Which hobby is considered a cult or has cult-like tendencies?
Which hobby is considered a cult or has cult-like tendencies?
238 comments
-
-
Warhammer - people at a local club have told me it is "heresy" to even refer to one page rules - a newish and very innovative wargame. That's the lifestyle players of course not everyone, the people who paint 20h a week while listening to Warhammer audio books play 8hs a week and do fuck all besides that. I have met loads of cool people in the hobby too, but omg those guys
-
Y'all have some weird ideas about what a hobby is. Parenting as a hobby cracked me up, that's just having a family, you presumably grew up in one of those. Religion isn't a cult-like hobby, it's a hobby-ish cult.
On the parenting front though, I think those pageants are, those kids do it for a hobby and I would consider it abusive, and hard to exit once they are in.
-
those kids do it for a hobby
The pageants are the parents' hobby. The kids are whisked into it at a vulnerable stage of development in which they don't have the agency to decide any of it for themselves.
-
I can agree with this. Like entering your dog in a dog show. I did want my kids in sport or dance as part of their education but told them if I ever gave criticism, to tell me to do the sport my own damn self. So they did their stuff as their hobbies, and I did my own art/sport stuff and kept out of theirs.
-
-
Nah, i must disagree here. The posters are right about being a hobby for some people. In two very bad ways
There are (usually the dads) who only pick it up once in a while the same way they go mountainbiking,etc. Then they usually try to "make up" what they didn't do the rest of the days and make it "extra fun". (As usual the Simpsons did a good take on it in their fun dad episode) But they don't give a rats ass the rest of the time. They don't go to the doctor with the kid,they don't know their school schedules,etc. They pick their hobby up maybe twice a month. I hate these people - because they are so numerous. When I am out with my kiddos I get comments "oh,do you babysit for your wife?" "Oh, it's nice you take that burden off your wife once in a while." Like what? Are you fucking crazy? My wife is the actual main income earner and this is not the 50ies.
The other kind is as bad,imho. The overinvolved ones. The ones that basically want to do everything so right that it becomes their hobby (or obsession). The "oh no, my kid can't eat sugar that is not made from XY" "I will not raise my child, i will love-raise them", etc. Note that while these have a crosssection with helicopter parents they are a distinct group themselves,as some prefer an intentional other style of parenting (all nature and free roaming,etc.). But they will focus on it - countless blogs, books from unqualified authors and instagram posts will be read, countless discussions, for them it becomes their hobby...or more.
So..there are some people who have parenting as a hobby. And that doesn't mean the ones who have no time for hobbies anymore - as parenting is fucking hard sometimes.
-
Yes, the feigned self-chuckle the other person had out-loud so the entire comment section could listen, is delusional bullshit.
MANY parents (and my sister is one) take parenting way beyond delivering the basic needs and rearing, and turn it into their entire personality. From the outside looking in, I can see a huge "mommy group" of women all in competition to assert who's child has the most afflictions, which mom's kid is the most autistic, which mom has the worst anxiety and needs the most free stuff and pity, who's got the rarest condishun....
Yeah, only a clueless dip would actually think this isn't a real thing. There are a shitload of parents who make parenting their whole life and identity. And they form mini-cults. My sister has been harming her own child since he was born because it gets her more social points in these groups. It's madness.
-
-
-
Celsius energy drinks.
I had a coworker evangelize about them so I decided to try them out. Every time I got one and tried it some complete random would come up 'Hey! You like Celsius? Have you tried the [whatever] flavors? [Other flavor] is my favorite!'
I found them all gross.
-
Their sugar free energy packets that you mix in water tasted like jello so I kind of liked those. I haven't tried the cans though.
-
-
Computer Keyboard Enthusiasts
-
All of them if you delve deep enough
-
Correct answer, pretty much any group will develop extremists after time.
-
-
Buying used panties from onlyfans sites.
-
To frame them.. right?
-
Only if you’re not a fucking weirdo.
-
I got the panties from a Drag performance, and then I wrote them on ig asking them for a signature. I'm still procrastinating the job to make them frame in the most baroque frame I can find.
-
-
-
Anyone using Linux, based on 60% of the content on lemmy. Uh… maybe also lemmy.
-
Religion IMHO is a hobby.
