Hobbies
Leisure bound: what exactly makes a hobby a 'hobby'? In this podcast, we discuss all things structured fun. From train spotting to Morris dancing, board games to beach-going, we consider what actually constitutes a hobby - an activity for its own sake? Or are other metrics, like regularity, important? - and how their nature has changed through the decades. A few things we mentioned in this podcast: - A history of trainspotting https://www.railwaymuseum.org.uk/what-was-on/trainspotting#:~:text=1942%3A%20Ian%20Allan's%20ABC,of%20Britain%20through%20their%20hobby. - Dwayne Dibbley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU6Skc4yZKQ - Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email podcast@alephinsights.com
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph and this week we're discussing trainspotting. Nick, so looking at you and Peter here today, you actually look like you might have just been trainspotting. There's something about an aura, there's an air about you that says to me, trainspotters.
Speaker B: an old, you know, particular: Speaker C:the cat. That's the cutting edge, more modern cultural reference. Well, yes, I mean, the thing
Speaker B: line to King's Cross. In the: Speaker A:of the hobby world? Before you come in, Peter, I presume we're going to then branch it out and map this out to other stuff and other hobbies, is that right? What are hobbies? You know, what is their life cycle? Because also, even the word hobby feels a little bit old fashioned now
Speaker C:to me. Yeah. Peter, what do you got? Well, I just expand the definition slightly. So it's not just spotting the train sort of registration, I don't know what the term actually is, but the train has a number. It can go as detailed as you like, as any kind of interest can. So you might not be particularly interested in the timetabling aspect of rail travel, you might be more interested in the rolling stock. So there's, there's some trainspotters have an interest in spotting particularly unusual carriages and carts on freight trains and things. So you might see lots and lots of carts carrying aggregate and coal and things. That's not very interesting. But what might be interesting is some sort of nuclear, nuclear fuel transport or something, because they're pretty rare. They're probably only a handful in the country. So spotting one of those would probably Peter's selling this to me. So you can go any kind of level that you like. And yeah, and sort of individual carriages have their own numbers, that might be a level of detail you want to go to. Individual locomotives have their own number and that sort of thing. So you can go to all
Speaker A:sorts of different directions. Yeah, I bet there's lots of schisms in train spotting as well. Two things. Yeah, this is of interest to me because where I live in Lincolnshire, there's RAF bases everywhere. And so I'm sort of familiar with some of the close cousins of the trainspotters, which are the aircraft spotters. And sure enough, they have special
Speaker B:areas. I drive past them. Do you remember about 15 years ago, a bunch of British planespotters were arrested as spies in Greece. And I think the Greeks were mystified. I mean, it was to them so implausible that someone could make a hobby out of going around and you know, writing down the numbers of areas. But I think most British people like, yeah, that's completely
Speaker A:normal. Yeah. So yeah. Okay, before we delve into other stuff, just very quickly, and we'll circle back to this later. Hobbies. What about us? I'm just interested. No, I mean, we seem like hobby types. What are your hobbies, Peter? Riding and fixing bicycles. Yeah. I've seen them. I've seen you take them apart. Yeah. And I've seen the evidence of that. I've not seen so much of the,
Speaker C:you know, putting them back together. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I do that all the time. Recreational
Speaker A:engineering. Recreational engineering. Yeah. Let's tart it up a bit. Yeah. Yeah. What about you, Nick?
Speaker B:Tango dancing, isn't it? So board games, unequivocally a hobby. I'm content with calling that a hobby. Sort of recreational programming, computer programming, making my own computer programs. Fun stuff, you know, like fun little projects. And obviously playing the piano. But I mean, we will discuss whether that's a hobby. Right. But I mean, I think, I'm certainly not earning money from it. So I think if someone called it a hobby, I wouldn't rush to
Speaker A:correct them. Quite, quite. Yeah. I think for me, similarly, music and musical instruments,
Speaker C:it doesn't feel quite a hobby. I've got more latent hobbies. I just haven't got time to do. Ah, go on. So, I mean, in very, very few spare hours, I'm learning how to produce 3D models in CAD with a view to eventually buying a 3D printer and starting to build physical things. Things that do things with cogs and wheels and things. Okay. But yeah, I wish I had more time
Speaker A:to do that. Yeah. Similarly with me, latent stuff would be art, painting. And I just don't quite have the time for that, it feels. But yeah, I mean, for me, a hobby for me used to be photography, probably. And that's definitely no longer a hobby for me. Because you teach it now. Yeah, I teach it and I sort of produce it. I do all sorts. But probably my big hobby is probably
Speaker B: ting. And that was big in the: Speaker A:Sorry, did you mention models as well? You said that already, sorry, yeah, go on.
