into the early 20th century or beyond (prior to the advent of modern newspapers and advertising).
> But even just conceptually framing your hobbies as something that could bring in revenue can change how you approach things, and probably not for the better in terms of enjoyment or stress relief.
Totally agree. And yes framing is a large aspect to it. Like if people who buy lottery tickets every time they stop for gas reframed themselves as 'investors'. Seems unhealthy to have to reframe relaxation activities as 'potential revenue generation'.
>Also depends on where you live, but I live in Europe and here you see people having hobbies and doing random stuff everywhere you go, people just drinking a coffee and staring at the sky.
It's sad how in the US people are too busy paying medical bills that they don't have time to drink coffee anymore :(
I started writing tweets with Ruby tips and engaging with people for sometime and I've noticed most people tend to find a way to monetize their activity. I only do it for the pleasure of learning with the community. I don't care about writing ebooks or making people pay for things they don't need.
But I can definitely conclude that on the internet, most people are looking to make big bucks. But have you tried going climbing or doing outdoor activities? There is always plenty of amateurs that never dream of becoming a professional climber or anything like that.
Also depends on where you live, but I live in Europe and here you see people having hobbies and doing random stuff everywhere you go, people just drinking a coffee and staring at the sky.
It could be that this is what you need. Disconnect.