-
vtubers
-
following a certain youtuber too. i onced followed some asian youtubers, that i stopped when they msygonistically "attacked an female employee and fired her, and turned super right". they even have these 2 loser female fans spend 24/7 patrolling thier channels gatekeeping and astroturfing the comment sections. and the rest of the fans are just as bad, it just reeks of incels for thier viewership and fangirl/groupies.
-
-
Adults going to DisneyWorld as if it was a sacred shrine
-
When I meet a chick in an online dating way, at the first mention of Disney I'm gone. Unmatch, block, whatever's fastest.
-
i read an article where a guy was going there almost everyday, or every chance because had nothing else to do. i think somewhere in that article mentioned that people were creeped or got suspicious because he is a man with no children at that place frequently.
-
Adults going to Disney without kids.
-
those are the one's that I was thinking about
-
-
-
There are two kinds of people who own a pressure canner - people who enjoy making preserves and fucking crazy people.
-
Sometimes a person is both.
The only reason I still have any normal friends is that my raspberry jam is freaking amazing. But I use that as an excuse to expound on the class war. It’s how they pay me back for the jam.
-
What's the other kind?
-
Did you know certain pressure canners can be used as makeshift autoclaves, allowing you to make your own home brewed sterile injectable medications?
-
Handy information to have for when all the hospitals close in a few years.
Because who wants a back alley surgery performed by people of questionable education using non sterile medication/implements?
-
sounds dangerous
-
Good to know if I ever need to perform makeshift surgery after the inevitable collapse of society!
-
-
Me, looking into pressure canning to preserve soup
I'm in danger!!
-
-
Arch Linux
-
It's absolutely crazy to me that there are unironically people recommending Arch to newbies.
-
I would say NixOS might be even more cultish. I am a part of that cult.
-
I wouldn't know, I've never met a person in real life professing to using arch BTW. I see it everywhere online though, but that might just be eight guys with a ton of sock puppet accounts for all I know.
Is arch linux even a thing, like Hanna Montana and Justin Bieber Linux is a thing?
-
Only to people who haven't been inducted to the cult of gentoo
-
I can't read "gentoo" without hearing the Weezer song "Getchoo" in my head.
Gentoo, uh huh. Gentoo, uh huh. Gentoo, uh huh. Gentoo, Gentoo, Gentoo..... ooh hoo
-
-
Unironically a neat clean system
If I knew how to get it
-
Can’t spell anarchy without arch 🏴
-
I don't know whether anyone has mentioned this -- gacha games. Like cults, it forces you to pay a lot of money, but never enough to satisfy them. It always leaves you in a state of frustration. Video gaming is supposed to be a hobby, but the level of attention and resources demanded by these games are insane.
-
-
CrossFit.
-
so many people get injured from that.
-
-
Competitive Super Smash Bros Melee, we won't ever die. And Nintendo has been trying to rub us out since 2008.
-
Nintendo has been trying to rub us out
"Stop, Nintendo. You're just mashing it."
-
Time to salt Nintendo.
-
-
. And Nintendo has been trying to rub us out since 2008.
dedication like that... phew. impressive.
-
-
Nostr. I think the tech is cool, but the culture seems like some sort of cryptocurrency cult
-
How does it compare to activityPub?
-
Honestly, I might not be the best person to ask, as I'm not super familiar with the underlying details of either. But, from a high level, I'd say that Nostr is more decentralized.
(I might get some of these details wrong, so hopefully someone can correct me.)
I've seen people say that ActivityPub is decentralized, but I just don't quite see it. I think even email is more "decentralized" than AP. With email, your identity is tied to a domain name. If you own the domain name, then you can switch email servers/providers. AFAIK, with AP, your identity is tied to a server and domain name. So if the server is gone, then your account is too.
With Nostr, you own your identity. It's not tied to a domain name or server. If a Nostr relay goes offline (or bans you, I suppose), you can continue using your account through other relays.
I think most people use more than one relay on Nostr (that's the default setting in many Nostr clients). If one goes down, I'm not sure I'd even notice. You can add/remove relays from your client too.
Nostr feels a bit more like p2p, in a way. More of the heavy lifting is done on the client than the servers/relays.
