I am not sure if I buy the premise. Have hobbies been in decline? If so, I would probably look to an explosion in consumption media (web, movies, shows, computer games, etc.) as being as much a culprit.
At any rate. I have hobbies. Everyone should.
I can relate to the shift towards expecting work to provide personal fulfillment. I know I look for that, but I don't know if I really should, or just be content with a nice paycheck and stable employment. I've got hobbies out the ass, really, but I can see how people are constantly tempted to turn it in to a profession. The homebrewer fantasizes about opening that microbrewery. Make candles? A front-page post on reddit can jolt you into small business territory, at least momentarily. Hell, Etsy practically has their business model built off people's desire to monetize their hobbies. The thing is a lot of people don't realize until it's too late that they like doing their hobbies on their own terms, not someone else's (i.e. as a business). I learned in high school I like drawing, but not art class. I like music, but not being poor, etc. etc.
Based on people's bios on online dating hobbies no longer exist.
For what it's worth, describing oneself both honestly and attractively is kind of a pain to some people. Think of how difficult it was to write college applications (For me it was like pulling teeth). Now multiply that by the insecurity people often feel between relationships and the consideration that People You May Know may end up reading that description and thinking you pretentious or basic or full of it or not actually that much of an achiever. Is Hubski a hobby? #foodski? #musicski (#hiphopski?)? But also sarcasm is my second language.
It's a pain to almost everyone except the most depraved narcissists. What I and kantos were quoting is low-effort, even in the realm of dating profiles.For what it's worth, describing oneself both honestly and attractively is kind of a pain to some people.
Men's health asserted in 2000 that if you could get a woman to laugh, you could get a woman to sleep with you. Not that there's a direct line between A and B, but sharing humor is sharing intimacy and the ability to connect well enough to disarm someone to laughter is a useful ability when flirting and establishing romance. No one wants to be intimate with someone they can't be at ease with.
I have no doubt of the validity of that. Perhaps it's just the scope of my looking glass, but such a general statement seen from profile to profile... I thought that'd be a given. In fact, I'd be surprised if/how any genuine intimacy could ensue without humor, laughter, what say you. I can relate to seeing a lack of variation with online profiles...
I don't feel like people in my generation were very encouraged to have hobbies. Whenever somebody asks what you want to do with your life they mean career and that's the focus all through out adolescence. It wasn't until I dropped out of college that I realized although I had made many career plans I had no idea what I actually wanted to do with my life. Because of that this line stuck out to me. I think productivity and goals have been hammered into the brains of my generation so much that we don't see a point in doing something if there isn't an end goal. Fun and enjoyment aren't good enough reasons for at least a big enough chunk of people that I've definitely noticed. It wasn't until I was an adult that I actually started picking up hobbies. In a culture obsessed with productivity, the hobby has become the next venture.
I don't buy the premise. Hobby Lobby is a publicly traded company with over 3 billion in sales. Knitting is somehow cool. Fucking vinyl is making a comeback. You want to tell me that seeking out rare b-sides is somehow less of a hobby than pressing fucking flowers?
Still, I can’t help but imagine her today, perhaps earning a paycheck as she hunted for new plant species, logging 47 hours per week among the dusty hills of Northeast California. Would it taint the purity of her hobby? Or would it enhance her life? She's romanticizing her aunt's life. She thinks that her aunt having this hobby was so nice that monetizing turns it into something awful. The alternative was that if her aunt needed money, she would have had to stand on the floor of Sears for 8 hours a day or more. Then she would have gotten the hobby to take her mind off what she had to do to get extra money. Monetizing leisure doesn't take it away entirely. People just find other ways of finding a way to take a break from the thing their doing all the time. There's an underlying premise that doing something you don't like is a good thing since you can escape from it with something you do like. That probably sounds more true if it's someone else that's doing the suffering.For my great aunt, flower collecting was a path to peace outside the home. It was a meditative return to nature, something she could own and be alone with. It was not work. Her flower-pressing excursions were citizen science by happy coincidence.
Resources have been on the decline. Whilst the engineered ones are inflating... There are age old debates resurfacing because of this.. It hasn't happened yet, but things are simplifying. Time is regaining its fundamental value over whatever the heck is fathomed in today's world.
Are hobbies in decline, or are hobbies looking different because it is possible to take the results of so many hobbies to market than it ever has been. Aunt Flower Presser may have had a solitary pursuit for herself long ago, but now would belong to an online community of flower pressers/gatherers that would have lead to a side business that would supplement her pay that she received from working at the local Winn Dixie.