Asklemmy

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

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

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

I build and optimize molecules using computational chemistry software for fun.

Similar to another reply about shorthand, I practice with my own steno-typing keyboard I 3D printed as a hobby. I'm steno-typing this very message! (Very slowly)

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

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...

Running. Ok, I know it's not obscure, however, if you say you're a runner, or that it's a hobby, you're frequently met with hostility, or people trying to talk you out of it. The amount of times people have said "running is bad for you, you need to stop" is insane.

Marxism

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

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...

Sim racing.

It’s difficult to talk about it without people dismissing it as just a video game with a steering wheel.

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

In addition to general learning which might be my favourite, I have multiple.

Maybe the most niche is a historical reenactment and historical costuming. Latter usually based on extant garments or garment finds. I try to get as close to the original in techniques, tools and materials using the best evidence I can find.

I also plan things that will never happen. I decorate houses and apartments on paper. I make extensive plans for travel that I can never afford unless I win in Lottory. Which I even never play.

I spend absolutely too much time playing with spreadsheets.

I’ve recently returned to wanting to get into guitar amplifier repair and design.

I have a pair of amps that i want to diagnose some particular problems and perhaps design a new pcb for or build out whole new ones

Not me, but my wife. She collects kpop cards. Apparently the bands have a random card of one of the members in the albums. Theres a whole trading and selling market for them.

I genuinely love brass band. It is a not terribly known form in pop culture (even among "classically" trained musicians) but that shit is awesome.

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.

i used to be really really into fingerboarding / fingerskating. made my own wooden decks and stuff

I'll say me writting my homebrew DnD world. It goes in pair with me using ObsidianMD, I love the tool i'm using and i'm having fun specifically in the making of polical cities more than in the making of combat senarios. My mom knows about it and sometimes asks, Dad finds it stupid, and I don't talk about it with anyone I used to atlk about what I write to two friends, but they are coming to my session in september so now I have no one esle to bring it up