Speaker B:And then now, controversial, we will need to discuss whether sport is a hobby, but you know, you have sort of, obviously, that's been around forever. And probably if you do class it as a hobby, the most popular hobby in Britain would be something like playing football or cricket or whatever. So there's a bunch of things, which I think we can all agree are mostly hobbies. What is a hobby?
Speaker A:Right, exactly. What is a hobby? Because some stuff definitely does feel more hobbyish. So Peter, do you have a view on this? What is a hobby?
Speaker C:Yeah, I would start with a fairly broad definition and say it's anything that you do for entertainment that doesn't earn you money. Actually, that's probably not true, because I think there's plenty of people that do hobbies and then kind of appear at like country fairs and things and sell their wares.
Speaker B:Well, then they're not doing it as a hobby. I'd exclude them from the hobby gang. I don't know. You mean people who make jam and then sell it? Yeah. Not a hobby. That's a job.
Speaker C:I suspect that's probably not their principal income. I don't know. I'd exclude that from my definition. I'd say it's something you do for fun, whether or not it pays itself or earns you money.
Speaker A:So let's try and test that a bit. So therefore, I mean, I play all sorts of sports for fun, but they don't feel like hobbies.
Speaker C:No, and I would allow that in my definition. Right. Because you're not doing sport, although professionals might find sport fun. They might really genuinely like their sport, and you'd hope that they would. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't do something else. But I wouldn't class that as a hobby. That's their principal job. I cycle and you do water polo and swimming and things. I would say we do those as a hobby, because we don't rely on those for our sort of... Yeah, I think I'm going to refine this.
Speaker A:Because I think maybe you have a subcategory that you allow sports into hobbies. Yeah. But they're not quite hardcore hobbies.
Speaker B:No, I think I want to refine Peter's definition. I think fun does have to enter into it. But, for example, eating, I do for fun, and I don't class it as a hobby. And sitting in the sun is fun. Swimming is fun. I go to the beach, go swimming. So my proposal is that the activity is the end in itself. So eating is not actually an end in itself, right? So I think that if it's in the service of some other end, it doesn't really count as a hobby. So, for example, walking pointlessly in a big loop around a hill, a hobby. Walking the same distance, but to get to the shops, not a hobby.
Speaker C:Okay, yeah, I'll buy that. So eating, like most of the meals you consume, presumably, are just kind of functional meals in the sense that you need sustenance. You haven't got time to do anything too extravagant because of work and everything else. So different meals, you'd class as different things. So you might have one meal, a Tuesday evening meal, you just throw some pasta together. That's not hobby eating. But a Saturday night meal where you spend a few hours actually preparing something a bit more elaborate, you'd say that's hobby eating.
Speaker A:But maybe also you could argue maybe, let's try this out. You were talking about the thing that's an end in itself, something like that, which is, you could, again, think about these things that are definitely hobbies, right? Stamp collecting, coin collecting. Is it that they only exist because they are hobbies, right? So walking is definitely a byproduct. It can be a hobby, it can be other things. But collecting stamps, I think you would pretty much only ever do that as a hobby. That's the only way that it exists. Yeah. So I think, and I think here it's like,
Speaker B:are you decorating an activity that exists already? So in Peter's example, you're going to eat something anyway. If you go out of your way to make it fancy, and you know, the meal ends up looking like, you know, Haute Cuisine, and you put it on your Instagram account, you've only decorated something you're doing anyway. Whereas I think what you're trying to say is, would you be doing that thing at all? Right? If you wouldn't be doing it at all, were it not for just the activity that you're doing as an end in itself, then it's much more hobby-like, isn't it? Yeah.
Speaker C:Like, yeah, I mean, it's definitely the case for train spotting. Yeah. I just want to unpick this a bit more. So you're going to the beach example. Would you say that's a hobby or not?