-
-
-
Definitely warhammer. Can't stand those punks. Have you noticed a lot of warhammer lore reaction videos
-
Related but a lot of smaller LARP clubs (European style at least, can't speak for America) end up extremely culty because of a perfect storm of factors:
- takes up loads of time and resources just to be average; making costumes, learning stats, downtime activities etc before you've even left the house
- predominantly twenty-somethings who recently moved out of their parents' house and end up house-sharing with other LARPers from the same club
- the RPG + Am Dram elements mean that it takes years to be able to access a lot of the game, whether it be types of spellcasting or a character in a position of power. This means that if you want to quit your club for another one, you're losing years of progression in a way that doesn't happen with sports or most arts-based hobbies.
- spending whole weekends in the middle of the woods with no outside influence, where you have to follow instructions given by refs. It's also not unusual to be up until sunrise or even do all-nighters playing through the next day as well
- success or failure at the game is often at the whims of said refs, MUCH more than in Warhammer
- ...as a result of which, the club management hierarchy ends up translating into social hierarchy outside of official events. The people at the top are the ones that effectively determine whether a party, day trip or even a wedding is going to be a big event or not, and the regular membership treats them accordingly. So, culty as heck.
-
It's like a microcosm of society itself in a way, guess we human beings can't think outside of hierarchical structures
-
-
Improv
-
Religion. All of them are cults. Every single fucking one.
Nothing. No other hobby even comes close to the death, genocide, rape, murder, and hate generated by that type of religious cult. It's every single year, too. Every single year religion tops its hate, greed, and pain inflicted on everyone.
-
I don't think anyone would call their religion a hobby, though.
-
Many people engage with the cults as a hobby though. Many of my relatives would probably agree that's about their level of involvement, but then they pay in to the beast that does all of the culty shit...
-
-
Your particular brand of invisible sky wizard is different from my particular brand of invisible sky wizard. Die heretic!
-
I'm pretty sure that religion was mostly used as a kind of motivational tool for the masses, but without religion there probably would have been another excuse why the enemy needs to die
It's always about resources and shit anyway
-
-
They said hobbies not belief systems.
-
For a lot of people, when you look at how they spend their time, it is clear that their religion is both their belief system AND their hobby.
Think of the "Bible study" types. They've turned it into a hobby-like activity. Some I knew growing up clearly had nothing else. It was their hobby.
-
I wouldn't call a cult a belief system.
-
-
Edgelord atheist mad at christianity and islam: "every religion is genocide and hate, and I hate them."
Buddhists , jains, pagans, etc: "hey excuse you buddy."
-
I mean, Buddhists just did a genocide in Myanmar. They have a cleaner track record than Abrahamic faiths for sure, but if you spend serious time in actual Buddhist places it fills the exact same societal roles.
Neopaganism is a bit of an odd one out in that list, because it's a newly invented thing.
-
I usually limit my ire to Abrahamic religions (though Buddhism's track record isn't completely clean).
I don't know enough about the history of Jainism to say one way or another, though given what I know about it (ALL life is sacred), i imagine they're probably the closest an organized religion can get to being unharmful.
-
Baha'is would as well, but nobody ever remembers them. The one time I saw a question about TBF on Jeopardy, it was the Final Jeopardy question, and no one got it right.
-
-
-
At this point, trading card collecting and grading. Oh, a new series of trading cards for pokemon or yu-gi-oh or whatever dropped? Time for all the adults to buy out every single card in the store and then run home in hopes that their scam leaders like PSA will encourage their behavior by gracing them with a card they claim is worth money despite only being out for less than a week.
Card grading ain't nothing but a scam, cult, and great way to encourage the worst in people, while simultaneously gatekeeping trading cards from everyone with more than 2 braincells. Ain't nothing gonna change my mind about it.
-
on reddit its very cultish, they dont buy it because they want to play it, because they want to sell it at a huge markup, or hold onto like a stock portfolio. people on pokebeach and the main tgc forum were complaining how the scalpers and pokeinvestors are ruining the game by pricing them out of purchasing it, and competing with scalpers. Also tcpi is doing very little to fix it, limiting online store or the vending machine isnt really working, increasing the pull rates and buying singles would reduce it significant.
mtg seems to be on a whole nother level, especially they are focusing on making cards of different well established IP.
-
-
Community theater can get pretty weird. (It can just as easily be not weird and awesome, though)
-
True, any gathering of current or former “theatre kids” is going to be weird. But that’s what makes them so fun. (Unless you hate show tunes. Then you’re in for a bad time.)
