Seems like there is a growing pressure for every hobby to be instantly affordable and widely available. Reducing a hobby to something as crude as a dumbed-down YouTube tutorial or starter kit on Amazon strips the hobby of its soul, nuance, and depth. Let rare skills stay rare — that’s part of their value.
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I can’t think of a single example.
Edit: Since reading comprehension seems to be a difficult issue for redditors, I’ll clarify:
I can’t think of a single example of a hobby becoming “instantly affordable and accessible”.
Yeah I’m sick of all the riff-raff bringing down the tone at polo tournaments and sailing regattas.
They aren’t.
Can you give an example?
Making a hobby accessible is ALWAYS good. You don’t have to dumb it down to make it accessible, and growing a hobby base is great.
The idea that having more people able to do a hobby reduces it’s ‘soul’ or ‘depth’ is an insane thing to say.
It was MY turn to make the weekly gatekeeping post!
Youtube tutorials are just another form of lecture.
Most labor require a set number of tools that could be put into one all encompassing package.
I’m not really sure this opinion is coming from a reasonable or informed place, i don’t imagine its popular for that though lol.
Thems the rules I guess, grats.
Is gatekeeping a valid opinion? 🤔
If I understand correctly, you would like to keep hobbies as simple or as complicated as they are. Works for me honestly!
Yup. Gatekeeping to keep the “normies” out helps preserve the integrity of it.
Often times people outside the hobby will try to barge in and demand things change to suit them, rather than walking away and understanding it’s not for them.
There’s a big difference between not being accessible and gatekeeping.
If something can be dumbed down in a youtube tutorial so people can get into the hobby? That’s amazing, it makes things more accessible and more people can get into the hobby! Some hobbies can’t be accessible to everyone though, because of their location or they cant afford the equipment or lifestyles.
But… not letting people do something basic because you want to feel special? Yeah that’s gatekeeping which is just stupid.
Ah a evergreen Gatekeeper Classic, good choice for an unpopular post
I agree with you except for one tiny setting. Warhammer 40k, please GW, lower the prices, i don’t want to go into debt to afford more than a combat patrol
I will never play golf because it is for pretentious richies
It’s about reducing the barrier for entry. Let people have a chance to try things – it doesn’t mean they’ll be good at it. Being good at the hobby requires practice and skill (and maybe more money), but there’s no harm in making it more accessible to people. Maybe they’ll like it and go all-in, maybe not; but they won’t find out until they try and they won’t try if there are high costs associated with beginner level.
I think this is an unpopular opinion and don’t like it myself so an upvote for being in the right sub.
I sort of understand your point even if I don’t agree with it.
There seems to be two main camps when it comes to hibbies.
Camp1: a hobby you do with others like book club or softball etc. In that case I’d want more people involved because part of the joy is sharing it with others.
Camp2: individual hobbies. Stamp collecting, calligraphy, gardening. On which case why do I care if you or anyone else has entered the hobby. I will simply toil away in my own joyous obscurity complete unaware that you are using low cost pens or top soil.
Either way I can’t really see how adding a barrier to entry adds to my enjoyment.
Why just the other day my Ferrari owners club allowed a Mondial owner to join. We of course won’t associate with him but he’s still part of the dues paying membership and I think that’s what’s important.
Increasing accessibility of hobbies is what gives the hobby longevity and raises the overall skill ceiling and quality of the hobby. Cubing is a great example.
If a hobby isn’t accessible, it will eventually stop being a hobby in general and then rare skills will not only be low quality, but close to none existent.
The only hobbies I can think of where mass popularity hurts the hobby are hobbies with limited resources like foraging and fishing (which a lot of people in the community gatekeep locations) and surfing where overcrowding makes safety worse
I can play football with my mates in the park and it doesn’t take away from Messi’s genius.
This is such a bad take from you
Which hobby did a poor kid best you at
Definitely an unpopular opinion. Here’s my upvote.
