Can Your Hobbies Be Unsexy?

From gaming to magic tricks, how much can your hobby screw (or un-screw) you?

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Anyway, another day, another discourse. Earlier this week, Twitter user CSandbatch posted this chart of men’s hobbies ranked by how unattractive they are. The source is unclear, and some postulated that the entire chart was made up, but if it is, I think it’s a fair approximation of what would happen if you asked women to rank male hobbies from sexiest to least sexy:

Although I’m not terribly knowledgeable about dating, I do spend far too much of my time thinking about how people relate to each other due to my long-documented difficulties making friends. I have a few takeaways here, but the main one is that a man’s hobbies are unlikely to make him seem more or less attractive to a woman, barring extreme circumstances (such as operating and maintaining a goon cave- a huge turn-on for women who appreciate organizational skills and interior design!)

Twitter’s AI might be uncensored but it’s clearly unfamiliar with gooning.

That said, I think this survey (assuming it was real) sparked some interesting discussion about the non-physical traits that can affect how sexy or unsexy someone seems.

Let’s start by looking at the hobbies that were ranked as the least attractive. All of them are pretty geeky for the most part. Some people noted that for the most part, they are passive hobbies related to consumption instead of skill, and that women are turned off by men “relaxing.” (I actually don’t think this is specific to women. Ask a man how he feels about a woman watching Lady Whistledown getting her cheeks clapped to Halsey quartets for hours on end.) But the main thing that stood out to a lot of Twitter users is that some of these hobbies—like video games, the “worst” one—are very common. And women play video games too—lots of women! So what exactly is wrong with video games?

Also, does a hobby being unsexy mean it would disqualify a man, or just that it wouldn’t provide any boost in their attractiveness? and why on Earth is birdwatching catching strays? Personally, I was appalled to see “online trolling” take a hit. That’s been my favorite hobby for years!

I think this can mostly be boiled down to people being asked to imagine how they would feel about a fictional person with these hobbies, versus actually being presented with that person. And before any men start patting themselves on the back for having more insight about their own preferences than women do, I actually think this applies to them too.

When it comes to real person interactions (I’m gleaning this mostly from my conversations/interviews with singles of all stripes), I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that most people’s dealbreakers—men’s and women’s—will be thrown out the window if the following three conditions are met: