I like to work on cars. Behold modern cars and all of their overcomplicated bullshit.

I love board games, and own a game shop. Many companies are creating board games (and other types of games) that require their app, then after a few years they abandon the app making the game useless and unplayable.

I play darts, we used to write on whiteboards with sharpies. Now nearly every club has a computer with some kind of software. Usually this software is closed source and sends all the data to some kind of server. We as players have no choice if we want to play the tournament, we have no control. Many clubs also use the computer for training. So everyone can see when you are playing, where you are playing and how you are playing. Great to see how good your next opponent is. Also great to track people. But way worse is the fact that everyone just talks about their average. Oh I played so bad my average was under 60, I still won 3-0 but I was so bad. I hate this. I want back the times where I play shit, win the game with a nice finish and can proudly say it wasn't good but a nice finish and we stop talking, not hear from someone not even in the room how bad I played.

Kinda a niche topic to rant about I know, but no one in this hobby seems to get my concerns.

Well I play video games, and woo boy, let me tell you about microtransactions, crap DLC content, season passes, never ending early access, unfinished releases, and anti cheat root-kits! If you’re on console you pay a premium to play online, if you’re on PC you have 18 different game launchers and DRM bullshit. Digital only stuff means you don’t own your games, cant loan them or trade them or sell them. I’m sure there’s more, and admittedly there’s good with the bad. Graphics have come a long way, and some rare innovations are fun to see. I still have fun with it, but wow it is a fucked up landscape full of way more land mines than it used to be.

Bike lanes and paths are now full of people buzzing by at 25mph or more.

Board games have been nearly ruined by kickstarter.

Instead of buying a well reviewed and recommended game from a store, you have to back a hyped up sales pitch, and then wait 4 months for delivery, if the producers don't just bail with your money or go "oops, we couldn't finish what we promised, and we already spent all your money...".

And if you don't back it to later read the reviews, the game is out of print and still waiting for the first wave of deliveries, meaning a second print is still at least a year off.

Also, the ratings are heavily skewed by people rating on the hype or early/review copies, meaning the rankings are heavily amazonified.

EtA: Also games are heavily bloated with social media candy: heavy and fragile minis, box stands, blingy crap periferals (branded dice holding toucan) and still needing organisers, player aids and mods from third parties who've gotten review copies to make said supplements...

Oh, and the stretch goal extras (get another 150 vanity minis/3D printed scoring tokens) for only $150 and an 18 month wait!

Solar, batteries and portable music has wrecked most of my favourite camping areas.

Video games. Streamers, YouTubers, and other ”content creators” have had a massive negative effect on the hobby as a whole.

The bandwagons driven by these people can destroyed games that should have had a mediocre reception, but instead were panned by a couple creators then that criticism was parroted loud and wide. Where a game could have had a nice little niche audience, instead it was shut down a year after launch due to the shitty bandwagons.

These people also drive companies to make horrible balancing and content decisions. Since these people play games as their jobs, and play them daily for 8-10-12+ hours, they have wildly different desires and perspectives on games. These perspectives again get parroted loudly, the game companies hear it, and make changes/decisions based on people that play all day every day. This destroys gaming for not only casual gamers, but all gamers that don’t play one game for 8+ hours a day every day.

I could go on and on, but these trash reality TV stars for nerds have done so much damage to the industry.

The industrial revolution resulted in climate change that makes it borderline impossible to be active outside in the summer.

Somewhat tangential, but Eddy Burback recently posted a YouTube video talking about AI, and how it's being marketed in a way that's intended to rob people of wholesome interpersonal experiences. Or at least dilute them by horning in.

Nothing is safe from tech bros. Certainly not hobbies.

https://youtu.be/IZ4HOCld5nY

Smart TVs have ruined gaming. The UI is absolute dogshit, and I can't even simply switch HDMI inputs without this whole useless setup process EVERY FUCKING TIME

Phones ruined Burning Man. Their cameras make people tourists, and their onsite social media precludes immediacy.

I have many hobbies, but they've all gotten better due to technology. I'll be curious to see what other people have to say.

It's not nearly as much fun to collect things. There's no thrill of the hunt-- if you need a stamp for your collection, just go online and buy it.

I LOVED books as a kid. I was reading at a high school level by the time I started kindergarten, and I just absorbed every book I could get my hands on. I would bring a 100-200 page book to school every day and would finish it before I got home in the afternoon.

I also enjoyed writing and would write my own stories. I was part of an organization in elementary school called Young Authors that encouraged kids to write, and I wrote 3 books through that group. It was my dream to be an author one day.

Then the Internet became a thing.

