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I used to manage a rock climbing gym, and I'm now a yuppie, so...
The thing about Rock Climbing that makes it so popular is that the part that makes climbing a route cool to normies is separate from the part that makes it technically cool to insiders.
When I tell people I climb, they ask things like "How high do you go? Do you go all the way to the top? Do you climb outside?" That's what people get excited about, or maybe free solo shit or overhangs and dynos if they're watching. They don't really care about route grading, just doesn't enter their head, luckily because once stats enter the mainstream they tend to get lied on so often they become useless.
There are 80-ft outdoor toprope routes around me that are beginner grade nonsense, I could take any reasonably athletic mottizen there next weekend and coach them through it. But your average normie is going to be more impressed by that video on Insta, than they would by me finishing the V6 benchmark project I've been working on for the Moonboard for months, despite the latter being vastly harder and rarer.
So the first day you show up at an indoor gym, you do what the general public perceives as just about the coolest thing there: you climb up a big wall on top rope, all the way to the top. Any decent gym has a route for beginners on a big wall, I would always make sure our route setters kept something easy on the tallest wall in the gym for that exact reason. After that, it's all progress, and it's a sport-hobby you can whittle away at infinitely.
Compare the classic ne plus ultra of yuppie sports: distance running. When I ran the marathon that gave me my username, I didn't train for it at all, it was on a bet (with another rock climber, coincidentally). Why did I casually stroll 26.2 miles and not 20 or 25? Because finishing a marathon has a cache to it, and the part normies ask about is finishing the marathon. The cool part of endurance running is the endurance, not the running. Only those who are into marathons care about your time, most people just think it is cool that you did it. So no matter how good you are at distance running, if you finished, you did the cool part. It's not really any cooler, in normal conversation, to brag about your three hour marathon than it is to say "I ran a marathon."
Similarly, going rock climbing is cool because you went, not because you climbed 5.12. This makes it popular among the casual, because the part they brag about isn't hard. Post a picture of you climbing on instagram, nobody is looking at the holds and saying it looks juggy except serious climbers, most people just notice how high you are off the ground.
I also like rock climbing personally, and think it is popular, because as a workout it will actually naturally build the body most people want: lean, muscular, upper body focused. MyFitnessPal logs an hour of rock climbing as some absurd number like 950 calories burned, and my forearms and biceps are tough to fit into shirts after I got into climbing.
Thanks for this comment.
I'd be interested in your opinions about the dynamics of Red/Blue tribe affiliation at the ultra high end of climbing. Obviously, there's a lot of crunchy types there, but:
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