Who cares? If you can’t enjoy your hobby because other (less experienced) people might be trying their hand at it, this says a lot about you.
It’s so discouraging when I’m trying to have a conversation about the gardening strategies I use in different abodes in my house collection when some peasant pipes up about a potted plant in their apartment.
Isn’t just gatekeeping ?
OP’s only hobby is probably Reddit.
that would be a good way to make your hobby completely obsolete and forgotten within a couple decades.
assigning value to a hobby based solely on its “rarity” is certainly a take. Almost like you’re undermining the very nature of what a hobby is. Get the fuck out of here
The popular “accessibility” trend is just fancy marketing talk for “how can we sell more shit to more people”.
In other words— I don’t think it was an organic movement. And if it was, it has now been taken over by corporate interests.
But in practice, I don’t see a problem making attempts to expose more people to a hobby.
And I don’t put much weight into “cheapening” the experience— because with everything, there is a skill ceiling where the minority of talented people will surpass but most ppl won’t. That’s just life.
If anything, my main critique about the “accessibility” trend is that it may foster unrealistic expectations from some of the newly adopted enthusiasts.
It seems like you have a specific hobby in mind. I’m all for a healthy level of gatekeeping within a community but own up to it here. What hobby are you talking about?
Gatekeeping to a reasonable degree is how to keep a hobby alive tbqh.
Had someone argue that a lack of easy mode in Elden Ring was ableist. Seemed enormously dismissive of the real struggles disabled people face with accessibility here in the real world.
Not everyone can do everything, ffs. It’s a video game, not a post office. No one is harmed if it’s too hard for them. Play something else.
Well,I agree that an hobby can be hard, but there’s no reason to gatekeep people from enjoying a lighter version of the hobby. You can rename the newbie version, if that’s the only issue.
Down voting OP because they seem to have confused accessibility/affordability with somehow reducing talent or skills.
Accessibility and affordability are things that make it possible for more people to attempt and partake in something. They don’t reduce the rarity of the experts in that hobby or sport. At most they increase the amount of experts to the natural level that would exist without artificial barriers. There’s generally a natural level of experts (best and/or most knowledgeable) at anything and that level is always a small portion of the people in that hobby, sport, skill, etc.
Soccer/football is one of the most accessible sports in the world and yet even though the absolute number of experts might be larger today than in the past they still represent a very small amount of people that are involved. Additionally, the skill of these experts is generally greater than back when the sport was not made to be accessible or available for most people.
We’ve seen this time and again with the desegregation of sports like baseball, basketball, and so on.
Every talent that exists can be taught but the variations in ability, drive, and other factors mean there will always be differences in talent/skill. We are a long way from removing those variations if it is even possible without something like genetic or other forms of questionable body modification.
Barely a hundred years ago calculus was something the majority of people were supposedly incapable of doing or understanding. Yet my below median income and intellect butt was able to do it in highschool. Now we have more people doing all kinds of advanced math that makes calculus seem simple.
Needless to say, the way OP worded their post doesn’t seem like they have an unpopular opinion as much as an incorrect and regressive one.
I kind of understand this. I hate the term ‘we’re democratizing X’ as in making it easy for novices to get in on the process. Sometimes barriers to entry are there to ensure the needed skillset or knowledge to safely or effectively do something. I don’t think barriers should always be value related, but perhaps knowledge or skill based, etc.
Not everything needs to be freely available to everyone all the time. Things used to require research, skill, knowledge, and yes sometimes money to get into.
There is nothing wrong with more expensive hobbies having entry level starter kits.
Astrophotography is a great example of this. Most people dont start out jumping straight into the imaging aspect of the hobby, they start out observing. And this is an amazing way for people interested in astronomy to learn the night sky and how to navigate to the various objectives. While yes, even observational telescopes can be expensive. There are definitely DIY kits and instructionals on how to build something like a Dobsonian telescope and kits for them.
