What Is This Hobby?

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.

hmmm. now that's an interesting question!

Seeing as how this web site's extent is not addressing animal husbandry, UFOology, or how to improve & maintain your compost heap.... I'd say such an accolade pertains to none of those more interesting past times.

But I'll take a shot in the dark as it were.... my guess is it has to do with something like the various in's & out's of Home audio... and maybe on a level surpassing that of Sears & Wal-mart.

of course... I could be mistaken as there is the occasional refference to iPods & Bose bantied about now and then.

Actually the real answer is far simpler... this is a world wide bulleten board every major international intelligence concern utilizes to pass on encoded messages from one agent to another.

Just check out the classified sales ads that have gear which is ridiculously over priced so no one will attempt to contact them…. Except for their black ops buddies1

Especially those ads which post no pics but say innocently enough… “Pics provided upon request”.

Sure. Pics of What? Missle silos? Sub bases? All of our current K-mart Locations?

Now there’s a lot of bang for your buck at $4 a pop!

I know it was all so hush hush for years and I've outed them now... but hey! If I could see it... everyone else probably did too.

What is this thing called audio
This funny thing called audio
Why is it such a mystery
why does it make a fool of me

I heard a song one wonderful day
it took my head
and carried it away

that's why I ask this forum and heaven above
what is this thing called audio

with apologies to the original lyricist

Onhwy61,
I thought that you had specifically read "this hobby", which to me is slightly different than saying "our hobby." I was certainly not suggesting you had picked up a George-ism.

I admit the passage you quoted, from "King Richard II" is one of the all-time great usages of the word "this" in a monologue. I remember it very clearly from high school English. My English teacher was quite the dramatician. I actually remembered that monologue when I started seeing "this X" crop up in public speech/soundbite form because it was very specifically "this country" which I heard so many times - and that made me think of Shakespeare's paean to England as a country apart from other countries, which suffered the everlasting misfortune to not be England.

I have a sneaking suspicion George Dubya did not pick it up while watching the RSC, though perhaps his speechwriter did. It is possible that it is a Texas-ism I had not previously recognized which wandered into speech patterns. I still think the change in usage has been remarkable. I view it as being part and parcel of a popular move towards an 'empathetic construction' of the English language.

Certain small events or triggers - seemingly insignificant at the time - change linguistic usage forever. How many threads have you seen start with "So...", or "Okay." These are also products of the past 10 years. Interestingly enough, I think they are connected with the "this X" because all three of them are signals of empathy; the speaker is trying to identify common ground with the listener. Starting sentences with "So" and "Okay" is, as far as I can tell, a manifestation of the decline of the spoken paragraph. It is meant to connect what is about to be said to something which might have come before but did not. I think both (starting with "so" and starting with "Okay...") signal an increasing lack of confidence in social speaking, similar to the almost ubiquitous use of a rising intonation in sentences, making a lot of what comes out of teenagers mouths sound like questions. How many of you have heard the following while standing in line at Starbucks? - "Okay, so, I was going to go shopping with Melissa on Saturday but she couldn't go? [rising intonation, sounding like a question, probably elicits a nod] And so I called Julie to ask her if she wanted to hang out? [rising intonation, another nod] And so we went to the mall and we were just hanging out (and we saw this really great dress), and like you'll NEVER guess who we saw there!" Michael Lewis pointed out a few years ago that "so" as a start of a sentence came from Silicon Valley, and I can imagine that the "so" start is an effort to "pick up where we left off before" which is so innate in the conversation of coders/multitaskers ("so, where were we? Ah yes, I remember...")

In the end, language is a living breathing thing. Personally, I am substantially less bothered by the linguistic issues of using "this X" as an empathetic construction than I am bothered by the shortcut of conversational construction implied in the use of "so" and "okay" as sentence starters. The art of conversational silence has long gone, and the art of speaking in paragraphs is rapidly disappearing. I suppose all this signals I am a linguistic snob. Okay, so maybe this language thing is like, well, you know... I mean whatever...

Blindjim,
You're right. Don't forget to mark the mailbox with chalk.