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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2730 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 7, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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It seems to be that recreational indulgence in handicrafts, like wood working for one, is far more common in the US than the West, let alone outside the Anglosphere.

I don't know whether it's because of cultural factors that value self-reliance, more free time, large houses with more room to dedicate to things like this, or a combination of the above.

I don't know a single person in India who has a similar hobby, only those who do it for a living. Of course, we lack hobby culture to an extent, but still..

It's probably the large houses.

A lot of asian immigrants in the US turn their backyards into vegetable gardens and chicken farms, not exactly the least laborious hobby.

Is it just seen as low status in India? I know my wife laughed at me a bit when I said I was interested in taking a pottery class, because that's something only people making poverty level wages do in her home country.

Not low status per se, just not something people usually think of as a hobby. If someone with any respectable level of status did it, nobody would look down on them for it.

I had a bizarrely strong urge about ten years ago to build a cinderblock shed in the backyard. It passed, but the strength of the urge startled me; it was something I fantasized about for about a year.

If I were to take pottery classes, it would start with digging up my own clay in my backyard, to prep for a post-apocalyptic/post-collapse future.

I love watching the Primitive Technology videos on youtube, where half the videos are about bootstrapping your own pottery kiln.

Hardware Stores / Home Improvement Centers are very popular in Germany and being able to build (or extend) your own home gives bragging rights. The slogan of one of the larger chains is "There is always something to do" and a competitor has "respect for making it yourself".

Ads:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ryg3BCRH0Nw

https://youtube.com/watch?v=AKdc6xdNu_0

One celebrity, a sport athlete who won the world cup, made with his wife home improvement ads, eg doing their own gardening. I just now realize how strange that is, as in other countries such super rich stars would instead advertise that they have servants for everything.

Part of it is the traditional image that a "real man" should be skilled in using power tools and be industrious (and the feminist idea that women should be too). And also because manual labor is very expensive, it is cheaper to do it yourself "as a hobby".

Germans play Eurotruck Simulator as a hobby so I don't see why they wouldn't cosplay as handymen at home either heh

It's the space. Wood shavings and sawings are messy, you want a dedicated workshop even if you don't need large stationary power tools like a table saw or a jointer.

Even wealthy Americans still imagine themselves as middle class, as frontiersmen generalists who could get dropped in the woods and handle anything.

Even poor Indians, if they have vast caste imagination, think of themselves as Aristos above manual labor.

It’s the Scout mentality. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are all about being prepared, no matter where you are.

Makes sense to me.

My guess is physical space + wealth.

When I watch woodworking videos, I am in awe of the size of these guys' garages and workshops. Google suggests the average US house is 3 times larger than the UK's. Plus these guys have the cash to buy the tools and the wood, and a big truck to transport it all. Americans are just richer.

If the UK were a US state it would be the poorest or 2nd poorest. We are so damned rich in America and most Americans don't even realize it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/08/26/if-the-uk-was-a-u-s-state-it-would-be-the-second-poorest-behind-alabama-and-before-mississippi/

That's a crazy statistic to read. The fact that Alaska would be first by that particular measurement is also strange.

Wish I had remembered this in time for my effort post.

I think this does explain a lot of it, but I'm sure there must be cultural factors if it's not the case in other comparably wealthy countries. They do likely have smaller houses though, when I'm thinking of places like Switzerland or Singapore.

Speaking for myself, there is something mythical about woodworking. My household had items that grandfathers had made, my wife's household had items her grandfathers had made, I myself feel a deep calling to leave my daughter with some things I've made for her eventual household. It's like a totem of generational competence. Some proof that "We are people who make things". And it's a lot less ephemeral than the code I sling as a career.

I don't see any Indian making that claim, even if their ancestors had that as their own profession!

Not a knock against it, I'm sure it's a perfectly valid hobby if you're meeting the low standard of enjoying it. I'm just perplexed regarding why it's a rarety elsewhere.

Probably the lingering effects of America being a frontier nation once upon a time. Where self reliance is a virtue.

It's fading. That is clear as day. The learned helplessness I see all around me is depressing. People acting like any sort of manual labor or recreational competence is beneath them, and the only worthy use of their time is byzantine credentialism scams. Why be the chump making things when you are supposed to be ordering them around?

Rarely do I see any of these people living lives as lofty as their view of their place in the world. But that's a topic for another day, and thread.

