Ask Lemmy

Anyone using Linux, based on 60% of the content on lemmy. Uh… maybe also lemmy.

Arch Linux

CrossFit.

Adults going to DisneyWorld as if it was a sacred shrine

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.

Competitive Super Smash Bros Melee, we won't ever die. And Nintendo has been trying to rub us out since 2008.

Linux

Warhammer

Crossfit

Internet personalities/"influencers"

Pickleball.

Kpop-Stans, Warhammer, Disney - Adults, Harry Potter.

There are two kinds of people who own a pressure canner - people who enjoy making preserves and fucking crazy people.

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.

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.

Warhammer.

Oh, a warhammer topic!

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

Knitting. It's part witchcraft, part voodoo.

Community theater can get pretty weird. (It can just as easily be not weird and awesome, though)

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.

Society for Creative Anachronism

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.

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...

I second DnD and Warhammer, and i'll add Magic the Gathering to this list

I feel like it would be easier to list the hobbies that aren't, based on the answers so far.