As people develop there interest in the observational side of things, they can begin slowly building setup for the photography side of the hobby.
Every hobby has it’s price points no matter how simple they may seem. And that is perfectly okay. If someone is passionate about hobby, they tend to become lifetime activities. And over the course of a lifetime their collections and investment towards their hobby will grow. Youtube tutorials are only a modern way of sharing experiences and knowledge with others that are interested.
This is the kind of thinking that leads to dead skills and hobbies. Lower level entry points are intentional. Part of it is skill building, part of it is not everyone needs the best tools for thier level, and if you don’t have entry level gear people just won’t try. I did stunt kites for a few years, If I had to buy in at the multi kite level out the gate I wouldn’t have bothered. I also wouldn’t have been able to fly a multi kite setup.
I play a lot of Magic, so I’ll use this as an example for why I agree with you.
For the past 25 years Magic has gradually become more tuned for new and casual players, as feel bad moments are removed from the game. Certain interactions – land destruction is a prime example – are extremely limited in new card printings because new players hate not being able to play their cards. Mana denial has morphed from cards like Wasteland and Strip Mine to cards like Demolition Field and Field of Ruin, where there’s a compensating factor so you don’t have to feel too bad about your $20 rare land getting blown up. Even the basic Counterspell has been deemed too strong and frustrating to be printed anymore.
On top of this, the designers have decided that new players want each card to do more, and so good cards tend to include both a setup and a payoff now. Decks that would have relied on synergy between the cards to create something greater than the individual parts are now supplanted by stuffing your deck with game-winning bombs that provide both immediate and long-term value for playing them.
This isn’t to say the game was perfect or anything, there have been disastrous sets released before this change occurred, but on the whole the game was more fun when these avenues of interaction between the cards were encouraged and designed for, rather than making good cards self-sufficient.
The game is becoming less interesting as a direct result of making it easier/safer for new players to play. Removing the risk and interaction removes the challenge and fun of the game.
I ride horses. It’s NOT accessible to most people and it SHOULDNT be.
In my little perfect fantasy land everyone would have a pony, but the reality in todays economy is that it’s expensive to have land, it’s expensive to have specialized care (veterinarian, farrier, training,) and horses are inherently dangerous which makes them not 100% accessible to all bodies.
There ARE ways to have and ride horses on a budget but more often then not you are replacing money with knowledge and to obtain that knowledge you need money. Ie. I train my own horses but I also spent 20 years learning how to do that and where my limits are.
Any efforts I know to make horse riding more accessible to more people involve someone else paying for it. The price tag doesn’t go away because no one in the assembly line of care is getting rich off of it.
What you’re complaining about is the commercialization of your hobby. Not it’s accessibility.
This post is just people assuming money is the singular issue being discussed when people bring up “accessibility”
I’d also like to add that more people isn’t always better though even in a hobby with others. Especially if it’s tourists/casuals. Like for instance I play table-top rpgs. Casuals just aren’t really able to be game masters. This means a massive player surplus with no where near enough GMs to go around. I also generally don’t enjoy GMing for players who aren’t going to put in the time to read the rulebooks at least enough to make their character and know the core game mechanics. The game slows to a crawl if they need 15 minutes to take what should be a 3 min turn. All the other players then get bored and check out of the game. One bad player can tank a whole group.
This isn’t about adding a barrier. There just is one. You can’t try to circumvent it to the detriment of everyone around you. I’ll help you if you don’t grasp something, but you have to put in the effort to read the player rules. I just want people to meet me half way and many don’t. I even have people have the audacity to try to get me to change games to a game they learned from others already (inevitably always DnD or PathFinder) so they don’t have to learn a new game.
I think it’s fine for a hobby to have a learning curve and require a certain aptitude.
What I have no patience for is gatekeeping. If a person is investing time, energy, and resources at any level to develop proficiency in a hobby, I see no reason the community should not welcome that person. It especially peaves me when a person is shunned for not having the right personality.