There are some valiant attempts to reclaim the virtue of self-reliance and the dignity of manual labor but it feels like, at best, fighting a delaying action. Ten years ago Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs fame) was invited to give TED talks or testify to the Senate about manual labor. Now the flavor of the day is just giving money to college grads who can't handle their finances like adults.

But is it really worth their time? You've admitted you're several hundred dollars in the hole, though you do have something nice to show for it.

I'm not claiming that as a general standard for hobbies of course. If just seems to me that barring some low hanging fruit, for educated professionals like the majority of us, it makes much more sense to pay someone else to do it and free up our time for other activities.

I can't say it would be a sensible decision here, even skilled labor like that is cheap enough nobody bothers.

Given my effective hourly compensation as an American tech bro: me building a new gun or retaining wall or installing recessed lighting in my home is wild profligacy or strictly a money burning hobby. But I don't want to live a life where I earn so much that I can "barely afford to sleep" as one poster wrote in a humorous story about a fictional rich man.

On some level, sure I could have paid a couple of nice Mexicans to do this for me. They recognize me at the hardware store parking lot and wave to me hoping that I'll hire them for the day. But I want to do these things myself.

If I gave the impression I judge all hobbies by strictly utilitarian rules, I can only apologize.

It's your free time, if you enjoy the way you spent it, who am I to judge?

You do understand I'm not literally hundreds in the hole right?

That wasn't obvious to me at all! You really need to lower your estimates for how informed I am about the costs in tools, space and labor it involves haha

Yeah, that was just in response to the hypothetical "what if you valued your time" question. It's interesting in the abstract, but useless practically. I have a salaried position, I can't just work more hours to make more money. If I did decide to slavishly min-max my time for profit seeking pursuits, it's unlikely I'd actually earn that much money in a side hustle or part time job. Or even half that.

If I did find somewhere that my more valuable skills could be brought to bare, I think my employment contract would actually prevent me from taking it.

Now the question of how long until the tools I purchased pay for themselves is an interesting one. The thickness planer I got has probably already paid for itself, or close to it. It literally halves if not quarters the cost of lumber buying it rough and milling it yourself versus buying it S4S or even S3S. Especially the place I get mine at that regularly has plenty of perfectly usable lumber in a "dent and ding" section. And let me tell you, S4S oak is expensive. It's the difference between paying $10 per board foot versus $2.5-4 a board foot.

My tablesaw I've gotten a ton of use out of, but deciding when it pays for itself is slightly more difficult. So far I've used it to build my kid a stool with a drawer in it, because she loves drawers. Also a box because I needed the practice. Made my in-laws a clock as a Christmas present. Used it when I rebuilt the rotted wall of my garage. Also made myself a bookshelf that was perfectly sized to go on top of my filing cabinet and hold my old game manuals. And when I replaced a bunch of rotted MDF trim.

Fuck whoever though MDF made good trim.

Then I built my wife a chair with it. And a garden. And a chicken coop. And a 3-bin compost.

Made a pair of cutting boards, one for us and one for the in-laws.

It's possible it's utility has paid for itself by now. It's been the workhorse of a great many of my projects.

My router table, circular saw, jig saw and miter saw are hard to say. I thought I'd use the circular saw more, but now I mostly use it to break down sheet goods. The miter saw I use all the damned time to rough cut planks, but I generally use my tablesaw to cut to final dimensions. The router table I've used for a lot of things that only it can do, or which just work better than a tablesaw. And the jig saw I've used to cut a lot of curves or sharp angles I wanted projects to have for decorative reasons that just were not gonna happen at all any other way. But in aggregate, it's hard for me to say these tools have paid for themselves. Still, it's a pleasure having the right tool for the right job.

In that sense, perhaps I am still "down" hundreds of dollars. On the other hand, I probably would have just spent the money on an RTX 3080 at pandemic prices, and blown a hundred hours in Cyberpunk 2077 instead. And if you are asking about return on investment or what my time is worth, that truly would have been money down the drain.

Sure sounds like there's a lot of depth in it, and while I can't say that I still understand the appeal myself, I can at least see why one might want to venture down the rabbit hole.

Keep at it! All that matters is that you enjoy it after all.

Too much value available from actual work, relative to hobbies? If I had a stronger sense that the time I expend on hobbies could be directly traded off into significant improvements in my and my family's standard of living and prospects, I'd probably hobby less and work more.

It's not that we don't have hobbies, but they're usually not as involved, or certainly not as physical or craftsmanship oriented.

This is especially the case for men, since women tend to have hobbies here that would be unremarkable in the States.

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