Ask Lemmy

Warhammer. The tabletop one with the figures, not the video games.

Vacations/travel for some people. Its clearly something where they have zero clue about their privilege and zero self awareness as they talk about it.

Parenting. Seriously, it becomes some people's only fucking identity and the way they talk about it feels like religious proselytizing mixed with a bit of used car salesperson energy.

Comic conventions. Some people make it uncomfortable how seriously they take it.

Wasting some time on Lemmy trying to leave shitty comments just looking to rile people up or something.

Politics, obviously.

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.

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

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.

Community theater can get pretty weird. (It can just as easily be not weird and awesome, though)

Linux

Warhammer

Crossfit

Competitive Super Smash Bros Melee, we won't ever die. And Nintendo has been trying to rub us out since 2008.

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.

Adults going to DisneyWorld as if it was a sacred shrine

Religion. 🤌🏼