Speaker B:Really good point. But I have a further criterion, which I think will deal with going to the beach. Which is that I think, well, a core hobby here cannot be, it must be an activity, an actual activity, right? So if you can do it without using your muscles, it's not a hobby. Listening to music, sorry, is not a hobby. Reading isn't really a hobby. Watching telly is not a hobby. I think there must be an activity. But also, I think that it has to involve the creation or even curation of something, right? And so looking at trains, not a hobby. Writing down a list of trains, hobby. Going to the beach, not a hobby. Going to the beach, collecting shells and arranging them into a collection when you get home, yeah, hobby. Okay, I've got a few examples which
Speaker C:might challenge this. Go for it. So watching films. Not a hobby. You say not a hobby. But what if you watch, what if you every week, say you have a film night and you watch films collectively with other people, discuss those films. You might keep a, you may not keep a record of what you've watched and what was good and sort of then research further recommendations and sort of you make a thing of watching films rather than just passively watching films. Yeah.
Speaker B:Is that a hobby? It's on hobby borders. But I think it's certainly not like obviously a core hobby. It's not. So yeah, I don't think any of these are absolutely necessary. But I think if you put them all together, you've got stamp collecting. And if you take away enough of them, you've got something which is very debatable.
Speaker C:I think your borders are fairly fuzzy, actually. But that's okay. So they can be fuzzy. And one more example, the beaching. Yeah. Going to the beach, right? So you're just going to the beach. It's a nice satellite. Let's just go to the beach and mess around for a bit. Not a hobby, I guess, in your definition.
Speaker B:Correct. Because you can do it without moving any muscles.
Speaker C:Yeah. So what, and they, but they, I've seen, and I know of beach goers. I think of them as a distinct class of people who take going to the beach, not desperately seriously, but they're very good at it in the sense that they know where they like to go. They know where the good beaches are because they do it lots. They do it regularly. They've kind of got, they've collected equipment to help go to the beach, you know, the wind breaks and the trolleys and beach games and extensive picnicking equipment and all sorts of stuff that, you know, they've taken it to another level.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And they enjoy the act of just going to the beach and not doing anything in particular. That to me feels hobby-like.
Speaker B:So maybe, maybe like the, I think the equipment bit is interesting and it almost goes back to Fraser's idea of, you know, that the thing has to exist sort of on its own. Like you need, to be a stamp collector, you need stamps and you need a stamp book. For example, the concept of a stamp book can only really exist in the context of stamp collecting. And I wonder if these sort of beach equipment things, all those, you know, there's little tanning things that people put under there. Like those are kind of, you know, you're getting onto, or even like, you know, those sticks that Germans carry when they go for a walk. They always have those walking poles. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, walking poles. Well, that's hobby. Yeah.
Speaker A:Just walking down the shops without walking poles, you know, no. So look, we're getting to a couple of things here and actually Miss might move us on to motivations as well. I've just got one more final thing.
Speaker C:Okay. I've got one more final thing.
Speaker A:Well, before you do, so we'll come on to motivations because I think motivations can help us answer this naturally. But one thing, so if you're at a party, like we've never met before and I go, oh, nice to meet you Peter, nice to meet you Nick. And immediately I just go with the opening gambit. What are your hobbies? And if Peter says, uh, beach going and you say stamp collecting, okay. I go, I look at Nick and go, yeah, okay, fine. And I go, no, beach going's not a hobby. And then you go, aha, but hold on. And you bring out a book or a spreadsheet and you go, yeah, these are all the beaches we've been to. And actually, if you go to my garage, I've got all this equipment. Oh, that's beach spotting. And, um, and, um, and then also, and I go, well, how, and you say, well, and I go every Saturday, no matter what at eight o'clock we jump in the car, we go somewhere and we, and I do that every week. And I go, yeah, do you know what? That is a hobby. Yeah. I'm persuaded by that. There's something about the, and like I say, we won't, you know, I won't, um, uh, I'll keep our powder dry on this, but I mean, um, there is something about the motivations and where you start to go with it and the things you accumulate. And I don't know.
Speaker B:Anyway, there's certainly one thing we haven't touched on, but which is kind of obvious, which is you need to do it routinely. Yeah. Or at least regularly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So don't, you can't just do something once and then claim. Yeah. But anyway, you had a couple of other things to say first.