-
-
Pickleball.
-
Seriously what is the deal with it? I remembered playing it in gym decades ago and everyone hated it. Now I see people lobbying for new freaking complexes for it. Let's see if the fad lasts more than a year before dedicating public land space to it
-
It’s been lasted more than a year. Its super easy for beginners and the gap between never played and mediocre player is pretty small in my experience. Groups of different ages/skill/athleticism can play the game relatively easy together. You can get drunk while playing and still be good. You don’t have to break a sweat if you don’t want to. Games are short.
I think it gets way too much flak and it is a little too overhyped rn. But it’s a top contender for the ideal casual game.
-
It kinda looks like tennis for the unathletic, which means I should fit right in, but I have zero interest.
-
-
-
People who code often come to their technical opinions via aesthetics rather than legit technical reasons. On 4chan/g/ there are people who only code in C, or only code in Lisp, or only code in Ocaml, and there's nothing you can tell them to convince them to use a new language because their hero is Terry Davis and they imagine themselves as living in Serial Experiments Lain. They code on projects with no real world applicability. I think the appeal behind Terry Davis is that these people are all building their temple to God, in a way.
-
Internet personalities/"influencers"
-
One way money transfers, controlling people's time and career aspirations, dividing families, rape, and murder.
Not all "Influencers", but some notable cases.
-
Are they fundamentally different from celebs and TV personalities of the past, or is it the scale and presentation that has changed?
There will always be grifters and those who are led in to loyalty follow them. It's bizarre.
-
-
Any sort of hypebeast scam. Labubu, pop up clothing companies with no real design or quality, beanie babies, most crypto, specific vinyl collections. It's only worth something if you know some deep dark lore about it which requires effort to research and understand, then you're hooked. It's post capitalism cult energy.
-
Only most crypto?
-
-
I think you need to specify what you mean by cult. The way I personally understand it, a cult includes a leader who exploits their members for free labor, oftentimes for sexual gratification, and removes them from their friends and families while subjecting them to psychological manipulation. I'm having a hard time thinking of a hobby that meets the criteria I'm more familiar with.
-
This. There are defined criteria as to what a real cult is, and once you have any familiarity with that, you realize that 99% of what people call "cultlike" is really just culture.
-
-
Warhammer. The tabletop one with the figures, not the video games.
Vacations/travel for some people. Its clearly something where they have zero clue about their privilege and zero self awareness as they talk about it.
Parenting. Seriously, it becomes some people's only fucking identity and the way they talk about it feels like religious proselytizing mixed with a bit of used car salesperson energy.
Comic conventions. Some people make it uncomfortable how seriously they take it.
Wasting some time on Lemmy trying to leave shitty comments just looking to rile people up or something.
-
100% what I first thought of. I was well into WH Fantasy as a kid with my older brother and moved into 40k as a teen. Lost interest as an adult and thought I might like to get back into it recently cos I've got a mate who's obsessed.
Too expensive, the business model is more exploitative than ever and the game system has become terribly bloated and the recent new edition hasn't improved it.
Also, beyond the top tier of competition, most matches are decided before a single figure is put on the board.
There are other far more interesting game systems on the market that aren't dedicated into forcing you into buying new miniatures and books every 18 months.
-
-
Kpop-Stans, Warhammer, Disney - Adults, Harry Potter.
-
HP fandom is pretty wierd cultish, especially around ROWLINGS terf-iness.
another genre is supernatural fandom , pretty cultish, mostly around how the fans think the actors were in a gay relationship, when they are not. to the point it creeped out the actors(jensen and jared, and misha) and one point i heard some of the guess actors were met with death threats from said fans, who also developed parasocial relationship with the actors.
-
-
Religion. 🤌🏼
-
-
Cycling. They go from 'this is fun', to full blown road dictators, in about 2 weeks.
Edit: just watch. The downvotes will likely display their cult rage.
-
Please explain exactly what you mean by "full blown road dictators", and clearly detail how it is different from "use the road in a completely legal manner in ways trying to keep yourself and others from getting run over by the many car drivers with a sense of entitlement to the road".
-
I almost never see cyclists ride in a legal manner. They're motorized vehicles when its convenient to them and pedestrians when its not. They split lanes, blow through red lights, and they loooooove to go out in big groups and take over the road
-
Well you see, cars go faster and are stronger, so by being in the road you are a road dictator.
