“My hobbies are reading, watching movies, and playing with my dogs,” I wrote proudly in my friend's purple and pink butterfly-themed slambook in sixth grade. No one, as far as I can remember, questioned the value of my habits at the time. But if I do the same now, there will be a barrage of questions: which directors do I enjoy for their transcendental cinema? Which authors do I admire for their portrayals of the travesty that is the disease called humanity? Are the dogs of non-breeder origin adding to the collective moral value of the dogverse?
When did hobbies become an intellectual contest among peers? Why can humans, bred and raised on social media, not simply enjoy and be and, as my good friend says, ‘pluck grass in a green field with not a thought to spare'?
Intellectual Jostling
Like everything else we find wrong with society at large, let's blame this on social media.
Lately, I have witnessed a trend on social media where people are competing to prove how intellectual they can be with their hobbies. And hey, I am from the media - proving you are more intellectual than the next is our survival mechanism, so no disrespect there. But do my hobbies - an activity Oxford Dictionary defines as ‘an activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure' - have to prove I am a productive and intellectual being?
My pleasure centres do not have to align with my intellectual centres, no thanks.
But we are enslaved to the algorithm, and then the algorithm shows us our peers deeply engrossed in a film made exclusively for Mubi - you can never find a print of it elsewhere. And then we are scrolling these feeds on our phones with Netflix running in the background like a plebeian.
And why do you have Netflix in the first place? Mubi or theatre. Anything else is a betrayal to the art called cinema and the hobbyist called ‘cinephile'.
The same group - the ones playing the Intellectual Olympics - look down on genre readers and watchers. ‘You are reading science fiction when you could be reading the biography of Einstein? What. A. Loser.'
If you watch comedy, pick a dark, thought-provoking comedy over a silly thing like Jumanji made for children. Oh yes.
The ego Olympics of being more intellectual at a hobby, while definitely amplified on social media, is starkly visible in real-life tweets well. Heard of Alpha Males in the manosphere who outdo one another in being the worst? We have Alpha cinephiles and readers as well. They can recite the entire Mubi catalog and their bookshelf is filled with history, non-fiction, and only the Literary ‘Greats'. While none of these things are ‘wrong', they do become a tool to flex the intellectual muscles on social media about these being the superior way to perform a hobby. Yes, perform. Not enjoy. And never indulge.
And you are nothing but Beta if you are caught with a Dan Brown on your bookshelf or a David Dhawan blockbuster in your ‘previously watched' list.
Because at the end of the day, under our current economic and social structure, productivity reigns supreme, and so our hobbies - like the radical Marxist idea - can never be ‘just leisure'. Leisure is the enemy of productivity. And if you are not productive for even one hour of one day, you have failed as a functional human in a civilised society.
And this is because we are taught under capitalism that no moment of our lives can be non-productive. Hence, even things that give us joy have to enhance us in some moral or intellectual design or be useful in a way where we can brag to our friends and social media followers. Funny how the same people don't find doomscrolling unproductive to the extent they chastise someone watching a David Dhawan film.
Monetisation On, Relaxation Off
A big selling point of having a hobby in the first place is to relax, to get a respite from the gruelling world, to engage parts of the brain elsewise suppressed in the productive juices of ‘hustle' and ‘grind'. But the grind must continue, as all the ‘finfluencers' and life coaches will tell you. So, on the polar opposite end of leisure and in line with making hobbies productive, you are left with no option but to monetise your hobbies.
There are many resources online that help you upskill your hobby. While this can be a great thing, you are not doing it to be better at a thing you enjoy for leisure, but to monetise it and use social media to make meaning out of the hobby.
Meaning, value, or purpose are now supposed to be an integral part of your hobbies. Reading a book because it's a great thriller? And you enjoy it? But what did you gain from those hours indulging in this frivolous book when you could have gained a right to be intellectually superior to your peers at dinner parties? More importantly, why paint a subpar image of your dog when you can upskill on Skillshare and then sell that art on Instagram? After all, if there is no monetary benefit to a hobby you inculcated in you for leisure, why even indulge?
So be productive and monetise.
Or be productive by becoming intellectually superior to your peers. Burn those vampire fictions and unsubscribe to Netflix.
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
