The Case for Being Bad at Your Hobbies

Are we still allowed to be bad at our hobbies? That’s a complicated question in the year 2026.

Consider the rise of “hobby apps” like Strava and Goodreads, platforms which The Guardian argues are “gentler” than algorithm-ruled spaces like Instagram and X.

“Because hobby apps are nicer places to exist, people spend more time on them,” the outlet contends. Other forms of hobby apps include Letterboxd, Duolingo and even NYT Cooking. There are some really niche ones, too, like Ravelry (for knitting enthusiasts) and Merlin (an app where you rack up bird sightings like Pokemon).

On one hand, these apps connect people to their passions — and to other people with similar passions. That’s a genuine good. But it’s worth asking: what’s lost when our hobbies have such a robust digital footprint?

Hobby apps can easily slip into the trap of mimetic desire: we begin to see things worth doing because other people consider them worth doing. And from there, we track, optimize, set goals. We keep our followers posted. We keep streaks going, or else. It all starts to look and smell a bit like conventional social media…to say nothing of the added screentime.

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Let’s Zoom Out for a Moment

Forget the phones and apps for just a moment. Why do we have hobbies? What even are they?

Let’s consider the word first: hobby. Funny little word. It sounds childish, and that’s because it is. Back in the 1400s, the word “hobi” was a nickname for a small, active horse. As the centuries went by, the word was clumped with horse to form “hobbyhorse,” the name for that iconic children’s toy: a long stick with a horse’s head attached to it.

Kids rode these pretend horses for centuries, and the activity became associated with a kind of blissfully pointless diversion. Eventually the first half of the word broke free. Hobby came to describe an “activity that doesn’t go anywhere.”

I love that. Activity that doesn’t go anywhere. The word “go” has a double meaning in our age. For one, a hobby doesn’t need to inch along a linear chart of progress. Definitionally, it doesn’t need milestones or metrics. And two, it doesn’t have to go anywhere digitally. It doesn’t need to be logged in order to count. It can simply exist, in its most blissful, mediocre and invisible state. Like a kid running around the park with a stick horse.

Mediocrity and Invisibility

I am almost positive I’m a C+ longboarder. I’m self-taught, so I stand on my board kind of weird; hills with a certain vertical drop scare me; and anytime I step on a board shorter than 40 inches I’m more prone to slips. I’ve also never mastered a single trick.

I don’t know for sure that I’m bad, but I also don’t intend to find out. Despite my technical limitations, longboarding has been one of my surest refuges for the last six years. Just the other day, a couple hours before an event I was really nervous for, I got on my board and rode around aimlessly. I listened to surf rock, spent a few minutes watching my breath and eventually ended up on a bench in the sun, where I pushed the board from one foot to the other.

In other words, longboarding is my medicore, invisible hobby. (If I didn’t write a wellness column, very few people in the world would know I do it at all!) It’s an activity that doesn’t go anywhere, the literal movement notwithstanding.

I’m sure that longboarding conveys all sorts of benefits for my mind and life. (It’s not bad for cardio either.) It’s one of the primary activities I use to tap into the flow state, which brings me an uncommon sense of concentration and calm. And in a great twist of irony, having a reliable hobby is positively associated with productivity at work.

But who cares? True hobbies bring diversion and release. If you’ve forgotten what that feels like or how to do it, look to the kids. How they run, collect, build and experiment without thinking about it. The way they keep showing up when things don’t go according to plan, because they implicitly understand you can’t fail at a hobby.

Society already makes you feel like you owe optimal performance to your career, your friendships and your fitness. But your hobbies are on your side. You don’t owe them a thing.

Meet your guide

Tanner Garrity

Tanner Garrity is a senior editor at InsideHook, where he’s covered wellness, travel, sports and pop culture since 2017. He also authors The Charge, InsideHook’s weekly wellness newsletter. Beyond the newsroom, he can usually be found running, skating, reading, writing fiction or playing tennis. He lives in Brooklyn.