Ask Lemmy

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

Arch Linux

Adults going to DisneyWorld as if it was a sacred shrine

CrossFit.

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.

Pickleball.

Internet personalities/"influencers"

Linux

Warhammer

Crossfit

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

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

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.

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.

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)

Society for Creative Anachronism

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

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...

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.

Religion. 🤌🏼

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

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.