Let rare skills stay rare — that’s part of their value.
Yes but no. Someone made a comment about video games that kinda struck me. “That guy who would have been outside cataloguing 37 new types of insect found in wooded areas near his home is now at home making a 37 part video on how to collect all the rings in the latest Sonic Game.”
Without making hobbies more accessible and affordable, a lot of them could easily die off. Money is tight right now for everyone AND every day we are loosing more folks who were in these hobbies before online guides and tutorials, meaning they had to figure it out or make it work their own way. If newer generations aren’t introduced, we could easily loose a number of skills and hobbies over the next few generations.
I will say though, that as some hobbies become more accessible, we really need to just let folks enjoy them as they wish to without trying to make major demographic or political changes to the existing fan base. Came into DnD back in around 2018ish and had a great time just playing the game. Over the last several years though, things like Critical Role, Stranger Things, and other pop-culture events have drawn a whole new demographic to this old hobby which is great. BUT those new people and the folks running the companies have made moves to alienate the existing fan base and change the game and story to better suit their views and beliefs. Instead of backing up the idea that “It is your game and you can play it how you want/need to” theyve taken to changing the game itself, moving away from “troublesome” stereotypes that could have precieved connections between real world people/cultures, introducing overly flavoring characters LGTBQXYZ+ for no more reason than to ensure the minorities are specifically represented (for the love of god you decide in your game if they are that, don’t write it down and try to force it on others. Let the DM or players flesh out the story and add tidbits right for their group.), or reworking whole systems to more or less cripple unique features such as races and their racial bonuses. Again, make a basic game & system and mostly stick to what has worked, then let the people who are using the reference materials fleshout the story as they see fit. Don’t try pandering to a minority population who has come out and been the most vocal while ignoring the who have been there for you.
I started gardening with an empty beer box, dirt from an forested patch, and dandelion seeds. In a third story apartment. Had dandelion salads. Stir fry. Now I’m nativizing a swamp and meadow three years later.
Get fucked buddy haha! Gardening is FREE!!! /Lh
> Reducing a hobby to something as crude as a dumbed-down YouTube tutorial or starter kit on Amazon strips the hobby of its soul, nuance, and depth
before soul, nuance and depth come the training wheels.
Apprentice to master.
>Let rare skills stay rare — that’s part of their value.
rare implies could disappear. that’s bad for everyone, I think.
>Not every hobby needs to be “accessible” to everyone
what if it’s educational?
used to have to know something about right ascension and declination. now you tell the telescope what to take pictures of. (for the price of a game console)
Best smart telescopes 2025: Navigate the night skies with ease
https://www.space.com/best-smart-telescopes
I tend to agree. Hobbies are meant for people who have enough time and money to support them.
Somewhat agree, but also disagree. Also would like to make the point just because you share a hobby with someone doesnt mean you’re in it for the same reasons, or that you should be friends.
There are often facets to most hobbies that can be improved that make things better for everyone.
However theres also people that have the expectation that every hobby is like tv or videogames, and if you cant just pick it up with zero experience or effort applying yourself, that you should instantly be able to enjoy it to the level of seasoned enthusiasts.
One of my hobbies requires a culmination of several skills that are hobbies unto themselves. Money can help with some parts but is no shortcut. Yet, you do get people trying to shortcut all the way through with zero effort and minimal spending, without fail they never seem to have good intents in trying to fit in. Its a rather niche and hyper-specific hobby so apologies on being light on details, rather not dox myself.
I probably wouldn’t want to participate in a hobby with you anyway!
I’m a bit of a house plant hobbyist. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see plants for sale, going for 15-30$, when a few years ago these plants would have been selling for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. I do love that everyone can get involved.
I play guitar. It’s a fairly accessible hobby. It’s the most versatile instrument there is.