Speaker C:So on the kind of other end of what, uh, if the presumably there's somebody or a team of people, probably just somebody in the British museum, his job is to archive stamps as examples of stamps, or maybe not British, maybe British library somewhere. There's a professional archivist, his job is to collect unique examples of stamps for historical purposes. That's not a hobby though, is it?
Speaker B:No, it definitely will. But of course, if you're doing it as a job, it just doesn't count. Yeah. My other thing, which is, and this is sort of the upper limit, if you like, of hobbydom, is that the creativity needs to be relatively limited in scope and fairly rote. Okay. So writing numbers, you're creating a log of trains and that's sort of part of the fun, but it does, you need, all you're doing is writing down numbers. I don't mean to belittle the incredible ardor of train sponsors, but that is all they do. Like, um, following, doing a jigsaw, classic sort of hobby thing, following a knitting pattern, classic hobby, putting stamps in a book, right? They are creating something, but it's very much, it's craft. I think you wouldn't say someone who composed symphonies, even if they weren't earning money for it, or, you know, went to the Antarctic or up Everest or something. I think you, that would be straining the idea of a hobby. You'd want to say that activity is sort of a little bit beyond what we would call a hobby. You know, there's sort of, the creativity is there, is too kind of complex, I think, to be classed as a, I'm just putting it out there. What word would you give it? What name would you give it? Well, I think it's, I mean, it sort of feels like it's, that's like artistic creativity or something. Yeah, it becomes a calling rather than a hobby. Yeah, yeah. Passion. Yeah, passion. That's right. Yeah. Something like that. Anyway, I'm just putting that out there because I feel like, you know, that what distinguishes the kind of creativity of hobbies is that it's a very sort of limited in scope. Deliberately, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I mean, it's like, you're being creative, but within a very sort of restricted confines. And also sort of... Decorating, I tell you what, you know, if you're into interior decorating, you decorate your house and you get your house done. And every year you, you know, you design a new room and you build it. I wouldn't, I'd struggle, that feels like too much for a hobby, you know?
Speaker A:Possibly, yeah. That's what I mean. It's interesting, this concept, because it's a little slightly, you know, elusive, but I mean, certain words sort of keep popping into my mind, like things like, I'll just say like, things like geek and geekery. There's a certain element of when we start talking about curating and logging stuff, right? And it's no one, it's not surprising this stuff's associated with, you know, males quite often are quite into categorizing stuff and that kind of almost an ownership of a bit of knowledge or speciality, but also niche. These, they tend to be quite niche. They're very, quite specific and quite defined somehow, the actual hobby itself.
Speaker B:Yeah. I'm glad you said geeks and not nerds, because I think there's a big difference there. Nerd is a kind of personality type, whereas a geek has an object, a geek is into something.
Speaker A:And I think that's that, so yeah, geekdom. Someone being into something. And also maybe this is the right point to bring on some motivations, because we can talk about, because I do think it can help define this, like, so we can ask, well, why would someone do this? But also perhaps more specifically, what do you get out of it? So thinking about our own hobbies of bikes, and let's just keep it to board gaming, let's say, and with me, Morris dancing, what do you get out of it? Why? What is it? You know, what is it you get from it? Because that might help us with this. Yeah. So I can kick off.
Speaker B:Okay. I have tried to answer this. And to be honest, I'm, I struggle, but go on. Let's say
Speaker A:what's in it for you? What's Morris dancing to you? Probably, I like the physical activity of it. I like the musicality of it. But probably more than anything else, I like the companionship of it. I like the other people in it. And most specifically, and I've thought about this a lot, it's not just I'm hanging out with other people. I'm hanging out with people who, in the case of Morris dancing, they don't care looking like idiots. I mean, I don't think we look like idiots. They don't care what might be perceived weirdos and going out there and doing it. And that kind of, and they do it anyway, because they love it. And it's fun. And that takes a certain kind of courage and a certain kind of integrity, I personally feel. And they're just always super interesting people, because they don't care. Like they like it and they do it. And there's a real integrity that I love.
