I don’t regularly watch any of it whether normal weekly show or special event, but wrestling. I still read up news and stuff about wrestling but I can barely consider myself a fan.
Building PCs. I used to find cheap PC parts and throw together a slowish, but functional computer for the fun of it. I built a few computers for “word of mouth” customers.
I got into other things, and lost touch with the previous clients.
I decided to get back into it a few years ago because my parents needed a new machine. I had to do quite a bit of research, and things were way more expensive than they had any right to be (this was even before the RAMpocalypse), but I got it done. It was still fun, but I realized it’s not something I want to spend a lot of time doing anymore. I still try to follow all of the tech news/tips/reviews, just in case, though.
Similar. I am/was the go to for my family regarding technology. Last year my uncle asked me about laptops for her daughter that was about to enter college and I had no idea. I have been using an inexpensive core i3 for the past 7 years with linux for my personal laptop and my work changes me my laptop wave 2 or 3 years but it is so bloated that it never feels fast and I no longer have any idea about the trends or requirements nowadays
I used to have 2 custom PCs and upgraded them little by little every time I found something interesting on sale
For me it’s a hobby I get back into when I decide I need to build a new PC. Then it’s a furious month or two of research, creating PCPartPicker lists and building. Once I’m done, I put the hobby on hiatus for a few years. I don’t find it interesting enough to keep up with year round.
Me too :(
video games in general. there was a time when video games were my number one hobby by a huge margin. if i had free time i was playing a game, and the only times i would do something else were when i burned myself out or finished something and didnt have anything else to play yet. im not entirely sure what changed over the past decade or so but i slowly stopped finding games engaging enough to hold my interest. i kept trying new games hoping something would hit the way it used to, and sometimes id find that for a while, but now most games i cant play for more than an hour before i get bored and drop them forever. its kind of sad because i used to get so much joy from video games and now i just dont.
Same here, could be just depression or having other stress in life. Every now and then though I do find an absolute gem of a game I can sink hours into (before dropping it again).
This weekend I actually managed to finally get some people together for Meccha Chameleon and we had a blast, played for about 5 hours :)
Time goes so fast when playing Mecca Chameleon! So darn fun
Not saying this is you, but ive noticed society in general had our brains friend by big tech and smartphone use. If you start detoxing and going back to 03 levels of tech use, you start to enjoy things like long form games and books again.
Or maybe you just need a good game series. I’d recommend life is strange (very movie like), or the Alan wake series (Control is an amazing game).
Or, maybe you just value more important things in life than games right now. Thats fine too.
I’m too old, it sucks
Was going through that until I decided on a whim to try the yakuza series, which is very unlike what I usually play. 7 games later and I am now a huge fan
D&D. I’d love to play again, but reality is, I haven’t in years. But I do enjoy keeping up with the culture.
As someone who learned on AD&D 2nd Edition, I gotta say, I find the 5th Edition rule sets (very annoying that there’s two versions. again) painfully slow and tedious to play. The rule set and focus has shifted from large-scale battles with dozens of participants and 3-4 armies to smaller encounters of only two teams and 4-6 participants on each team. Just one large-scale encounter on the 5e rule set would probably take multiple sessions.
The culture and the way people play has also changed dramatically. Pencil, paper, and dice used to be all you need, but is seen as “inadequate” now. Terrain, D&D Beyond, and miniatures are the new standard. Everyone uses a tablet or laptop and browses Reddit between turns. Every turn is treated as an opportunity in the spotlight to have their big moment of the session.
I hate to sound like a boomer, but this new stuff ain’t it.
I think that’s just the consequence of popularization. Everyone watched Critical Role and expects production quality from their DMs. I play Pathfinder and still just use paper and pen. They call it “theatre of the mind” now lol
As someone who also knows how to calculate THAC0, I respectfully disagree. I won’t argue with anything you said, because those are valid points. Just a difference in play style.
Back in the day, we simply skipped, simplified or avoided any of the more complex formulas. We wanted to keep the party moving, and I think the new rules do that better. Roll a 20, high is good, low is bad. That’s all you need to know, and you can focus more on coming up with creative, fun solutions rather than worrying about all the modifiers and restrictions that limit what you can do.
I don’t think we ever ran any real large scale battles, or, if we did, they just got zoomed in. (There’s a massive battle going on around you, this is the tiny portion of it on front of you, and the DM will tell you how the rest plays out).
Everyone uses a tablet or laptop and browses Reddit between turns.
Then why play at all? I thought the fun was doing something together with a group of people, you know, to get away from the internet and back in touch with friends.
I do feel like live plays have set some unrealistic expectations around minis, content and time spend on the game. It’s like expecting your day to day to be an action movie. But all the groups I have played with regularity are more relaxed but each person’s and groups expectations are different.
Combat can get very long if people are not prepared. Especially with graphic details of attacks. Keep that until a killing blow or cinematic moment.
It’s such an awesome hobby, but I burn out way too quickly, especially as DM. You prepare each session for several hours, then the session itself takes 4+ hours easily. Super fun, but on a schedule it starts to feel like work.
That’s the hardest part. Good luck finding a consistent 4-6 hour window that is convenient for everyone.
The key is finding 3 or 4 other adults that understand the value of consistency. I’ve been in a weekly game since before COVID and we simply don’t make other plans on that day. No “eh, it’s just D&D I can skip it to go to the movies”. No grief for legitimate reasons to miss a session (but we try to do a replacement activity to keep the schedule rhythm) because we all trust the rest to take the commitment seriously.
There’s people with children in the group who make it work. If you can’t handle a weekly game you just don’t want to do it enough. It’s not a matter of convenience.
