24 Hobbies And Old-School Skills People Say Are Slowly Disappearing
I’m at the age where I can watch someone restore a rusty tool on TikTok for hours and think, “I could get into that.” I don’t have the physical means like tools and that stuff, but I’m emotionally ready for this hobby.
There’s something appealing about having a hobby that leaves you with a physical result at the end. You literally made something. You didn’t just spend an hour on social media watching what other people made.
People in this AskReddit thread shared the hobbies and old-school skills they’re seeing less often, and several sound pretty great.
Although apparently the first step in picking up a hobby is owning a house with an extra room.
1. Hosting A Dinner Party Without Assigning Everyone Homework
“Maybe just in my circles, but hosting a dinner party seems to be a lost art. Planning out a full meal, usually themed, and some party games. No expectations for the guests to bring anything. We’ve had friends invite us over for parties, and we always appreciate it, but the art of ‘hosting’ seems lost. We used to host monthly but got annoyed that no one ever invited us back. So now we only do it once or twice a year and focus on just having family over.”
2. Giving A Broken Appliance A Chance Before Replacing It
“Repairing small appliances. A loose wire or worn switch used to mean an afternoon with a screwdriver; now, the whole thing often goes straight to the bin.”
3. Model Trains Require Some Very Real Square Footage
“Model railroading. It requires a lot of dedicated space, and the financial outlay is very high, two things that younger people, especially, don’t have much of now. As a consequence, the hobby is aging rapidly, and people in their 50s are considered ‘young.’ Lots of people are interested… but the biggest thing is the lack of dedicated space for a layout. When you’re living with multiple roommates to split costs, you simply can’t monopolize the living room with a train layout, LOL.”
4. Knowing Your Way Around A Computer’s Files And Parts
“Computer maintenance and general tinkering. Not just on the hardware side, but also on the software side. Most people are completely clueless about basic things, like understanding what a folder is.”
5. Being The Young Person At The Ham Radio Club At Almost 40
“Ham radio. It’s not obsolete or going anywhere, but I’m the youngest person in my local club, and I’m nearing 40.”
“I just recently got into ham radio. Of course, I’ve recently entered my 50s; I think you just automatically get interested in s**t that you previously couldn’t have cared less about after a certain age.
For me, it started with an interest in off-grid topics, which led me to Meshtastic/MeshCore, and now I’m researching local AR groups. Guess I’ll probably have to start gardening soon and maybe catch up on some Ken Burns documentaries.”
6. Sewing Gets Harder When The Fabric Stores Disappear
“I wonder if sewing fits into this. It seemed like there was a bit of a resurgence recently, especially with the increased popularity of cosplay. But with JoAnn going under, there aren’t any more fabric stores around. Hobby Lobby and Walmart only carry a small selection of basic cotton broadcloth. Without access to varieties of fabrics for making garments, interest will wane again, and sewing will return to being a thing that your grandmother did.”
7. Finding Someone Who Can Fix Your Shoes Or Your Suit
“Cobblers and tailors. Nowhere in my town can I get a dress shoe resoled or major alterations (beyond hemming) done on a suit.”
8. The Project Car Needs A Place To Live, Too
“Working on a project car… I think the much-higher price of land is a big driver of this.”
“A lot of the hobbies mentioned thus far require lots of space to really do them. It’s the biggest driving factor of the decline, especially since I know many people who would love to get into space-intensive hobbies and have the means to fund their passion…but they just can’t get the space to do it.”
9. Coding For The Satisfaction Of Figuring It Out
“Coding. Even if younger people get into coding now, they’re actually ‘vibe coding,’ aka telling AI to code for them. That’s not learning how to code at all.”
“It also just robs you of all the fun of actually programming. It’s not just getting some randomarse app; the joy is in solving problems as you go and then getting the satisfaction of your solution finally working, and needing to actually learn something.”
10. Stamp Collecting Used To Be A Bigger Deal
“Collecting stamps used to be on a whole different level.”
“That’s probably because letters used to exist. Now stamps are just kinda boring, mostly.”
