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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/in-praise-of-mediocrity.html

This article struck me as valid. There are many pursuits that have evolved from some guys having a laugh into organized and serious competitions. When kids went from playing ball in the field to leagues with uniforms and practice schedules.

I consider myself mediocre in most things, but often take immense enjoyment in creating something that would be laughed off the table in a public setting. When I used to paint my own muscle cars I never once went to a car show. The car and me would be ridiculed. But I loved them and in the end the only person I had to please was me.

This article has inspired me to get back to making average stuff.

One of the reasons why I quit local airsoft scene. From fun hobby, suddenly you had bunch of overweight dudes thinking they are special forces, when in reality guys can't run few hundred of meters without dieing and after all, are playing with plastic bb's, but suddenly everyone is way too serious with it. From unless you have proper real uniform and gear, don't go regularly to team workouts to learn 'tactics' etc. you are not 'serious' enough.

 smurfORnot wrote:
One of the reasons why I quit local airsoft scene. From fun hobby, suddenly you had bunch of overweight dudes thinking they are special forces, when in reality guys can't run few hundred of meters without dieing and after all, are playing with plastic bb's, but suddenly everyone is way too serious with it. From unless you have proper real uniform and gear, don't go regularly to team workouts to learn 'tactics' etc. you are not 'serious' enough.

I stopped airsoft for the exact same reason

I am glad my 40k group is not into this "serious gaming" thing

Here and there I wonder if this article isn't really talking about the pursuit or mediocrity but that too many people take up hobbies not for the fun of it but the plaudits they see high achievers in the hobby they've chosen receive.

I've never been mediocre at anything. I'm either extremely amazing at it or extremely terrible. If there's a Bell Curve to quality, I'm at either side of the hill, never in the middle. I mean, there will always be those who are better or worse than me, but they can't see over the hill either. I've struggled with things that other people think are trivial, and I've stayed bad at them far longer than what most people would consider healthy.

That being said, this article was more an appeal to having a hobby, and I have dozens of them. I've never let the fear of being bad at it decide whether I try something. Since I'm an anti-social misanthrope, the deciding factor is usually how much I have to interact with other people, and whether I must offer up any control of that hobby to others.

 smurfORnot wrote:
One of the reasons why I quit local airsoft scene. From fun hobby, suddenly you had bunch of overweight dudes thinking they are special forces, when in reality guys can't run few hundred of meters without dieing and after all, are playing with plastic bb's, but suddenly everyone is way too serious with it. From unless you have proper real uniform and gear, don't go regularly to team workouts to learn 'tactics' etc. you are not 'serious' enough.

I never got into airsoft for those reasons.

This is why I mostly stopped playing Warhammer/Warmachine/Magic for several years and stuck to painting/collecting during that time.. All the local venues had very competitive play groups and I couldn't find anyone willing to just try out some fun lists or play a scenario with some houserules. One guy even invited me to his house for "a friendly game", so I brought a friendly list, and it turned out he wanted to test his optimized tournament list on me. Recently I moved and found a new group that A) plays a lot of historicals, with a less competitive approach, and B) thinks of stuff like Warhammer as "for fun" and plays/plans for those games appropriately. It's like a breath of fresh air.

Perhaps part of the difference is that I met this group through work, and we all work in an extremely competitive environment, so time spent together outside of work tends to be about letting go of that - our other main group activity is hiking and camping.

I'm a solid pursuer of the B+ to A-. Generally speaking, I find in most things it takes about as much effort to get to the top 10-20% of something as it does to get from the there to number one. That's about the point I'm happy to put the effort into something else.

 smurfORnot wrote:
One of the reasons why I quit local airsoft scene. From fun hobby, suddenly you had bunch of overweight dudes thinking they are special forces, when in reality guys can't run few hundred of meters without dieing and after all, are playing with plastic bb's, but suddenly everyone is way too serious with it. From unless you have proper real uniform and gear, don't go regularly to team workouts to learn 'tactics' etc. you are not 'serious' enough.

Same.

Yeah, not everything needs to be an ego defense. I think that the happiest people I know spend a lot of time doing something they are good at and also enjoy, but also enjoy spending time actively doing something they enjoy but aren't nearly as good at.

It's a somewhat annoying thing - several times I've gone in to buy one-off from local FLGS and they automatically want to sign me up for tournaments, day one - with the local crowd trying to egg me into it as well. Sorry, no, I just got this to play a game or two at home, not to be competitive.

I've pretty much always been casual about my hobby except twice - I got serious with Mechwarrior (there were some damn good prizes involved), and my writing hobby. Beyond that, I'm at best a Jack-of-all-trades, master of none.

For years I have said that pro-painting figures poses a danger of spoiling the fun for the rest of us who just want to get a decent "table ready" look.

 smurfORnot wrote:
One of the reasons why I quit local airsoft scene. From fun hobby, suddenly you had bunch of overweight dudes thinking they are special forces, when in reality guys can't run few hundred of meters without dieing and after all, are playing with plastic bb's, but suddenly everyone is way too serious with it. From unless you have proper real uniform and gear, don't go regularly to team workouts to learn 'tactics' etc. you are not 'serious' enough.

I still play airsoft because my local site has a statement in their safety brief that basically says “you’re all in the woods playing army with toy guns, chill out”. Tends to get the right kind of atmosphere.