D&D and ttrpgs are perfect for tuning in and out. I used to follow every new releases the play test materials, YouTube channels of live play and discussions while DMing a campaign and looking for one to play in as a player. Now I just play in one campaign as a player and just started to prep being a DM. Its easy to get overwhelmed
Making music. I’ve been collaborating with a buddy off and on, but I used to have a strong drive to work on music daily and now I’m just passively consuming media and generating little creative output. I watch from the sidelines when cool new tools warrant a look, but I wish I still had the drive.
:( Same here. I have slowly been trying to get my gear set up in a new space again, but have trouble feeling the drive to actually write/record anything.
Add me to the pile. Still play for 20-40 minutes, 3-5 times per week, but can’t just sit down and write anything new. Maybe soon…
I used to be big into cars, but they got too complicated, expensive, and I just need something that works reliably, and I don’t have space for a project car. Also I think new cars are way too expensive, but I still like seeing the new tech and what different manufacturers are making.
I used to shoot and reload ammo multiple times a week. I still have everything, but it mostly collects dust. I go skeet shooting maybe twice a year and deer hunting for a week. Besides also getting pretty expensive, the majority of people I run into are, shall we say, not my type of people these days. So I typically don’t want to spend time around anyone at the range. My club membership is like $30/yr, is 5 minutes from my house, and I can bust clays with my brother now and then and make sure the deer rifle is sighted in, and that’s good for me.
I still enjoy watching histories of weapons and ammo development because I learn a lot of world history and see some cool engineering. Most GunTubers also suck though.
I follow a lot of music production and guitar things to see all the new gear. I only ever learned the basics of guitar and bass, and now I play piano and the linear layout of things makes more sense to my brain. Guitar has by far the coolest gear and gizmos though, so I still check out all that stuff. I’d like to check out all these amp modelers, but I don’t own a computer, so there’s that. 😂
Formula 1. Watched it religiously for many years then the regulations got weird so my interest started waning. I check in from time to time but the last race I watched was around 5 years ago.
Rust (the video game, not the programming language)
Can’t stand to play anymore, but I still keep up with the major patches and still watch some RustTubers.
Cars. I used to know all the models and their figures, like combustion chamber volumes. Now I still like cars as kinda closed, autonomous systems that are super complicated but an amalgamation of design and functionality. But I also hate them because they are loud, dangerous and because of them our cities and landscapes are plastered with concrete and tar that heat up, are ugly, prevent plants to grow and make cities less walkable.
Kind of same. I’m still very into cars and tools etc and bring impressed by the engineering, but really hate how theyve ruined society and earth in so many ways. Like the internet.
RuneScape.
I played RuneScape when it first came out (late 2001) (“RuneScape classic”) and stopped playing shortly after “RuneScape 2” was released (2004). I played for about a week in 2011 after a friend brought it up, but I wasn’t really interested in playing an MMO again.
I heard RuneScape pop up here and there over the years but still didn’t feel like playing an MMO. At one point I tried to login for fun but couldn’t remember my password.
About 2 years ago I suddenly remembered my password (who knows where or why it returned to me when it did) but I had my 20+ year old account back. I locked in and played OSRS for about six months.
I didn’t know originally that OSRS was a separate new character, so I wasn’t sure if I wanted to start over again, but I had fun revisiting old content and exploring new content. I watched a bunch of videos (Settled Swamplympics, etc)
I stopped playing shortly before Sailing was released. But I still watch the occasional YouTube video and read big news about the game. Maybe I’ll go back someday.
I used to be on a bowling team with my mates. We’d bowl 2 or 3 times a week, (practice and league)
i moved to another city and dont really have anyone to bowl with so i basically havent played for years.
But i still keep tabs on the latest tech and professional results. Still on a bowling subreddit since there’s nothing on the fediverse
I keep telling myself i will get back into it.
I dont play Rust anymore but I do watch some Rust YouTubers to help remind me why I don’t play rust anymore
Same with DotA for me. Used to play a lot, but then it just became a chore. The community was (is) shit, Valve doesn’t care about DotA, and the meta doesn’t change often enough. The game is slow and lacks innovation. There’s only one supported e-sports version of DotA and it barely changes.
Now I just watch once in a while, but mostly it’s in the background to make noise.
Skateboarding. I’m old now but seeing street/park/ramp skaters (sorry longboarders and electric skateboard-esque enthusiasts) now still gets me stoked.
I was a skater growing up and probably how most who knew me would describe me even though I was also into snowboarding, mountain biking, and punk music.
I lost a lot of my crew when dating became more of their thing in HS, then all of my crew when we went different ways after HS. I tried to stick with it in college but got frustrated with losing a lot of the progress I’d made and always skating alone. I got back into it briefly in my 30s when a couple guys at work expressed interest in hitting up a nearby skatepark over lunches. I could actually do a few things but only at a fraction of my former ability but I went easier on myself and acknowledged that a lot of time had passed since I could do cool stuff consistently. That job and those guys are gone now and I’ve moved. I’ve still got the deck in my garage but it’s been at least 15 years since I’ve skated. I’ll watch an old 411 or see a kid trying to ollie in the neighborhood and that brings me joy (and some sadness)
NetBSD
I dailied NetBSD for 5 or 6 years until I replaced my ancient laptop. The new laptops wifi chipset wasn’t supported so I moved on to Linux. I still read NetBSD and pkgsrc release notes, but its not like it was.
I tend to circle back to stuff but have like a million things open that aren’t what I’m into right this moment
That being said, what a fucking excellent question, 10/10
Dating and relationships.
Used to be something I put a lot of effort into and it was kinda fun, now not fun anymore so there is no point in putting effort in.
Same. Plus the effort to reward was often very minimal. Most of my best relationships are / were friends that we decided it would be mutually beneficial to add more “nuance” to the relationship. :)
