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.
*
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.
Playing and studying chess, on www.lichess.org. It’s a free open source alternative to the heavily commercial chess dot com.
Learning a new language. Tons of free resources all over the internet
Learning card magic. You can go a long way with just a pack of cards and the 52Kards YouTube channel
Learning to play music. Tons of free resources all over the internet
Learning card magic. You can go a long way with just a pack of cards and the 52Kards YouTube channel
I’ll have to give that a look! I’ve been trying to get better at some different card shuffles, as it’s both practical and fun to do.
Just be careful to learn card magic and not magic cards. Because one of those is not good for minimizing your consumption haha
Lots of maker type hobbies do require an initial (and often ongoing) material purchase. Some are better than others at using what is at hand though.
Sewing/alterations is both a useful skill to have and allows you to repurpose old fabrics.
Art supplies can be quite expensive, but drawing materials are fairly ubiquitous. You likely have something within reach that you can practice with.
How about collecting & watching pirated TV shows off the internet?
Hiking.
You can do it on trail mix and tap water. All you really need is a good pair of shoes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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@lemmy.world have been immensely helpful for me in my brief journey so far.
Many hobbies have some sort of cost associated, I would hope materials to do the hobby aren’t necessarily seen as negatives.
People have been doing HAM radio (and learning it), electronics tinkering, woodworking, fishing, etc for ages. There are upfront costs to get equipment, although used stuff abounds, ongoing costs are materials or components that one wants. For some things once you get it working you don’t necessarily have ongoing costs.
I see commercialism as exploitive, just purchasing things not so much.
I see commercialism as exploitive, just purchasing things not so much.
Yeah, to elaborate a little, the question’s more aimed at finding activities that aren’t actively trying to rope you into buying more and more to keep up. A couple classic examples of what I had in mind to avoid would probably be like a trading card game or some tabletop game with collectible(?) miniatures (not sure what those games are called), whereas with crafting hobbies it’s simply a necessity upon exhausting craft materials.
The amount of consumer pressure within ham radio can be larger than you think. HF rigs can go for thousands of dollars, with VHF/UHF gear up there too.
Yes there are a lot of far less expensive ways to enjoy amateur radio. And I really should get my too-long unused cheap rig out of storage and do some of them, like digital modes on a computer over HF or satellite with a homebrew antenna and my old analog HTs.
P.S. It’s ham not HAM. It has never been an acronym so it should never be capitalized. Ham radio at the beginning of a sentence just follows normal English language capitalization rules.
73 from now actually old and apparently grumpy OM
Is there a way to get notified when people respond to a some else’s post?
Not yet but apparently it’s coming. Unfortunately for now you have to save it and check back manually
That’s going to be app specific. Not sure what apps do that but that’s how it would be
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.
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:
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home cooking
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sewing and making your own clothes
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cycling
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composing poetry
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ethical philosophy
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social dance
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programming indie videogames
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letter-writing
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calligraphy, though this is borderline, as you can spend literally any amount of money on fancy pens and nice paper
Edit to add:
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carpentry
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hunting and fishing
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volunteering
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graffiti
Fountain pen user here, can confirm. Ink is a factor as well.
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3d printing! A lot of the crap you buy you can make yourself for next to nothing. Also a lot of crap you have can be repaired in similar fashion.
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.
Plants / gardening: you can multiply plants and get seeds for little or no cost.
Some martial arts. A gi and a fee to keep the lights on. Avoid the places that guarantee black belts in a year or sell gear.
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.
