I try to make something that looks good (or at least doesn't look like random static) by running pictures I've taken through audio editing software. There are some extra steps that go into it to "trick" the program into importing the picture as if it were a sound file, making sure the header (information that tells your computer that this is a picture) doesn't get fucked with, and then exporting the data in a way that it will be saved as a picture and not an mp3 or something else.

On the rare occasion I do bring it up, I can literally watch people's eyes glaze over. Until I show them a picture

Edit: internet is really bad right now, will reply with an image when I can

Edit2: picture was too big at 7MB. Hopefully a screenshot of the picture doesn't look too bad

I'm a math teacher. I use my video game making knowledge from Godot to make little video games to review skills. Each takes a few weeks to make with game design, making all the art, programming, and making the worksheet.

Here is my Disco Dj-Demo if you were curious what I mean.

I think it's fun, it's not something I can really chat with others about.

I am learning lockpicking for fun. It helps me relax. I used a practice lock at first, then a cheap real lock. I've just learned that my firearms lock...yup, can be picked open in about 10 seconds. Equal parts cool and terrifying. Locks are waaay less secure than people think.

It has the same "internet hacker" stigma so I avoid talking about it.

I like learning about random ass hobbies without ever indulging in them.

I watch an ungodly amount of aquarium / terrarium videos, lurk a ton of aquascaping communities. I owned a betta fish in an empty bowl when I was 12 and that's it. (poor fish)

I read all you could know about book binding fanfiction, never done it.

I read a hundred pages long horse breeding guide for the game black desert online and I have no idea why. I only played the game for a month, spent most of it reading a google doc about horse. I'm not even sure I owned a horse in the game.

Sometimes I try the hobby, for example mini painting, and don't have the patience for it. But I still watch some random dudes on youtube paint for hours and sometimes they don't even talk!

No idea why I am like this

Model trains. I don't bring it up because it's obscure, but I've definitely found there's a stigma. "Oh he's the guy who plays with trains". Screw the haters, I like to relax after work and do a bit of escapism. Eventually I got over it though and talk about it with friends, but it's not the first thing I bring up either

For me it's coffee. Most people see it as a daily need. When I say my hobby is coffee they always say things like "that's not a hobby".

Working on my (private) servers is a hypnotic activity for me. It can be interesting or I can hate it and still want to do it. It can also be relaxing. Last time when I was sick in bed I played around with wireguard VPN configs all day to get a routed VPN for my VPS. I'm going to fix it today because something doesn't work the way it should.

Also, I learn Japanese. 日本語が大好き！

Starting and abandoning hobbies.

I've spent a good chunk of the year making ebooks from out-of-print dead tree books. Proofing and formatting takes a ton of time. Nobody reads them but me.

Contributing to OpenStreetMap. I try to bring it up because it would be great to get more contributors to the project, but either I have to explain "It's Wikipedia, but a map" or they come out with misunderstandings about the project that aren't worth correcting. E.g not liking the icons used to display points on the map.

In a way, my interest in internet privacy is almost always met with uninterested "ah" IRL. Even when I dont come off as preachy, when I just try to sell it as "watching YT without ads", people often don't care.

Programming... Maybe not the most quirky, but just doesn't make for good conversation

Downloading and occasionally playing games from the flip phone era (j2me games). They seem to be mostly forgotten. They're basically the best alternative to the ad ridden, micro-transactions galore of today's android games and there's a surprisingly high amount of very high quality games.

I have a hobby that I can't even truly mention the name of it because the name is shared with the book Lolita.

However the lolita fashion clothing I wear and collect from Japan and China has nothing to do with the book so I often have to refer to my hobby as "Japanese Street Fashion" and that actually covers the other J-Fashion I wear too, which includes lolita dresses.

They're just specific types of dresses with a certain cut, they are often described as cupcake dresses and were more popular in Japan during the Harajuku Girls craze, so like around 2010 to 2013ish. I actually picked up the hobby in 2015 and started building a wardrobe, learning how to use color theory to match pieces of clothing, learning about different fabric types and how to care for them, and even learning about how to import items from other countries like Japan where they have limits on what they want people in the US to be buying from them.

I'm not as into it as I use to be because I have less of a disposable income now and it's a very spendy hobby. Plus COVID made shipping more difficult and a lot of laws in other countries changed around shipping and prices increased for international shipments. I still buy a dress like every 6 months? I use to buy them more often and sadly I don't fit some of them anymore. I only gained a bit of weight since 2015 but the dresses are tiny and its hard to get them altered without the right matching fabric.

I'm currently trying to lose weight so I can get back into wearing more of my wardrobe again like I use to. Currently cycling as I write this.

I also use to go to meet ups for lolita fashion specifically but that community is unfortunately full of toxic people and I finally gave up on going to the meets not long after COVID restrictions were lifted where I live.

I've never let it stop me, but:

• ethical philosophy

• social dance, especially contra and square

• chromosomal / genetic inheritance simulations

I speak Esperanto and I am quite active in the movement and write for the Esperanto Wikipedia. In 2011 I had quite a cool trip to an Esperanto Youth Congress in Kijiv. But it's hard to talk about it because most people see it as a failed project from the early 1900s, not as a modern subculture.

Knitting - if you find the right audience, you can chat for hours, but it can also lead to blank looks or lots of assumption.