11. Learning A Camera That Doesn’t Also Receive Texts
“SLR (DSLR) photography. Although I started with film in my high school photography class, by the time I was ready to purchase a camera outside of school, digital had become a thing, and I picked up a DSLR. Fast forward to today, although DSLRs aren’t going anywhere, especially in the professional photography world, due to the sheer volume of camera phones, people just aren’t investing their time and money into learning a manual camera and lens.”
12. Getting Into Motorsports Comes With A Serious Price Tag
“Motor sports. It’s too d**n expensive, tracks are closing all over the country, and modern machines aren’t that fun to work on. It’s way more enjoyable to get your hands dirty building something than it is to chase electronic errors all day long.”
“My kid wanted to get into karting. Even getting everything second-hand was way too expensive. I could literally get him pro coaching in any number of sports for way less.”
13. Joining The School Band
“Playing an instrument in the school band. In my area, being in a school marching band or concert band was huge when I was younger. But my old trumpet teacher doesn’t give lessons anymore, and the local band music shop sold out to Music & Arts after the pandemic, because the kids aren’t as interested in band anymore.”
14. Sending Postcards Starts With Actually Finding Postcards
“Postcrossing. It sucks, because you can’t find many postcards in many stores, so you have to go on a treasure hunt. It’s something I recently got into, and it’s genuinely fun and creative to find and use postcards and stamps and send them out to friends.”
“I taught myself how to make a postcard (as in, meeting the weight and size requirements) for this reason. Then my best friend died, so now I have a stack I can’t send to anyone.”
15. Glassblowing Takes Skills You Can’t Pick Up Overnight
“Glassblowing. While it can get automated by machines…anything even remotely complicated or made from a special kind of material usually needs to be made by a glassblower manually. It’s hard to teach, and there isn’t anyone who even wants to learn, so it’s slowly but surely fading into obscurity.”
16. Making The Book Itself Is A Hobby, Too
“It’s not necessarily dying out, but it’s pretty uncommon: bookbinding. ‘Modern’ techniques were in use 300 years ago. The tools can be pretty cheap, and $20 worth of material will get you started on your first few projects.”
17. Being The Young One At A Board Wargame Convention
“Board wargames. Whenever I go to any convention or anything, I get a lot of attention and praise for trying to keep the hobby going. Other than me, the men in their 50s are the young ones. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, it was quite popular among children and young people, but now it’s almost all boomers and the like.”
18. Traditional Crafts Need People Who Can Afford To Keep Doing Them
“There is an organization called Heritage Crafts which lists crafts that are ‘endangered’ or ‘extinct’ in the UK, because we are losing knowledge and equipment and not training new craftspeople. Hand quilting in a frame is on there, alongside musical bow making, diamond cutting, ballet pointe shoe making, chain making, and many more. It’s a very interesting list!”
“I will mention that the reason why most of them are endangered or extinct is that they define the status of the skills based on how many people get paid to do the crafts/trades, not by how many people do it for fun.
Many of the skills are on the list because they’ve been automated, outsourced, or replaced by another product that consumers prefer. It’s hard to justify training an apprentice when no one is buying your products.”
19. Finding A Wood Carving Class Is Its Own Project
“Wood carving. No one in the city hosts a class. None of my circles talk about it as a thing.”
20. Ultimate Frisbee Needs Some New Recruits
“Ultimate frisbee. There are still some cities in the US where it’s very popular, but it’s declined a lot since COVID across much of the country. In my city, a large part of the community is entering their mid-30s, and there aren’t that many people in their 20s to replace them. I know a lot of other cities in my region are in a similar situation.”
21. Knowing What Makes A Watch Tick
“Watch-making and repairing. It was very popular when I was a teenager.”
22. Fiber Crafts That Require A Steady Hand And Some Patience
“Many fiber crafts, like handspinning, tatting, bobbin lace, etc. You need patience for those, and an eye for detail.”
23. Handwriting Fancy Enough To Deserve A Frame
“Calligraphy comes to mind.”
24. A Vote For Snooker
“Snooker.”