But no matter how much or little one spends, it doesn’t make them good at it.
So I think it depends on the hobby. Personally I do think certain hobbies should be accessible, like boating as other people have said.
I’ve sailed a sailboat. I got lucky as I don’t come from a sailboat owing family. But it’s not that hard and not bad for the environment, it’s just expensive and gate kept.
Hobby =/= skills
A lot of people would enjoy doing something but there are costs due to a bunch of bullshit industry prices and often lack of competition (because of niche sector) —> monopoly
Examples: flight simulators
I think I might see what you’re getting at? In my opinion it’s not so much low barrier to entry as it is a low barrier to promoting yourself as an expert and a high incentive to do so.
Using one of my hobbies as an example…
The knitting world was very different when I started 20 years ago. You’d buy a pattern, and that pattern would be published by an established company, and in order to get that pattern published you’d need to have demonstrated a certain level of expertise in the field. Patterns were reliable – if you could follow one, you were good. Now the market is flooded with terribly made patterns and self proclaimed experts who learned to knit 6 months ago.
It’s not because knitting has a lower barrier to entry – acrylic yarn and needles have always been cheap. I can’t even say it’s because it’s easier to self-promote. Lowering that barrier is a net benefit because it increases diversity and lets us hear voices who might not have been heard in the hobby.
It’s hustle culture. Nobody’s allowed to just have a hobby anymore, because why have a hobby that costs you money when you could have a side hustle that makes you money? The goal isn’t enjoyment and mastery anymore. The goal is to be just good enough that you can market yourself as an expert to people who don’t know any better. Then those people reach your skill level and think they’re experts too. That’s what’s diluting hobbies.
There are tons of talented, hard working masters of their crafts out there on social media and selling patterns. The problem is that good work takes time, and social media by nature rewards volume over quality. Are you going to get more views from spending months knitting a beautiful hand drafted sweater or cranking out a dozen ill fitting sweaters in accidental twisted knit in that time? So most of what we end up seeing is the person who slaps together a thing that looks just impressive enough to wow your average onlooker, but won’t pass muster with people who know the skill.
This has been happening in martial arts for literal decades, the very impetus of contact-based martial arts, y’know, the “contact” part is a massive turn-off for people. Especially with kids martial arts, generally the more “authentic” you make the experience, the worse you’re going to do as a business. Take that with a huge grain of salt, because the pendulum has swung back a little bit from the “mall karate” era with the popularity of MMA/BJJ/Muay Thai
Gate keeper, keeper of gates, the final boss of Reddit.
Let me give a niche example. I’m a Lolita, as in Lolita fashion. There are many ways it is becoming more accessible, but nonetheless quality in fashion is VERY apparent. We might not tear you apart for wearing a 20$ dress, but we will tell you that something is or is not part of the fashion, tons of people try to get into the fashion by spending as little as possible. It’s a luxury fashion, people save for a long time to afford it, there is no reliable fast track. But they still try!
Unironically yes. People hate to hear it, but gatekeeping is valid and a necessary evil at times.
My one kid is a competitive rock climber. As in traveling to other provinces for competitions.
Guess what? She got her start at one of those birthday party fun climbing gyms – with the light up walls and silly themes.
As someone else here said “before the skill and determination, comes the training wheels.”
This reminds me, is F1 racing even that hard, or just inaccessible because you need to have 600K USD minimum to put your kid through a carting career first.
Wonder what the skill level would be like if poor kids could kart competitively as well.
Hockey should be exempt from this mentality. All the safety regulations and price gouging makes it a sport very unaffordable to play for many.
Idk, I feel like every hobby needs to have some kind of starting point, and what’s wrong with a YouTube tutorial? How are people supposed to start picking up these rare skills? Go and apprentice themselves to some old man in the woods?
like what?
Are you saying this because your hobby is overflowing with people who are bad at it and it annoys you so you want to gate keep it behind a paywall ?