Hobbies as Hobbies
Embrace the gravitational pull of the rabbit hole, I say. We need to stop complaining about how people toy with the thing instead of using it. Photographers compare film vs digital, cyclists look for the bike that completes their collection (N+1), cinephiles spot the mise-en-scène, and people with 3D printers spend too much time in the garage. That’s fine! Let the hobby be the hobby.
The point of a hobby is to enjoy how you spend time. If that’s not happening then find something else to do. But usually hobbies are fun because they let you obsess deeply (even if for a short time) about some oddity and that’s all that matters.
When I was in middle school, one of my teachers introduced the class to Macromedia Dreamweaver (we got to use the colorful iMac G3). I loved the heck out of that tool and followed a little built-in tutorial and taught myself HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Did I build anything useful? Only a short script that looped alert dialogs infinitely such that the only way to clear them was to shut down the Mac. Did I get in trouble for “hacking and potentially destroying school equipment” for it? Maybe yeah! But it sparked an interest that turned into an obsession and eventually a career.
Passion drives outcomes.