Sometimes when I look through the hobbies I follow, I chance upon the people who also like the same hobby. It sounds obvious enough, but sometimes when I see the other people who like raw denim for example, it gives me a bit of a shock. It’s not that they’re not nice people, or that I’m being overly judgemental. I think I’m just used to seeing Japanese people wearing Japanese denim, with their slimmer stature. But the truth of it is everyone else is also wearing Japanese denim, who don’t look Japanese, including myself.
It happens with mechanical keyboards sometimes too. I watch so many YouTube videos, and think that everyone will look like Taeha Types or Alexotos, but they actually don’t. I mean even I don’t look like them.
These sound a bit silly in observation, but the key point is that there’s really no external proof of someone to be interested in a hobby to look a certain way. It means two things: it means that gatekeeping based on appearances should not be the case. It also means that just because someone is interested in something, they don’t need to change who they are about it and they can still stick to the hobby.
And yet, sometimes these are really hard concepts to apply practically…