Speaker C:Ditto, all the same reasons. But for me also, there's a, as an engineering brain, there's a element of enjoying the process of optimising as well. Yeah, there's that thrill, right? So it's beyond just fitness, it's getting fitter. And that parlaying back into the enjoyment of it, but also making the bike better, maybe buying an upgrade or improving the way it works, cleaning it and oiling the chain, for example, as a regular bit of maintenance that makes a big difference to your enjoyment of the ride, because you can move faster.
Speaker B:But also you enjoy, I bet you enjoy doing it.
Speaker A:Yes, yeah. Yeah. And that's interesting, because mine, I'm quite a sort of physical movement-y kind of, you know, dance-y kind of guy. And you're not Peter, but similarly, I'm not that kind of engineer. And it is a beautiful thing, like, you know, it's, hey, it's no great shock that the things that we do in our spare time, we enjoy and it suits our personalities and so on. But yeah, so Nick.
Speaker B:Well, I mean, actually, Pete, you could just substitute the word bike for the word board game in Peter's answer, because I really like the, I just like the sort of intellectual side of board gaming. You know, you get very, it's quite escapist, you know, you spend a couple of hours being a totally different kind of person with a whole different set of problems. But it's interesting, you mentioned this thing about, you know, I don't want to hang out with other people who play board games, so I can talk about board games, particularly. I mean, well, of course you do. I want to hang out with people who are like board gamers. And the best way to do that is to find other people who like board games. Because I mean, you know, other board gamers tend to think in a similar way, which I find sort of interesting. You know, they tend to be happy to have, discuss the same sorts of topics. They're generally a little bit weird. And, you know, so I feel like, you know, by joining a hobby that you're interested in, you're likely to find other people, it's like a selection mechanism. Self-selecting tribe. Yeah. But where the hobby is almost like a selection mechanism to find the right sort of people. And I think, you know, board gaming, and probably Peter with biking, and almost certainly Morris dancing, naturally excludes people who aren't really into it. You know, if someone decides that board game is kind of cool, and they want to get into it, but they don't like playing board games, and they get annoyed when they lose, and all of those kinds of things, then they simply will not. They simply won't. And I guess like someone who's decided that they're really into biking now, and turns up with their latest, you know, £10,000 bike and all the equipment. Met them as well. Yeah. But, you know, then as soon as they conk out halfway through their first, you know, sort of trip round a bike route or something. And you're like, well, and actually those people, often, you can tell they're not actually the right, the people you want to hang out with, you know? Interesting, because... All the gear and no idea. Yeah. Is that a thing that people say, right?
Speaker A:Yeah. Because as you know, I've got a Jaguar, an old sort of classic Jaguar, right? And just for kicks, someone said, oh, come along to the Jaguar club. Okay. I went there. I didn't like them very much.
Speaker B:What, how would you, I am imagining, basically like lots of Jeremy Clarksons. They were a bit, yeah. Right.
Speaker A:Lots of like middle-aged men. What's the collective noun for a Jeremy Clarkson? Express. Yeah. They were also a little bit showy, a little bit showy. Right. A little bit judgmental. A little, I mean, I'm probably horrible slandering, but I mean, just not my crowd, not my crew, you know? No. Totally understood. I'll see you later. I'm going to have to go back with my ukulele mates.
Speaker C:Ownership of a particular brand of car doesn't feel like a sort of unifying factor in the same way that people who like mountain biking. Well, no, I think it is.
Speaker B:If you're really into, you know, to cars and what they mean and Jaguars in particular.
Speaker C:If it was like classic Jaguars, where a big part of the ownership is maintaining it. No, you're looking at it from a Peter Coghill perspective.
Speaker B: ool and you like kind of cool: Speaker C:I'm not saying it's not a real hobby. I'm saying that I'd say that group of people would feel probably they have very diverse sets of types of people there and they're not very cohesive as a group.
Speaker B:Yeah, I bet the Jaguar maintenance club is much more your scene than the Jaguar ownership club.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, so to help us, I want to move on to something else, but just to help us in that, I've come up with a phrase, which is to talk about what we've just done, which is, might want to write this down. Birds of a feather block together. I just came up with that just now. Fascinating insight. I came up with that just now. So look, I want to talk about decline. Before we move on, sorry. Yeah, sorry, go on.