I'm into macro photography: Just taking pictures of tiny stuff.

I find pointless bugs in video games. I can spend hours trying to platform in a single spot the game doesn’t expect, like jumping from a fence to a windowsill to lamp post to a canopy to a roof.

I used to be a speedrunner and still have some of that blood in me, but I refuse to skip content in casual playthroughs. So the crazy part is if I find a way to skip an entire level, cool, time to go back and do it normally.

Retro tech. It's not too obscure, especially nowadays. I could talk long hours about how mind fucking blowing was the Amiga and then still how it went down on the drain... tho I just see on the other people that this isn't really the topic that will kickstart (heheh) the party.

I need to find more friends...

I kill and butcher animals for myself and sometimes friends together with my boyfriend. Mostly pigs, some sheep and goats, poultry. Sometimes injured animals who are too injured or in too much pain.

The idea is to save the stress of transport to animals who are raised in good conditions as part of diversified restorative small-scale agriculture.

The killing and butchering is just one part of a circle of activities around the farm throughout the year, but probably the most unmentionable in any social setting other than among meat fanatics.

Video games. Even with how popular they are, it's not something easily brought up in a casual conversation. I hardly ever run into people my age who even play games. :/

I genuinely like to engage with video games as an art form and I think some of them are among the actual best works of art there is.

It lands like absolutely nowhere. EIther people see you as a capital G gamer, but even the capital G gamers hate you because they want to enjoy product, not art

I really enjoy getting the most out of a computer/mobile device that I have. I love trying out different OSes, messing with a video game to squeeze as much as performance possible etc.

Not too quirky or obscure but I really just like to fix shit. Clocks, washing machines, cars, crooked door, hole in a sweater, electronics... Nothing is outside of my interest.

On the more obscure side I like to fiddle with wrist watches by adding aftermarket parts and modifying their overall look.

I really got into steve1989s mre videos. So I collect vintage military rations.

Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. Usually gets an, "oh" and a sideways look

I install and set up operating systems. It's something I do to my own computer regularly, but I'll cheerfully do for someone else because it's fun.

Linux is my favorite, but I can do Windows, Free/Open/Dragonfly BSD, Haiku, and given time to research others as well. I keep meaning to give NetBSD a shot...

It gives me a focused task with a specific end goal that requires some technical knowledge, but mostly preparation, research, and troubleshooting skills. The activity can sometimes lift me out of a depressive episode for a while.

I used to make porn gifs.

I make music, but it's not really music anyone would want to put on at a party, so I don't tell anyone about it. There's nothing more awkward than standing there trying to explain to someone that what they're listening to is a chord progression played with each note slightly out of phase such that rather than distinct chord changes, you just get an overall impression of it as time progresses while they screw up their face in confusion and disgust. Not that everything I make is a conceptual experiment, but that's inevitably what someone will put on if they discover my music.

I was learning Gregg Shorthand at some point just for the fun of it and every time I brought it up people had no idea what I was on about.

I train in swordfighting. It's good exercise and trains hand eye coordination as well as good balance.

The funniest part is it's actually helped me a lot in my day to day because I know how to move my body

I have a perfectly accurate 1:1 scale lightsaber replica of Luke Skywalker. It turns on, it’s really bright, it reacts accordingly to how I swing it, can deflect blasters and makes tons of cool sounds…

I don’t bring it up in conversation, but when people find out they get really excited (well, boys mostly)

Geocaching used to be really big but now is pretty low key and niche.

A lot of people I talk to have no clue what it is, and the rest know what it is but have some wildly wrong preconceived notions about it. Stuff like "It's only for hikers" (no it isn't) or how the geocaches are only in the woods. I had a friend who literally did not trust me to go geocaching with her because apparently she thought somebody would be waiting at the location of the geocache to murder us. I had to sit her down and show her that a large majority of geocaches are located in bustling cities and on the sides of major roads.

Sucks that a lot of people also just did not understand it. I once told a friend that there's no monetary reward and they looked at me slackjawed. Like yes you just go find things and then when you find it you have the satisfaction of having found it and shared your find with your friends online. You don't make money doing it lol.

I don't have such a strange hobby, more that the subject for that hobby is strange. There's nothing weird about fixing up a 35 year old sports car or truck or something.

But I've been working on what I thought was a well-known model of 4x4, but now that it's running it draws a crowd of onlookers when I take it somewhere, and many people, even adults, don't know what a Suzuki Samurai is and have never seen one before.

Weather watching (not the extreme kind) - I basically note down the current weather and interpret my own forecast then later see if I'm right.

Lockpicking - it's basically a tiny little puzzle and I can buy different solutions for a few bucks at any store.

Gardening - this is less obscure/quirky and more that I don't want people to think that I'm bragging about how many tomatoes I have because I will in fact brag about how many tomatoes I have.

I read tarot cards and I'm considering doing it professionally so I can rip off the gullible petty bourgeoisie.

Yes, Sarah. All the planets in our solar system has aligned just to give you a promotion. Now give me 20 bucks.

Masturbating to hentai bondage.

I've been playing Second Life for almost half of my life. I used to run a blog about it and often spend a few hours every day online chatting with people. Mentioning that I know anything about it inevitably triggers people to either ask "wait that still exists?" or "isn't that a sex game?"