Fountain pens. Honestly, most people look at me more weirdly when I mention a nib's feedback than when I mention the means of production.

Nude hiking. I mean I wouldn't care if someone I knew saw me, but I wouldn't be talking about it in most conversations.

Stand-up comedy. I love doing it and I'm a HUGE nerd about it.
It's not that I wanna hide myself, I'm just tired of all the "tell me a joke" or "let me tell you a joke" conversation that follows. If you wanna hear my jokes come see me on Friday and I've probably already heard your joke many many times and told 10 times better than you do.

I dabbled in a bit of neography (creating your own writing system) and a hint of conlanging (creating your own language). I think I've managed to create a fairly decent writing system for myself, but the conlang went nowhere fast as I underestimated the effort required to even get started with it. I also attempted making fantasy maps, but it was all in paper and quite a while ago.

That's it, I suppose: neography, conlanging, and fantasy mapping.

I also spent an embarrassing amount of time looking at maps and making virtual road trips via Google street view, but that's way more mainstream.

Dildos, especially Bad Dragons. I genuinely love just collecting them

I'm an amateur game developer. It's very, very rare I actually get to meet someone else who's into it. Everyone else is either overly impressed, thinking I'm some genius making COD or GTA in my spare time (I am definitely not), or some combination of thinking I'm lying/complete disinterest. It makes me quite sad to see that programming is still relatively niche.

I love fixing up classic iPods, and as much as I enjoy it, any mention of it comes with "but why?", then the person asking refuses to understand why I still like using iPods even in this time of streaming music.

3d printing

In general most people have a total misunderstanding about the whole process and it's boring explaining the basics

Guns. People assume I'm a Republican

Fountain pens! And inks.

And quality paper.

playing in a symphonic orchestra. sure, it sounds cool, but most people don't know much about the topic and feel intimidated by it, so the conversation is just me attempting to convince them that it's not just for rich nerds and you can be casual about classical music.

I like collecting old 2000s handhelds. PDAs and the likes! Even daily driving a real beauty, a Sony Clié PEG-UX50 (catchy name as always, Sony!)

Model Railroading. I went several decades without a layout. Then for whatever reason, I just recently started building an N scale railroad. I'm having fun remembering oops skills and learning new techniques.

I absolutely love working on photocopiers, even though it's my job.

My friends say I'm a hoot in the discord!

This is totally fascinating reading all the replies.

I love making bleeps and bloops using VCV rack and Mirack on iOS. The flexibility of modular synths in the digital realm is so much fun! And no one can do 5 minutes of conversation about it. Admittedly it’s pretty dense.

I play Mahjong. If I try talking to most Americans about it, they'll think I'm talking about Shanghai, or Mahjong Solitaire.

I actually play 3 forms of it:

Riichi: Standard Japanese rules. This is what you typically see in anime and mahjong games from Japan.

CSM: Competition rules for Chinese Mahjong. This what you'll typically see played in tournaments outside of Japan

American Mah-jongg: A ruleset with a lot of unique features. An AMJ set contains jokers that can act as any tile in the set. The game is played without being able to call "chow"(taking a sequence of 3 pieces), You "Charleston" for the pieces you need before the round begins (pass pieces to the right, left, and across from you), and the standard hands you can make change on a yearly basis. This is the version you often see played by the American Jewish community.

I love playing all three, but it's hard to play them in person, because you need to find at least 4 people who can play by the same rule set.

Riichi is easy enough in Japan, but it's seen as kinda a sketchy game here, and most places you can play it are at expensive and seedy mahjong parlors. Luckily there are a flood of video games based around it that make it more accessible.

Chinese Mahjong is very regional, and each area can have its own variation on the rules, scoring, accepted hands etc. When playing with Chinese friends, I just kinda roll with whatever variation they're playing.

For American Mah-jongg, because the standard hands change year to year, you have to buy a new card from the National Mah Jongg League yearly in order to keep up with it, so it's the only mahjong game with a subscription cost built in. Also as mentioned, the game is very community specific, but also the majority of players are often senior aged women, usually making me the youngest at the table by far.

I love playing all three, but it's hard enough finding someone else who also likes Mahjong, let alone find someone who doesn't confuse it for the solitaire game. I'm not saying Mahjong solitaire ruined my life, but if I could Thanos snap a game out of existence...

I need to find an offline hobby, something that doesn't involve a screen

I don't usually mention embedded programming, electronics, vintage stereo hi-fi, home automation, and fountain pens, among a few others. Of course finding someone who is into any of that could lead to some fun conversation.

Pretty much all of them at this point, I'm in the construction industry. Video games, reading, computer repair, anime, dungeons and dragons, miniature painting, watch making, chess... There are a few brave exceptions, but most people give me that glazed over look when I bring it up.

Technology, open source software, operating systems, retro technology, furries

I've got a shit ton of hobbies thanks to my ADHD, but I think my most obscure one is Reef-keeping. Also the most expensive.......

I play bagpipes semi-professionally. The overwhelming majority of people do not like bagpipe music, and even if they do, they don't want to hear much about my bagpiping antics. One good thing is that I will never struggle to answer the dreaded "what's one interesting fact about yourself" icebreaker.

Jacking off. I'm really good at it and have a lot to share, but every time I've tried the police get called.

Open-source virtual reality, usually just any VR works too lmao but especially FOSS VR

Making gaming terrain out of household junk. Hey, wanna hear about the combat tiles I'm making out of cardboard and hot glue? No? No, I completely understand...

I like making things. I'm mainly into making costume props and decorations. Basically I'm into making interesting things exactly once, learning a bunch of lessons on what to not do, but never do it again. I'm not a skilled wood worker or metal worker. But! I bound a book myself, coffee stained it, and made the cover out of sewn together leather scraps. It's a Necronomicon. I made a lightsaber almost entirely out of junk from ReStore (mostly plumbing parts). I made an EL wire tree with a dried tree branch about 6ft tall, a spool of decent gauge metal wire, and 50 10ft EL strands. Sanded and painted toy guns. Made a James Webb looking wall decoration out of black foam board, gold hexagons, and an NFC tag. Semi related, I modified an IKEA table to be a vaulted board game table where the tops mount on the wall via French cleat and it has cup holders to keep drinks out and away from spilling on the inside of the table. I have 3D printed some minor costume bits. Made a bunch of wizards wands out of paint, hot glue, and chopsticks. Made a float lamp (tie a bunch of annoying knots around a sphere). Currently trying to modify toy Poke Balls to have a functioning LED button but I really hate soldering.

I'm a programmer by trade so I also tinker with Home Assistant far too much. I have a jellyfish lamp with an RGB bulb that tells me the weather when I wake up. Just made an LCARS (Star Trek UI) dashboard for decoration.

I collect lewd anime figures. They sadly have tonspend their existense in a closet.

Buying keyboards... I just had a moment where I made an impulse decision where I spent 200$ usd on one. It's my 7th keyboard and I know it's not gonna be the last. I'm not even a touch typer... Something weird is going on

Seems like every hobby is too obscure for most to care at the level I do. Sim racing, rtlsdr, self hosting, ANY kind of motorsports, home automation, blogging, DND, video games... At the surface these are not too obscure but I find very few people in my day to day life that care about them in detailed way

Knot Tying. Sure, there's an International Guild of Knot Tyers, but it's a rather small group.