Speaker C:Nick said something interesting earlier when he was offering his very clearly defined definition of what hobbying is. You said there's an upper bound and the upper bound seems to be something to do with, like, proficiency in the thing. Is it just proficiency or
Speaker B:is it more than that? I didn't use the term proficiency, but I like it. It feels right to me. I think there's something about sort of...
Speaker C:When you're so good at something, you could say, actually, I'm so good at this, I could just go pro and become like the Everest climber. You could make a living just climbing mountains through sponsorship and everything else. So if you got to the point where you were so good you could climb Everest, that's no longer a hobby in your book because they're so good at it.
Speaker B:There is something there which I think is right. I'm not sure if it's proficiency or something, but I think at some point describing someone's activity as a hobby becomes selling it too short. I think there are certain things like train spotting and like stamp collecting, which you simply cannot get beyond a certain level of depth at. But there are some things so, you know, like let's imagine that you, I don't know, famous musician, highly proficient, Keith Jarrett or someone, you know, my favourite pianist, even if he never performed or he only performed for free or something, you wouldn't say that piano playing was his hobby. Isn't that just would... It's like if you met Salman Rushdie at a party and he said, oh, I write and you go, right, so your hobby is writing books. You'd be like, no, actually, you've kind of misunderstood. Do you know what I mean? There's something there that...
Speaker A:Even if you'd never been published.
Speaker B:Right. I think that's right. Yeah, something like that. Or maybe what we're saying is it can't be your main activity. Like it has to be something you do on the side to be a hobby.
Speaker C:I think that's probably where I'd sit. That's how I'd define it. Because you could, if someone was, it was independently wealthy, didn't have to work, but they said, you know, I fancy becoming a writer, but I don't want to publish. I want to write poetry. I want to get really good at writing poetry, but I've got no interest in publishing anything. I don't want the limelight or whatever. But you could imagine somebody getting very good at writing poetry and nothing's ever published. I would definitely say that it was their hobby.
Speaker A:I think the arts are an interesting one, so I'm not so sure. But yeah, maybe. Let's leave that out there. Shall we move on? Yeah, let's.
Speaker C:So you wanted to talk about decline?
Speaker A:Yeah, I do want to talk about decline. Actually, as we were chatting, I remembered that growing up, there were two, so I grew up in Bedford and in that town of what, about 100,000 people, I'm guessing it is, I don't know. There were two... What town? Oh, the town of Bedford. That's excellent. Which predictably, sadly, no longer exists. I think it went out of business in the 90s, I'm guessing.
Speaker B:That makes sense. It feels like, yeah. Well, it's almost like there's a hobby of being into hobbies. And I think we all know what that means. And that feels like it's declined. Because I know exactly what you mean by hobby shop. It's got the little tins of paint. Yeah, little models. It's got the train accessories. There'll be a range of hobbies that you could be into. Nobby's Hobbies would...
Speaker A:Yeah, they'd sort you out. And weirdly, out the back, I think they sold lawnmowers as well, which is a bit of an odd one.
Speaker B:No, that works for me.
Speaker A:But yeah, but it kind of actually, that kind of makes sense. So, hobbies in decline, are they? Why?
Speaker C:So, well, I was going to tackle it by thinking about what factors have possibly caused train spotting to decline. Go on and then we can... And then we could perhaps try and generalise from there. So, I've got five...
Speaker A:I think we're going to start moaning about internet and video games and computers soon, but go on.
Speaker C:That's one. So, I've got five kind of factors, which I think are personal to the decline of train spotting. So, first is technological changes. So, with the sort of standardisation of rail travel, with trains moving from steam to diesel, and then later electric, they arguably have become sort of less interesting. They're all a bit more samey. The fleets are standardised and they all kind of look the same.
Speaker B:Well, they're covered up. The great thing about a steam train is you can see bits of it moving. Yeah. Like, that's really underestimated. Whereas a modern locomotive, you just can't see, it's just a blob that moves along and these wheels poke out the bottom.
Speaker C:Yeah. Yeah, I think so. They just, they look kind of the same. They're different colours, but they really sort of fundamentally pretty similar because they've sort of optimised towards a certain maximum. Another one is cultural significance or the decline in it, right? So, everyone's got cars these days, more people fly. So, trains aren't as big a deal as they used to be. So, the idea of sort of sitting there in the rain, watching from a bridge, watching trains go by is probably less appealing just because it feels less important in the world as a thing. So, I think that's a thing that can generalise. Another one is digitisation or the sort of the rise of the internet. So, yeah, this is where we range about video games and Netflix kind of sucking up people's time. There are more outlets, you know, for extracurricular pursuits. And they're often kind of much more, less effort for a similar kind of payoff.