-
As a cyclist, I'd have to guess "riding two abreast when there's a car behind you."
-
Found the cyclist.
-
-
ive seen those, they have all the getup, wearing the gear aerodynamic helmet, and they act like karens while in the store too sometimes. and they loudly try to chatise you for almost running into them, when they suddenly pulled in front of you. i call them bicycle douches. oh and they disregard pedestrians too
-
I hate cyclists, and I'm dutch. Cycle to work or the store? Fine by me, I do it all the time myself. Being a cyclist however? I'll hate your guts.
Tho I'm pretty sure it's not that uncommon of an opinion here, most of the time people either hate cyclists, or are one themselves.
-
Heh I remember several years ago, I bought a cool vintage 10-speed bike which was lovingly restored by a local bike co-op, it wasn’t ever a top of the line pro racing bike or anything, just a nice old street bike for casual riding. The co-op did a great job making it like new, but with subtle finishing accents.
I posted some pics of it on r/bicycling on Reddit to get their feedback, advice. SUCH SNOBBERY! My god, you’d think I took a shit in the middle of the lobby floor of The Ritz-Carlton. They made me feel wholly unwelcome and unwanted.
-
-
Politics, obviously.
-
Warhammer.
-
I feel like it would be easier to list the hobbies that aren't, based on the answers so far.
-
Feel free to post this question.
-
-
Gunpla, pop/labubu, liquid-cooing/overclocking, 3D printing, drones/RC
There is a bit of a threshold between an innocent hobby and a cult, but once crossed, it's.... yeah...
-
If you're into liquid cooling cause it gives "better performance" then that's cope and a cult, but if you just do it to make your PC look cool asf then there's nothing wrong with that
-
Nahhhh, better performance WAS a totally true and valid thing. Though since moore's law died, power management systems advanced, and heat pipes/chambers were commercialized, the difference is now neglegible for all but the extreme cases.
-
Can you still overclock tf out of a liquid cooled cpu or has that changed?
-
-
I don't see what makes the last two cult-like?
-
Some of the bambulab owners are a bit cultish for sure.
-
-
-
Knitting. It's part witchcraft, part voodoo.
-
The single thing I miss about Reddit is r/knitting. It was the only consistently kind and supportive niche sub I ever frequented. I learned a lot from them and even when someone posted something kind of ugly or not right, everyone was like, “keep it up! You’ll be doing sweaters in no time!” Sometimes people were snobs about yarn but usually for just themselves… not knocking on another user not opting to buy expensive hand spun/hand dyed yarns especially when it’s clear they were beginners. Ah I miss it honestly.
-
That's because it's math, which is voodoo witchcraft.
Don't even get me started on fucking crochet...
-
-
Society for Creative Anachronism
-
Oh damn. I came here to answer this too, but was definitely not expecting someone else already to have said it.
I do HEMA, which has a healthy overlap with the SCA, but from what I've heard, the SCA has a pretty rigid structure and hierarchy with ranks and titles. I've heard about people winning bouts in SCA fencing against someone who is supposedly ranked higher than them, and getting shunned because of it. That's not healthy.
-
Dagorhir also overlapped with SCA a bit, and surely had a weird social scene, but I wouldn't consider it cult-like. People seemed well integrated with the rest of society when they weren't battling.
-
-
They seem so positive and bubbly from the outside!
Definitely a cult.
-
-
I second DnD and Warhammer, and i'll add Magic the Gathering to this list
-
Yeah, anything that has you speaking in game jargon in public should qualify.
One of my friends at a pizza place a few years ago: "I can't believe I didn't get to poison anyone last night."
Me: "Dude, context! We are in public!"
-
First intro to MtG was in college I walked past a room with the lights out and only candles lit, the four people were wearing robes and playing... MtG. Decided right then that nah, that's too far for me.
-
Candlelit MtG? They were either having a terrible date or daring the other to burn their decks
-
thats sounds like DND. i played MTG in hs, it was mostly in HS cafeteria or in a secluded room with friends, and someone that works there, we dont play outside of school though and nobody in CC played it, so i stopped playing it, but sitll collected it for a few more years.