I actually picked up 40k mainly because I really enjoy the modelling (and to a lesser extent painting) side; I’ve got my painting to a point where I’m pretty happy with it and it gets 7-8 average scores on the gallery here, which is fairly decent, but I just don’t have the patience to spend the effort getting any better. Plus I’d rather spend the time getting more of my army painted, because I’d much rather have an entire army at decent tabletop quality than 1 showpiece model in a sea of grey.*

Similarly I enjoy playing the game, but I know I’m not great and I also know that I just don’t have the time and energy to research tactics, math-hammer and refine lists and all the other stuff that would be required to get good. That’s why I quite like the new power level option; get my friends, a few beers and some cool looking models and lets go.

* of course, I don’t actually have any fully painted armies yet, because I’m a hobby butterfly, but working on it, honest!

I'm of two minds on this.

Firstly, I think that anybody should always be encouraged to take their hobby to the next level. I don't mean the pursuit of perfection, but forward progress is always good, not necessarily just on one facet of the game. The goal should always be nicely painted minis on a nice painted and assembled table. That's the best outcome for both players. I don't approve of the movement by some people to claim that people with painted armies, or who want to see progress on painted armies is "snobbish" or "elite". I'm a big believer that your army is your hobby...but playing a game with someone, it becomes "our hobby", and I think everyone should do their part to make sure that our hobby is as rewarding and good looking as possible.

However...

I don't have high standards for how you paint your army. Just paint your gak. We live in a world of glorious shortcuts and cheats we can do now with hobbies. We have coloured spray paints and primers, dips and grass tufts. I genuinely don't care if your army is spray painted one colour and your bases are painted green. Paint your gak. I'm a huge fan of being absolutely realistic with your painting goals. I'd take a base coated army over three beautifully painted models while the other 100 sit around in grey plastic. I think a lot of folks try too hard without being honest with themselves on their time, skill, or commitment to painting an army. Paint it to a standard to where you're not embarrassed to put it on a table and game with it. I paint quite a few models and I get a lot of feedback and often people are giving me advice for how to take it to the next level. I've reached the level I'm comfortable with, and I don't imagine I'll spend much more time on stuff. I want it "well done", and fast. I'm not ashamed of my models, and I don't think I've turned anyone away with the quality of my armies.

So in short I'd say: Be honest with yourself about your skills, limitations, enthusiasm and standards...and then paint your gak.

A hobby is for fun. If improvement is part of the fun for you, then fair enough. However, if you’re happy with your army that’s only painted in flat base coats, then good on you.

In my experience most people benefit from learning more about how to perform in their chosen hobby. If you do models then learning how to better clean, build, paint and play really helps build on the enjoyment.

If you like Magic the Gathering then learning how to build better decks helps

If you like photography then learning how to use modes other than auto; how to control lighting and flash etc....


No matter the hobby if you learn up to a middle-range of skills then most people gain from that learning quite significantly. Pushing on from that level is down to the individual.


I think online you often get the most keen or enthusiastic of many hobbies, which can lead to a heavier bias of skilled people represented; a raised skill bar and also a bigger drive to improve. It's not the only approach, but it is the approach that can appear dominant if one limits their influences to the online forums and discussion groups only. Consider that from any local club there might only be a handful who actually go online, read articles and post comments; the majority of most groups are not online and if they are its not much. So there's a huge wealth of people and opinions and views that are often underrepresented.

I think I needed this thread. I've been getting inside my own head too much about my painting.

What I really want is, like, 10k points of every army. Can't do that trying to win awards!

 Lorek wrote:
I think I needed this thread. I've been getting inside my own head too much about my painting.

What I really want is, like, 10k points of every army. Can't do that trying to win awards!

This. I had a buddy in high school (high school!) Who placed in the Golden Demon young bloods, and his dad won some Golden Demon entry stuff --- they were super serious hobbyists. I had a fully painted army about 70-80 strong painted like...an average high school (read: not great). He never had more than eight miniatures painted, lol. If you're comfortable with "I want this army done in 20 years" then go nuts, but I'm a huge fan of setting realistic expectations and motivations for yourself. I also cringe a bit when I see people who are brand new to the hobby jumping on YouTube to read about the most advanced techniques they can find - when they don't even know how to properly trim, sand, and assemble a clean miniature.

Pace yourselves my dudes.

Also, that sort of painting can win you awards. I judged a couple of "best painted warband" for a mate's Malifaux tournaments a few years ago. In each case, the guy who I chose as the winner didn't have the best-painted individual models - they did, however, have a completely painted warband, unlike the folk with one expertly-painted model, two half-done and half a dozen unpainted models with one arm.

You can always get better at something, but' never let "perfect" be the enemy of "done" ' is more the point of it.

Don't get fixated on the minutiae.

Going too hard at your hobby is a one way trip to burnout.

I'm with Elbows in this: get your stuff done, in your style, on your pace, just get it done at some point. It's considerate towards others and keeps you improving all the while.

Personally I like to get things done, but always strive to create the best I can at that time. Got to strive for that personal humanistic perfection in everything, just won't stress about it. That means I'm not churning too many finished figures out so fast, but they're currently at a very good tabletop level so I'll be content with them for decades. I can look at them and nod proudly, "Yup, I did that, it's cool." When other people do that too around the gaming table, I'm satisfied.

There is always someone that wants to be the big fish, no matter how small the pond is. It is fething annoying.