Speaker B:And they can be really fun. They can be fun, right? Yeah, they can be fun. Video games are interesting because they're definitely an activity. They're not passive, like watching TV. But at the same time, at the end of it, you've got nothing to show for it broadly. I mean, it's interesting. Minecraft could be a hobby, maybe.
Speaker C:But also, I'd lump into that. So, specifically for trainspotting, there's all sorts of online databases and APIs and things where you can just find out where every single train is at any given time. Really sad. So, if that's what you care about, you can look it up.
Speaker A:I mean, there's something wonderful but depressing about that, isn't there?
Speaker C:Yeah. So, two more. I think there's a socio-economic thingy going on. I think the general trend is more people have got more free time and more disposable income. So, that enables those people who would have become trainspotters to get more, do more, inverted commas, involved things. So, if you go to a country fair or to a steam rally and things, they are massive these days because more people have got more time and money to spend building engines and doing the kind of, getting more hands-on with the engineering rather than passively observing it. So, I think that's a thing. And then finally, this is probably not so generalizable but security concerns. So, you mentioned the Brits who got arrested in Greece for spotting tail numbers. That's the thing. That's a good point. Critical national infrastructure, which really is, is quite heavily guarded and protected these days. There aren't nice sort of platforms conveniently. You can't sneak into train stations to record numbers and all sorts of things. They just put a bit of a break, you know, put the brakes on.
Speaker B:So, Al-Qaeda, I mean, I know what they did on September 11th was bad but they also killed trainspotting. That's the real victim. Interesting. I like all those theories. I think what is, that is definitely a, I guess you could say it's out-competed by other activities, trainspotting. But there is another way that hobbies can die. And I think the canonical article here is Geeks, Mops and Sociopaths, which is the, I think one of the greatest articles ever written on the internet. And it's by David Chapman on his meaningless, I think it's called. And it's just such a familiar life cycle that you see of there being what he calls geeks. These are the creators and the people supporting the creators who create the initial scene. And it's very cool and it's weird. And, you know, they create cultural capital and social capital. And, you know, you, whatever you, I guess like the first computer gamers and stuff, they create, you know, they're really into computers. They made their own computer games. You know, you had to be a bit of a kind of engineer to set your old computer up back in those days. And, you know, it was kind of much more, it was a bunch of weirdos. And then, of course, you get the mops, the members of the public who like that scene, but they don't make much effort. They like to sort of be there and hang out and consume it. And they bring liquid capital. So they have money, but they tend to dilute the hobby. They're like, hey, why isn't this more accessible? Which you see all the time, you know? And then finally you get the sociopaths who come in and they monetize it. And I guess anyone who's been involved in a kind of niche hobby that has become mainstream, which I, you know, I consider that probably happened to, you know, say computer games, has seen that thing happen. And I, you know, for me, it's, you know, like there was, there's this annual war gaming conference I go to. And, you know, it was, it's all middle-aged, middle-aged white men. And then there were some youngsters there this year, more diverse, but they were like, we need, how can we make this like more approachable for more diverse people? And I thought, well, that's, this is the, unfortunately, this is the death knell. Not, not obviously, because I mean, they're desperate to have more, you know, young, diverse people there. But as soon as you start going, how can we change this to make it more accessible? You know, then, then you're, you're starting, that's the beginning. So, so I think that's worth mentioning that, you know, you've got, you've got, first of all, that it dies of death. It never gets out. Like, Trainspotting never really got out of the, you know, that kind of geek zone. But then you get the opposite problem, where it becomes popular, and then
Speaker C:becomes diluted, and eventually it just dies. It's not necessarily the end, though. I'd say that in, say, computer gaming, you have countless cultures in gaming, still alive and well. So the most sort of public one is the indie game market, where there's small development houses or individuals producing games for a particular niche set of players. That's pretty alive and well.
