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Notes -
I would say that these hobbies aren't just high-status because they signal wealth, but because they can be used to signal taste, and taste is the virtue of the haute-bourgeois. There are better and worse ways to do each of those, and failing is obviously tacky (e.g. reading Harlequin smut/Star Wars novels, gushing about your holiday to Ibiza/Pattaya/Vegas, idk maybe taylor swift).
This is your tackiness detector going off.
The alternatives to the high-status pursuits you list are noticeably less legible in terms of taste. Partly this is because they do not, in fact, have the high highs that the people engaging in those high-status activities are seeking. No blog is comparable to a Great Book, etc. But, also, it's because they basically require you to already have deep knowledge about the blogosphere or your local area in order to judge whether or not someone has good taste in those hobbies (TV shows are something of a different matter in the HBO era).
I'm pretty sure I remember it from this article, but the joke at the beginning stuck with me and seems relevant:
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