Oh also on the "Tik tok ruined hobbies" thing, my question is to those people: is accessibility that scary to you? If wide range access to tutorial videos or walkthroughs is so bad, what is someone bedridden supposed to do for fun? Because there was a time I couldn't leave the house at ALL, and what got me through it was learning to paint and draw as a child. I couldn't go see my friends so I'd text them and send them videos of me covered in paint or links to the tutorials I followed. If I can't afford a class or even attend a class on painting, wtf am I supposed to do??? Tik tok ruined hobbies my ASS because now I get to see other people using their passions the same way I did or even better. So many small businesses get to advertise their work on tik tok. I don't love the app but one thing it didn't do was ruin someone's hobby, it might've sold out the supplies for a bit while it was trending but your talents are still there dawg. Nobody took that from you.
Sorry for getting personal or whatever obviously you don't gotta post this if you don't want to. But yeah they just hate that certain hobbies aren't so exclusionary anymore. No, Kristeighnnn, your knitting circle isn't the shit anymore because I can just do that myself without you teaching me (and failing to teach me, might I add.)
also no apology needed for getting personal lmao you're preaching to the choir here, my blog is pretty unfiltered! yeah i think this is a huge benefit to social media, esp. for traditional handcrafts like the fiber stuff i'm deep into - a lot of this stuff is on the verge of getting lost simply due to commercialization and low interest rates, but online communities have really helped with a lot of that. i am so glad you had access + were able to find community that way - i want that world for every person, my story is quite similar! creativity is so important and covers so many forms of expression that it pisses me off badly when people try to criticize others for "doing it wrong."
you are absolutely correct in that the criticism boils down to handwringing most of the time. but i am about to go on a stupid rant about misogyny that got WAY too long lmfao. pls forgive.
i think my issue with a lot of the YT nonsense i see is that it boils down to a few different things:
"being a beginner is cringe" - you'll see this complaint buried under subtleties like "you can tell they aren't even trying very hard," "it's clear they only do this when the camera's turned on," etc. very much a criticism of perceived "skill" from a person who very likely isn't even into the hobby themselves.
"Women I Mean Hobbyists are enjoying things the wrong way" - occasionally this makes an approach at being meaningful. usually you'll hear a statement like "the focus is on having the shiniest new markers" or "you can see there's things on her shelf she isn't even using" or other such things that boil down to Women Are Being Materialistic As Usual. sometimes points are made about the TikTok Shop's reputation for low-quality materials, which - bitch, have you been to a Hobby Lobby? that shit's been around since capitalism was invented. yeah, sure, e-commerce has exploded the issue, but that's never the point, is it? the issue is "women are taking up perfectly good shelf space with purchases." and so what if she spends more time color-coding her markers than actually coloring? so what if she went on a book-buying binge despite struggling to finish the series she's been working through? never have i seen an evolved answer to this question, even though i do think reasonable criticisms OF THE MARKET exist. bc it's not about the market. lmao.
"go pro or go home" - kinda like the first point, usually this one covers the category of "they obviously just jump on whatever's trendy and abandon their last hobby." oh my god, get a grip, Carlin or Gable or whatever the fuck your name is, YT Commentator Man #753. just because you have been working on the same project car since high school. i better not see your performative ass buying the next PlayStation. you already have one. essentially this criticism boils down to "they aren't doing enough of their hobby for me to take them seriously before moving on to something else." again, my question of "so what?" remains answerless.
"i devalue this hobby because it's for women I Mean It's Consumerist" - here you'll find creators lambasting everything from gel pen calligraphy to mandala drawing to labubu collections to bullet journaling. these guys (and girls, i'm not gonna pretend some women haven't hopped on this, but women being capable of misogyny isn't exactly new news) will happily grandstand and goalpost on what constitutes A Hobby, which as we all know is a noble and bounded category that should be protected from defilement. and they'll pretend their issue is about capitalism. and i always go to click hoping maybe this time it'll actually be about capitalism. but no. it is about women enjoying things. always.
and if anyone reading along is thinking, well, don't they criticize men's hobbies, too? sure. but whenever i see male-skewing hobbies criticized, it is never because it's Morally Bankrupt Overconsumption, but instead because it is ruining the fun for everyone else. things i have seen are one-off expose-type videos about the following:
guy who buys pokemon cards to upsell them at a premium to desperate parents just trying to fulfill their kids' Christmas list is ruining the fun
guy who gets into fights in the comments of his woodworking videos is ruining the reputation of the community
guy who gatekeeps info about how he does X technique is ruining his integrity because he keeps clickbaiting people
i never see guys whose workshop tools are too shiny to have been used often brought up in the former type of video. i never see big-ass binders of Magic cards being made fun of as consumerist brainrot, or fantasy football forfeits as examples of community toxicity, etc - yes, these guys get criticized, but it always gets to be about their merits to the hobby and their lack of community-mindedness instead of the supposed Real Societal Issues facing The Hobbyist Today.
just my little rant for the evening lol. thanks as always for letting me go off like this :)