Speaker B:Yeah, and I actually think there are as many hobbies as ever. But that, you know, like everything else, I suspect there's so many things now. And it all kind of looks the same from the outside, because it's things you do online. And I think computer games have gone from being a niche activity to being just a medium. And so now the hobbies are the kind of people who play specific, weird types of game and that kind of thing. So yeah, yeah. Similarly, in decline, I
Speaker A:remember at my school, we had a hobby club. And you go there and do all sorts of different hobbies. Yeah. We need to wrap up. However, we've got just enough time. Were there other clubs? Was there like a non-hobby club? Where people got together and just sat there? But weirdly, there was a chess club. And there was a hobby club. So what's going on there? Is chess a hobby? Is chess a hobby? Wow, there we go. Let's leave that hanging. Answers in the comments. Yeah, I've got a question for you. What is the hobby that you would like to do that you don't do? And you're not allowed one that you almost do, like your latent one of, I forget what it was. Yeah, sort of cadding and modelling. There you go. So something that you really have not done at all. Something where you feel the pull. But you've never taken the plunge. I could get into that, you know. Peter? Yeah, so it's
Speaker C:not unrelated, but it's a bit... Is it still gonna be very engineeringly? I bet it is. No, not really. Okay. I'd say it's probably more on the arty end. But it's a blacksmithing. So my partner sent me on a, gave me a sort of day experience blacksmithing course. It was really, really good. Did you make a bolt or something? No, that would be machining. I made a toasting fork. Oh, nice. And it was an all-day thing and it was introduced to blacksmithing. Has it got a nice helical shaft? Yes, it's got a twisted shaft. So we started with a piece of stock steel, kind of, I don't know, like half inch stock steel, maybe about two feet long. And by the end of it, we had a toasting fork with two sharp prongs, nicely... Well, mine aren't terribly symmetrical, but they're bent into a nice toasting fork shape. On the other end, there's a leaf hammered into the end, curled around itself. And in the middle there's a sort of helical twist. It's definitely engineering adjacent. Yeah. Well, I'm just
Speaker A:imagining a sort of parallel universe where I'm on a podcast with Peter Coghill, blacksmith. And maybe he's just a bit burlier, a bit hairier, a bit more mass around the shoulders and quite an earthy kind of person. I can see it, I can feel it. And I'm asking him... With big, gnarled, dirty hands. Yeah. And I'm asking him, what would be your hobby? And he's saying, well, you know, I'd quite like to try engineering and cogs and stuff.
Speaker B:Anyway, yeah, no, nice answer, Nick. Well, you might argue this is adjacent to me playing the piano, really. But for me, I'm quite interested in the idea of like composing electronic dance music. You know, there is a whole scene of people who have those kind of compose on their computer and mix together electronic voice and stuff. And they have those sort of multi-track things. And it's all... Every time I've tried to look at it, it's intimidating from the outside, which is fine. That's what they want. I get it. I don't expect to be allowed in unless I'm willing to put in the legwork. But I secretly suspect I'd be really good at it. I think you would. But I've never quite taken that plunge. Yeah. I think at some point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see you being massive on the club scene. Yeah, well, I could be as long as I could just do what... Is it Daft Punk who wear helmets? And then no one will know I'm secretly a middle-aged man. You have to wear a full-body suit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:I like that. For me, and I've got a few actually, but woodworking. I'd like to be a carpentry. Metal detecting. Now, I've actually got into that a little bit and I feel bad because actually it's something that my son's really interested in and I'd like to do it more with him. However, the big one I want to do, magic tricks. I'd love to be able to do that. I did that when I was a
Speaker B:kid. I did loads of... I'm very into magic. I spent years learning magic tricks and stuff. And then I just realised it wasn't really a very good way to pick up girls. Turns out they're not really
Speaker A:into magic tricks. Yeah. Magicians are often a bit creepy. Yeah. You say that. Look at Paul Daniels and who he married, right? Well, I mean, that's true. Yeah, yeah. But I'd love to be able to just take small coins out of small children's ears and stuff like that. All right. Yeah, yeah. So I should just get busy doing that, right? Okay. All right. I really enjoyed that. That was lovely. A nice, gentle little sojourn around hobbies. Okay. Well, we'll stop there. Thanks as always for joining us. I'm Fraser McGruer. I've been here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph. Until next time. Goodbye.