Suddenly, I didn't need to spend hours in a library reading through dozens of books to find information I needed. I could just do a quick search on Infoseek, or Excite, or AskJeeves, and have a repository of knowledge at my fingertips. It was life-changing!

As the Internet evolved and more data got dumped on it, I started spending more time perusing its depths and less time reading physical books. I ended up getting a job in IT because computers fascinated me so much. Eventually, I realized I hadn't picked up a book in years. Everything I wanted to read, I could find online.

Now here I am at 40 years old and my dream of being an author is gone. In our modern age, most people don't read physical books anymore and authors don't make enough to survive, unless they make it on a best-seller list or something. Even Stephen King is more well known today for his political commentary on Twitter/X. I haven't heard much about any books he's been writing in a long time.

I once wanted a library room in my dream home. I still kind of do, for the aesthetic. But I don't really read physical books anymore, and I could only fill maybe a single wall with the books I currently own; mostly treasured classics from my childhood that have been stored away in boxes for years. I'd be better off having a PC gaming/theater room in my dream home, as that's more where my modern interests lie.

I love the Internet age. It revolutionized my childhood and brought us into a wonderful age of information. But I can't help but think about how completely different my life would've been if it hadn't been invented. I sometimes wonder if I would've been more happy and/or successful in a world without the Internet.

Got into 3D-printing a few years back. Intended to print some replacement parts, a few decorations and gadgets, and took care to not waste too much plastic. In the internet, there are pages dedicated to 3d models other people have printed. They were always a good inspiration on what could be done, and even if the model isn't exactly what you wanted, it was always a functioning prototype to test with.

Since last year, multicolour printers have gained popularity. They automatically change between 2 different colours, but to make sure nothing of the old colour is left in the system, every time they change it they print out a few grams of waste product.

It's a waste indeed if you look at the "poop bucket" of anyone who uses these types of printers. Idc if it's only the "technically recycleable PLA" they use, I don't like it. And now I have to manually filter out those models, and they can fill an entire page depending on what's the new trend right now.

I’m more of a sewer than a knitter or crocheter, but I’ve heard AI patterns for knitting and crochet are really bad online now (and an utter waste of yarn and time).

New tech made me hate IT. Especially shit like Windows 11 and AI.

Model trainers used to be 2 wires to the track from a DC transformer. Add in a switchboard if you want blocks. Set the locomotive on the track and it would run based on your output from the transformer.

Now they are mostly computerized, and prohibitively expensive. A decent steam locomotive used to be $300-500... Now in the $700 range. Granted there is new functionality, but it feels like a hobby simple enough for a 7-12 year old to enjoy became an old rich man's hobby.

Definitely better. I play tabletop RPGs (D&D, Pathfinder), and technology has allowed us to do all sorts of things that would be challenging in a physical medium. We can create detailed maps with lighting effects, sound effects, and triggers. A lot of the more tedious parts of the game such as initiative and health tracking get automated, and applying damage and healing is as easy as clicking a button while having a unit selected. And to top it all off, we're not restricted to playing with the people around us and physically getting together. You can sit at home in your PJs and just hop into a Discord call to play with your friends. I'm truly grateful for it because I was able to continue playing Tabletop RPGs with my sister when she moved 1300 miles away to live with her then boyfriend, now husband.

I've been on social media for a little over half a year. With the introduction of AI image generators, I have had my art stolen by an AI image prompter, who took my art and made it look like a congealed mess, in addition to being accused of using AI on another site back in June, even though I've posted progress pictures, timelapses of me drawing and PaintTool SAI files with many of the layers being intact. The AI image prompter was locally banned by a moderator, while the other person had their account removed by the administrator, who then apologised to me about that person's rude behaviour.

My favorite hobby is gaming so I'd have to say always on requirements for single player games.

Programming and Linux is my hobby I guess but new languages, distributions, and frameworks spring up all the time. On one hand the innovation and creativity and variety are inspiring and impressive. On the other hand it makes analytical types like me more likely to spend time researching solutions than actually implementing them. It's also too easy to find the perfect tool for whatever your problem is or get invested in solution and before you know it the project is abandoned or flipped into a commercial product so you have to start the hunt all over again and convert all of the stuff that depends on it. I think it's a "good problem" to have but still a bit of a problem.

It would be nice if open source software had a more reliable way to be sponsored so contributors could have some monetary support for their efforts. I say reliable because some very popular projects have little to no sponsorship so we could be one pissed off dev away from Y2K.

Writing

I casually bicycle around town and like to see who I can keep up with to test how fast I am. More and more folks have ebikes now and it's getting way less fun.