What Is This Hobby?

Playing with electronics and extracting the most enjoyable music reproduction that I can financially muster. I love tubes, cables, plugs, tweaks and other stuff associated with audio. very similar to my auotmobile hobby, racing, race rims and tires, racing cams and heads, coolers, special gears. Different hobby, but similar methodologies to achieve better results. Ciao,
Audioquest4life

Hobbyists are usually building or collecting things. I don't think too many of us are building our own gear, but we have probably collected a great deal of electronics over the years. It seems like "the Hobby" is another way to sum up the Quest for the absolute sound. The path to the Quest is summed up well by Avguy and eventually one comes to the same conclusion as Mike_in_md.

"This X" is a way of defining something which sounds a bit stilted to many people over the age of 30. It seems to have come into popular use in the first few years of George Dubya's presidency when George, and many politicians (mostly conservative side) started to describe "the USA" as "this country" and "this country of ours" rather than "our country" or "the United States of America." I looked around for a while to try to discern whether it was a Bush-ism or someone else's schtick. I have not found the source if it is not George Dubya (or his speechwriter's).

"This" has become a word which implies inclusiveness without saying 'our' which sounds too possessive to some people. It no longer seems to be a way of commenting about the the thing specifically (while insinuating that the observation may not apply to other ones). Personally, I find the usage to be annoying and contrived, but it certainly has gained a foothold in this language (smirk).

T-Bone, insightful. Possibly Shakespeare inspired?

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

The RSC 2000-01 season was titled "This England".

I purposely did not use "our" so as to allow for differing opinions about the exact nature of the hobby.

Obviously audiophile type activity has something to do with reproducing music, assembling equipment, tweaking systems, etc. My question, which is intentionally very open ended, was intended to find out if there was a specific area along the audiophile type activity spectrum that we could agree upon as the central focus of our hobby? I suspect not, but I don't really know, hence the post. If it's just playing with electronics, then where does music fit in? If it's exploration in reproduction of prerecorded music, then the whole equipment side seems diminished. My impression is that the hobby reference occurs most often when people are talking about changing equipment, the so-call upgrading. That's also where I see the most references to drug use/mental health issues.

The Wikipedia definition is so broad that virtually any non-employment related activity is a "hobby". Being a serial killer qualifies as a hobby under that definition. Audiophiles would fit under the scale modeling/diorama area of the hobby definition. I never thought of it that way, but it's true.

Finally, where does Audiogon's forums fit into our hobby? Reading and writing about assembling electronics and listening to music seems to take up a fair amount of time.

I didn't think that "this" or "our" was in question but rather hobby? I think Onhwy61 makes a very strong point about Audiogon forum's. The forum's bring enthusiast's together and without intent, it promotes the hobby and makes us all feel good about this/our/your hobby. Let's face it, without Audiogon, if you don't have anyone to share "this/our/your Hobby" with, it can be a bit lonely and not as much fun.