What hobbies help you minimize or avoid navigating commercialism?

By commercialism, I’m aiming at a mix of spending a lot and sifting through bloated business models (e.g. this or that accessory/equipment, microtransactions, etc.). Feel like many can relate to this sort of commercial fatigue, and yet it creeps even into hobbies where one tries to unwind.

Lately I’ve picked up reading more again, as thanks to libraries I’m able to do just that, but I’m wondering what some other, less obvious options* might be.

:::spoiler * This is mainly for the going outside, walking folks. I enjoy a good walk from time to time, but I’m interested in activities that are a little less obvious. :::

RBWells,

I do gardening (easier for me than most as a landowner, but there are also community gardens where I live), make my own bread, cooking, and yes, walking.

Birdwatching is good and doesn’t require buying much.

My kids lately have been into puzzles and karaoke.

There’s a lot of fitness stuff you can do without buying stuff. Yoga, bodyweight exercises, even the partner acrobatics are fun and certainly a challenge.

Sex, lol. Not a hobby per se, but so good for a relationship and a great activity to do together.

starfennec,
starfennec avatar

Plants / gardening: you can multiply plants and get seeds for little or no cost.

Kolanaki,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

None of my hobbies intrinsically help. The fact that I have ADHD and autism do. Commercialism’s psychoaddicitiveness doesn’t work on people with broken brains.

Tavarin,
@Tavarin@lemmy.ca avatar

3D modelling and printing. You do need access to a printer (some libraries have them), but the plastics and resins are cheap, and you can make lots of cool stuff.

Mrs_deWinter,

Writing stories/novels.

Chances are your initial expense will be zero. You most likely already own everything you could need. Almost everything available for purchase is unnecessary or completely ridiculous. Your friends and family won’t even know what to get you for Christmas over this new hobby.

Fill your everyday routine with daydreams and inspiration, imagine scenes and dialogues while your mind would otherwise go idle. Stuck in traffic? Turn up the music and imagine something. Bored doing chores? Picture yourself as one of your characters. Annoyed by strangers? Put them in your story and let a piano fall on their heads.

I truly think everybody should write. It’s such a delightful thing. Not to publish anything obviously - but because it’s fun, it’s easy and it’s completely free.

knightly,
@knightly@pawb.social avatar

Become a furry!

It’s more of a subculture than a hobby, but developing your own fursona and interacting with the furry community through it is a great way to kill time and make friends.

Plus, it’s compatible with all the other hobbies too, because no matter what it is there’s a group chat full of furries just as excited about it as you!

RamenDame,

Boardgames. You can go all in and Kickstart cool games and buy all the bits and pieces. But actually, board gamers are always in the lookout for players. Therefore you’ll find a big community with lots of games and it is not necessary to have your own games. If you do like to buy though but want to avoid costs, share it with someone. Make it your game. Many you can’t play alone anyway. I wouldn’t mind someone to have no games at all but spend the time with me to play. Your time is the most valuable. And: it is easier to find friends through board gaming than get your friends to play boardgames.

rockandsock,

Landscape photography. Do it while you are on your hike.

Grenfur,

Recently I’ve taken to self hosting. It started with me just wanting a raspberry pi for pi-hole and has developed into a full hobby. Because so many of these services are FOSS and can run on a toaster it’s helped me immensely with avoiding commercial fatigue. I also find that the communities for the hobby are insightful and, because the solutions are free, they aren’t selling you on a product. They’re just passionate about the service, distro, or setup that they use.

I’ve also learned a ton of applicable skills for adult life, so happy side-effects.

weeeeum,

What do you recommend hosting because oddly enough I already want a server but I don’t know what to host. I feel it’s such a waste to burn electricity just to produce heat since using electricity in any capacity produces heat so I would literally use my server as a space heater.

I thought of hosting a Minecraft server for friends (or even friends of friends) and folding @ home as well. I already have a computer much better suited for file hosting so I would not need more of that.

Grenfur,

What will you be hosting on? I started with a raspberry pi. It was important to me to host on something outside my main machine. I chose the pi because it would run linux, use very little electricity, and would remain out of the way.

Initially it was for pi-hole. Which is a network wide DNS filter used to block ads (with some exceptions like YT). That got me more interested in my own privacy. So, I added a searx instance to my pi. It’s an aggregate search engine that searches a bunch of search engines and won’t track me. Or at least I’m tracking myself.