-
-
-
Nix and NixOS
-
People who play Call of Chuthulu every single day
-
Where!? Point me in the direction of these people so I can uh... show them the error of their ways! But first I will have to gain their trust by joining, of course.
-
-
Hanging out with angry white dudes in white sheets who carry flaming crosses.
-
Honestly, I don't think very many of them could really be described as such, as at the very least most hobbies either don't have a person or group that could be called it's leader, or if they do, it's generally some business that owns some relevant IP that very much isn't considered unquestionable and above criticism. You could get cults that emerge within some hobby group instead of taking up the whole subculture, but given even things as mundane as exercise groups have had this happen before, I'd guess that can technically happen in just about any of them.
-
Dungeons and Dragons
-
But the cultists are the bad guys!
-
Shar?
-
-
-
Cult leadership
-
I wanted to start my own cult, but didn't know where to start. Luckily, I found a great group of people who had the same interest! Now we meet every Tuesday!
-
cult leaders tend to be grifters too.
-
-
-
pokemon card, especially around collecting(specifically collection porn, they have no interest in the game itself but get the rush from opening and getting a rare card) and playing it(mostly around the mechanics and gameplay). and they aggressively defend any possibility the current nature of the game is very wrong. i wasnt happened upon a discussion board around this. something similar , but people think chronic lyme is actual disease, there is a whole industry and cult around this thing, its unreal. and the people most pedaling it are MDs giving unsanctioned advice and prescriptions. and people defend(the disease) this like they defend donald trump(anything that contradicts the validity of CL is met with extreme hostilities)
-
Triathletes
-
Huh? How? There's no leadership structure to it to provide that cultish vibe, it's mostly just individuals are small groups of friends doing their thing together.
-
-
Kirby.
-
TIL Kirby is a hobby.
-
Kirby vaccuums maybe? More like a MLM back in the day.
-
-
-
Communism. There’s iconography, a separate way of using language, chanting, gatherings, books, meetings, clothing, hero mythology, doomsday plans of a revolution not unlike a rapture, and in some sects there are charismatic leaders and polyamory.
-
Communism isn't a hobby or a lifestyle tho? its a political ideology.
-
Just because something is a political ideology, doesn't mean it can't also be a hobby.
-
In the US in 2025 it bears a strong resemblance to a hobby at times. No shade intended either. I’m a card-carrying member myself.
-
-
I don't think that's a hobby...
-
thats a political ideology identiy, it isnt a cult.
-
Communism is and always has been a cult. Socialism is a political ideology. Communism contains all the hallmarks of religion: the belief that you have the one ideology which explains everything and can literally predict the future (dialectical materialism) and is explicitly a plan to murder your enemies to achieve an eschatological end-time which is both poorly explained (Marx basically never explained how a perfect communist society would actually function or what it would look like) and also unachievable (after the revolution, communists tend to spend all their time purging and massacring other communists who aren't communist enough). Communism even suppressed science which they believed was incompatible with dialectical materialism - relativity, quantum physics; despite the Soviet union having a strong nuclear weapons program, for a period in the 1940s and 1950s these theories and areas of science were considered counter-revolutionary. Same as in China during the cultural revolution. They killed heretics the same way the catholic church and spanish inquisition did because communism is a cult.
The revolution never ends - communism is impossible. Not because of "human nature" or anything like that, but because communists NEED enemies the kill. Murder is built into the religion.
-
A political ideology with cult-like tendencies.
-
-
-
DnD
-
"Do not Disturb"-mode is criminally underrated, I advocate for it to anybody willing to listen.
-
-
Adults who play board games
-
Wrong. They actually have to invite me to be considered a cult. 😩
-
The cult of scheduling conflicts and never having time to meet up :(
-
My parents used to get together with another couple almost every weekend and sit down and either play sequence, rummy, hand & foot or something along those lines. Easy way to sit down once a week, have a drink or two and just talk with your friends, no TVs, phones or etc were ever on.
Wish I lived near a friend group that was able to do that. They started hanging out doing similar around 1980 and kept it up till 2017 or so. (Was the same 2 friends, they both moved 1200 miles across the country) and made sure they lived a few blocks away during that time.
-
Most of them...
-
The cult of..origami?
-
Also candle making, don't sniff the Kool Aid scented wax.
-
Oh, man, the serious origami people are SERIOUS!
-
-
238 comments
Oh, a warhammer topic!