i collect dice. i really enjoy finding unusual dice via kickstarter. im always on the look out for something that hasnt been done before or unusual shapes. when a new type, i.e. liquid core, comes out i usually wait a month or so to see what the market does. if everyone starts making them then i dont usually add them to my collection. i am also trying to collect all the chessex gemini series dice
Physical media collecting. Particularly if i have a functioning player for it. If i don’t then the interest goes down the drain. That’s why there’s a huge focus on books with me. Pulps. That’s why I’ve got my eyes on a copy Swords And Deviltry as we speak.
I realize you’re likely referring to music formats/players, but…
I’ve wanted to get some Zip disks and a USB drive to just have fun with the nostalgia. Same with Minidiscs. Every time I see a Techmoan video with Minidiscs I say to myself “you don’t need them… you don’t need them…”
I like cars, but specifically boring old cars. Supercars don’t do anything for me, I think normal “enthusiast” cars are pretty boring, and the communities around them can kinda suck. But I will totally nerd out about your grandma’s bingo-mobile she bought new in the 80s.
I love plushies. I have an ever growing collection and love just browsing plushies of all sorts when I’m online. I just really like cute things. But as a 28 year old man with a beard, it’s safe to say I’m not exactly the spiting image of a plushie collector, and most people are definitely not interested in talking at length about it with me.
Fixing small things. My friends or family need something fixed that doesn’t require a professional. I like figuring out how to fix things or at least providing a temporary solution. I do it because I’m helping someone, also I’m building my skill set. A basic search of answers and videos teaching me how to do it properly most times is easy to find. If not I find a way to create a safe temporary solution until they can have one come in. Very fulfilling, especially if you like a challenge.
Just replaced the cheap plastic latches on my Nintendo Switch controllers with metal ones the other day, then did the same for my girlfriend’s switch yesterday. $5 and maybe 20 minutes total and now our controllers don’t randomly slide off while playing anymore. A new set of controllers is $80 each. It was a good feeling.
This is basically how I got into plumbing, turns out working for a company that doesn’t snake drains makes the profession super interesting and varied such that it sated my adhd desire for novel experiences and problem solving.
Home brewing beer and making fishing lures. Not many people I know in my daily life enjoy beer or fishing. It feels pompousy to just bring up in casual conversation unless someone talks about how expensive a keg of Texa$ from Turing Point Brewing is or a swimbait they seen at thier local taxidermy shop was selling for $200+ and looked ultra realistic.
I don’t think it’s super obscure, but I home brew beer and it’s a hobby where you can really go deep into the technicalities of tweaking recipes, building equipment, and just the overall process in a way that would probably bore the average non-brewer to death.
I agree, and I have a lot of fun doing it. But I doubt that the average person would be interested in a discussion about yeast attenuation or which water profile to use for a particular style of beer.
Sim racing isn’t necessarily too quirky or obscure but I do it to maintain some sort of maybe possibly ADHD. Doing laps around a track really helps with getting myself used to focusing.
It’s especially helpful because each lap around a race track tends to be only 1 - 2 minutes, which is a relatively easy amount of time to keep focus at any one point in time, but keeping it up for consecutive laps and remaining consistent as time builds up in small increments is a different kind of joy to me.
I am also a person with ADHD who uses sim racing as a form of meditation. I think motorsport requires processing a lot of information very quickly, so its one of the few things that can fully occupy my overly busy mind.
Hahaha unfortunately Circuit de la Sarthe is my absolute limit when it comes to track length, though even on the Mulsanne Straight I end up spacing out. It’s like a mini break
I collect and know a lot about weed vaporizers. Weed is still not legal where I live and other users, who even also use vaporizers, are happy with their device and don’t wanna know about the benefits of my other dozens
So what’s your favorite? I’ve been exclusively vaping for years now, no combustion in this house. So far my favorite devices are my TinyMight 2, Ditanium, and various Dynavaps with the Simrell FMJ if I’m using a torch. I have a DC elev8r too but my girlfriend banned it after I burned the shit out of myself and set a blanket on fire.
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’ve got in my room right now a game of mahjong riichi, and I can fully agree. Taught my family, and every time we play I have to reach it again. Made some friends discover to and everytime I have to explain there rules, because it’s simply not a game any of them are used to. But I love it
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