I’ve never run a minecraft server on a pi but I have a friend who has. It was fine for up to about 4 people.

From there I actually built a rig specifically for hosting. It’s a little more stout than the pi. On it I run Proxmox (which I use to create linux containers for the other things I host). I do run a file share on it. It’s nice because it’s easy to run weekly backups so I don’t lose things. I also run a vpn, qbittorrent (for linux isos), jackett (indexes torrents), sonarr (used to… find movies I’m missing), jellyfin (to watch said movies anywhere in the house) and finally I do host a valheim server there for my friend’s and I.

Honestly I would at least start with a dedicated machine for it, maybe an old laptop, a pi, just anything cheap that if you screw up you can wipe and start over. From there: pi hole, seaex, retro game box maybe? There’s really a lot of things you can host. Find a need you have a Google a linux solution for it. There’s almost always one.

weeeeum,

I work as a computer repair technician and my workplace has some really old cheap (90$) server hardware for sale. They have 32gb of DDR3 and old dual xeon 5606. I would probably upgrade them because old xeons are dirt cheap. They also have some old workstations too that could be suitable for hosting, similar amounts of ram but new processors.

Not energy efficient but that’s fine since they would literally be a space heater, and if maxed out those old CPUs can still get some work done.

Grenfur,

Honestly, that’s not bad for a start. That Xeon should be fine for most things. I run an amd 4650g pro and never get close to using it all.

Side Note: The people over at !selfhosted have been immensely helpful for me in my brief journey so far.

FauxPseudo,
@FauxPseudo@lemmy.world avatar

Wood working. Whittling. You can buy very expensive tools or you can go old school and pick up used 100 year old ones for nothing or even make your own. You can buy wood or you can salvage it.

weeeeum,

I agree tremendously. Additionally Japanese woodworking is pretty much devoid of commercialization entirely. Tools tend to be judged by their undeniable quality and the reputation of the blacksmith who forged it.

Additionally to avoid commercialization in western wood working (aside from buying vintage) is making a lot of your own tools. One of the most important rules in wood working is to buy tools that allow you to make more tools. So go ahead and buy some chisel blanks and make some handles, buy a vice screw and build your own leg vice (coincidentally the leg vice is almost extinct today due to commercialization of the cast iron vice, despite performing worse than the leg vice). Build your own bench, clamps (use some hardware kits) and if you have some guts you can cut your very own wooden planes and fit an aftermarket blade.

It’s a lot of work but it’s very rewarding and there is a tremendous amount of pride when using tools you make/restore yourself.

giraffedesigner,

I sew my own clothing amongst other things and am generally crafty (woodworking, etc).

I don’t know if it’s possible to completely avoid consumerism (gotta buy the fabric, materials, etc) but it’s a lot easier to find things to repurpose. I have made clothing out of old bedsheets and curtains, for example. People repurpose pallet wood all the time as well.

thirdBreakfast,

I don’t sew, but a follow several people who do (for vintage and modern clothing) on Instagram - just to emotionally vampire off their irrepressible happiness when it all comes together and they make something that comes out as great as they imagined (lots of “and it has pockets!!!” moments) or they master a new skill they had been struggling with - like sewing button holes in denim or whatever.

It’s not for me, but I love the obvious satisfaction and joy other people are getting out of it.

Bye,

Playing magic cards. I just print them all off at the library

FrickAndMortar,

Get yourself a speed loom for $20 and some thread or embroidery floss, and you can darn socks! This was my pandemic “learn a new skill”, and now the whole family brings me socks with holes, to fix.

And the “best” part is that cheap socks wear out around the patch, so then you get to / have to darn them again!

Tutorial:

youtu.be/qhPUjTxQgHA?si=L2hUlL7IBxboQ59L

pastermil,

How about collecting & watching pirated TV shows off the internet?

elbarto777,

That’s not a hobby. That’s a way of life!

pastermil,

YAARRRRR!

Rentlar,

Learn a new language using Language Transfer method!

Pay what you want, but the lessons are very well done and quite different than your textbook (no writing anything down at all). The teacher doesn’t push you to donate at all but I tell you it’s absolutely valuable and worth it.

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